Day 302 - 18 Nov 96 - Page 48
1 29. In some industries 37 hours a week was the calculation
2 as the cut off before getting overtime.
3
4 Obviously, his view as an expert was -- page 49, line 45 --
5 that "overtime should be paid to reward long hours." But
6 at the same time he was not encouraging long hours because
7 they are associated with high absence rates through
8 sickness, associated with unsafe working conditions and
9 stress -- sorry, with unsafe working and stress and other
10 factors. Then he says, bottom of page 49, "You do get long
11 hours in low paid sectors." The temptation, obviously, is
12 from the employees' perspective to work that which is on
13 offer and sometimes without choice because you need the
14 money. That is the bottom of page 49.
15
16 Now, on the top of page 50, he says that apparently, from
17 the figures he had seen regarding McDonald's and their lack
18 of payment of overtime, it appears -- and he was being very
19 cautious about this -- from the figures to be systematic
20 abuse, systematic underpayments. As someone who had been
21 on the wages council he was very alarmed by what was put in
22 front of him in the witness box. He was not very impressed
23 with the idea that it may, may, and it clearly does not,
24 but that it may kind of by chance, if someone was working
25 premium hours, they might go above the minimum statutory
26 overtime rate. He was not impressed with that at all. As
27 we have heard the premium hours rates are very small, and
28 the overtime being time and a half would mean that you
29 would have to work a hell of a lot of premium hours within
30 your time before you would reach the overtime time and a
31 half differential. It is just not possible, and what
32 happened to Mr. Alimi clearly happened to tens of thousands
33 of other employees throughout the whole period in which
34 overtime was compulsory.
35
36 He said that wages inspectors have their work cut out.
37 They had 110 of them in 1987, covering 2.3 million workers
38 and 430,000 work places nationwide. So, the major
39 employees would be contacted by post or questionnaire. And
40 there might be a follow-up interview with a senior
41 personnel officer, he said at page 51, line 38.
42
43 If then it had been known that a substantial minority, one
44 in 20 -- which, as we know is one in four of all
45 full-timers -- one in 20 of a major employer such as
46 McDonald's did work overtime, then there would have been an
47 inquiry.
48
49 Of course, there are other provisions in the overtime
50 regulations, where, if you work on a rest day you should
51 get double time and, also, there should be time and
52 one-eighth between 7.00 and 11.00 p.m., time and a quarter
53 between 11.00 p.m. and 7.00 a.m. So, it is not as if
54 McDonald's shift premiums were anything to write home
55 about. Mr. Pearson said they would be incorporated into
56 the overtime provisions regulations.
57
58 He said, at page 53, line 14: "The survey methods of wage
59 inspectors might well not have ever have identified this
60 problem."
