Day 302 - 18 Nov 96 - Page 46


     
     1        catering workers, full and part time.  That was page 37,
     2        middle of the page.
     3
     4        Then we go on to the catering review group on page 38,
     5        which was the confidential catering industry firms' own
     6        survey of wage rates between different firms.  Anyway,
     7        I have not got the actual document.
     8
     9   MR JUSTICE BELL:  No, well, I remember it.
    10
    11   MR. MORRIS:   I think there were three different wage review
    12        documents, wage comparison documents.  All very much the
    13        same, it came down to it.
    14
    15        Actually, no, sorry, before he went on to that, you came in
    16        with a question about -- that was on page 38.  It was about
    17        how family credit, Mr. Phil Pearson said, provides for
    18        employees, 16 hours or more a week, two children and above,
    19        working in a low paid job, it lifts their wage to the
    20        equivalent benefit level paid by the State, and the family
    21        credit bill nationally is about £1 billion per year.
    22        Basically, what he is saying is the State is subsidising
    23        employers who are paying low pay by paying a portion of
    24        effectively their income rather than the company doing
    25        that.  And obviously, that would apply to McDonald's for
    26        the low pay, depending on the circumstances of the person,
    27        whether they have children, whatever, who are working for
    28        McDonald's.
    29
    30        Anyway, going on to the...  He said that -- this is on
    31        page 40, line 27 -- the catering jobs of waiting, chef, bar
    32        staff and so forth, appear among the lowest 10 male
    33        occupations by pay, and female as well, that was true in
    34        1983 when I looked at the figures, first, and it is true in
    35        1995.  So the lowest 10 occupations in the low pay league,
    36        as he called it, catering, appears in the bottom 10.
    37        I don't know how many jobs, whether there is a hundred jobs
    38        that fall into the category of the low pay league but...
    39
    40        Then we have the document, External Survey of Hourly Rates,
    41        which is the catering review group.  He said that this is
    42        completely preview information which would never be
    43        available to a researcher normally, and it is only because
    44        of the cooperation of the company's, cooperating with each
    45        other, which is quite unusual, I should think, that this
    46        information is available and we have it available in court
    47        today.  And all the major companies, he says, that are
    48        McDonald's competitors and have directly comparable
    49        operations are present there, and the conclusion is
    50        McDonald's basic rates are at or below the lower quartile
    51        of the market.  That is, of their own low paid industry
    52        McDonald's are in the bottom 25 percent of that low paid
    53        industry, their pay rates.
    54
    55        He was quite surprised by these figures, because he had
    56        been given to believe that McDonald's, probably because he
    57        had been reading McDonald's own literature, McDonald's wage
    58        rates were higher.  And it turns out, of course, that -- I
    59        can't remember if it is the one compared to McDonald's wage
    60        rates in two years previously or not.  We will come on to

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