Day 181 - 01 Nov 95 - Page 55
1 from the 1986 Crew Handbook, internal page 41, bundle
2 page 42, paragraph 4 on that page, the last line,
3 says: "The maximum hours that young persons can be legally
4 employed in any one week is 48. However, McDonald's policy
5 does not permit crew members to work more than 39 hours
6 per week."
7
8 In your experience as a wage council member, and bearing in
9 mind the memo which we saw earlier on in 1990 from
10 Sid Nicholson, head of personnel, about policy not to
11 employ people over 39 hours a week, would that be the kind
12 of thing that would be very likely to be taken at face
13 value as a definitive statement?
14 A. Yes; not by any company, not by your small business,
15 your cafe; the record would probably need to be examined.
16 But for a significant national employer with organised
17 personnel practices -- again, I am not privy to the actual
18 meeting between -- but, you know, on the face of it, this
19 was precisely the kind of documentation that would be
20 required to support -- well, which would support --
21 McDonald's in this case, McDonald's response, saying: "We
22 work a 39 hour week, no more", all those aspects of the
23 Wages Council order do not apply.
24
25 Q. Right. OK. We have heard that something like 20 per cent,
26 certainly in London, of McDonald's workers are full-timers;
27 and if the vast bulk of those working overtime are
28 full-timers, and that amounts to five per cent of the
29 workforce, then a quarter of all the full-timers will be
30 working overtime each week. Is that -- well, it is an
31 obvious question, really -- is that a very substantial
32 percentage?
33 A. Yes. Therein lies the problem, therein lies the
34 potential area for any, you know, retrospectively
35 hypothetical -- I think we are talking now retrospectives
36 and hypotheticals. But yes, I mean, that is the -- I would
37 say, as indeed I believe I have covered already, as a
38 former council member, I would say that that would give the
39 -- that would be the trigger, those kind of statistics
40 would be the trigger for a check on the process, bearing in
41 mind what appears to have been the position, which is that
42 there was no overtime; and yet the data contradict the
43 policy.
44
45 Q. Mr. Rampton asked you a hypothetical question about
46 full-timers being the people who may have got one or two,
47 or more, performance reviews. Can I ask you a similarly
48 hypothetical question: is it not likely that all the
49 full-timers at McDonald's will have started without
50 achieving any performance reviews?
51 A. They would have started on the basic rate.
52
53 Q. Yes, of course; 100 per cent of them. The turnover length
54 of stay -- you said you did not have any length of stay
55 data. If we can go to the documents behind Lynne Mead's
56 statement, if someone can help me where that is exactly
57 again. It is one we did not really look at, except for
58 very briefly; Mr. Rampton referred to it. Yellow X -- is
59 it tab 7?
60 A. Yes.
