Day 180 - 31 Oct 95 - Page 26


     
     1        because I believe I have a reasonably familiar knowledge of
     2        the industry overall.  But what is always interesting is
     3        how these averages are made up of very different
     4        experiences in the different sectors of catering, with very
     5        much lower turnover in the more stable industrial catering
     6        area and very much higher elsewhere.
     7
     8        Whilst I was working for the TGWU, I had contact with
     9        personnel officers, senior managers and some of the leading
    10        hoteliers in London, Southeast, and became familiar with
    11        their turnover figures.  You would discuss them; you would
    12        think of strategies to reduce turnover.
    13
    14        I remember a personnel officer of one leading national
    15        hotel company telling me it cost them £400 per employee to
    16        replace them.  Turnover is expensive.  In fact, the figure
    17        he told me was 400 times the hourly rate; 400 times the
    18        hourly rate, actually was the figure, so it would have been
    19        £800, to replace staff.
    20
    21   Q.   Just pause a moment.
    22        A.  Yes.  (Pause)  This figure of the cost of labour
    23        replacement as a multiple of the hourly rate is a fair
    24        indication of the waste and the cost to industry -- the
    25        penalty, if you like, of high turnover.  Of course, the
    26        better paid the employee, the more it costs to replace
    27        them; that is a truism.
    28
    29        But this issue of high staff turnover in catering is the
    30        industry's Achilles' heel, as anybody familiar with the
    31        trade press will know.  It is an issue which the house
    32        journal for the industry, that is the catering hotel
    33        keeper, comes back to time and again.
    34
    35   MR. MORRIS:  We have heard in this case that McDonald's labour
    36        turnover figure in the winter of 1989/90 was something like
    37        190 per cent, sometimes above, sometimes below.  We have
    38        also heard that in their Official reasons For Leaving
    39        chart, something like 23 per cent of leaving reasons are to
    40        do with going back to college, which means that something
    41        like 77 per cent were not the same, that is why they were
    42        leaving.  In your expert opinion, what does that indicate?
    43
    44   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Hold on.  Where did you get that from?
    45
    46   MR. MORRIS:  That was the chart we had, the Official Reasons for
    47        Leaving chart, which showed 22.91 per cent said they were
    48        leaving to return to school or college.
    49
    50   MR. JUSTICE BELL: I remember that, but you went on to say that 
    51        it meant that 77 per cent did not give a reason for 
    52        leaving. 
    53
    54   MR. MORRIS:  No, no, sorry.  77 per cent did not give that
    55        reason.
    56
    57   MR. RAMPTON:  No, but they gave other reasons.
    58
    59   MR. MORRIS:  Exactly.
    60

Prev Next Index