Day 155 - 14 Jul 95 - Page 30
1 Q. Do you think that the yellow badge people were stupid?
2 A. No.
3
4 Q. Did they have an awful lot of power?
5 A. No.
6
7 Q. Do you think that their wages were lousey?
8 A. They were one of the highest paid in the restaurant. I
9 do not know the exact figure, but they were well looked
10 after by myself.
11
12 Q. I am not going to read much more than this. He
13 says -- these are yellow badges, I think -- "They got
14 absolutely nothing out of it" and I do not know what that
15 means at all. then he says, "Yet they managed to treat the
16 people below them as badly as they were treated
17 themselves". Mr. Giardina, if you found yellow badged
18 people treating people below them like dirt, to use
19 Mr. Magee's phrase, what would you have done?
20 A. They would not have been given the option to actually
21 progress into the hierarchy because one of the main things
22 to be an area leader or an area manager is to be
23 professional, have a good attitude, etc. etc., and
24 obviously that would not have been one of the qualities
25 that they possessed if they continuously did that.
26
27 Q. I am on the same page, my Lord, page 9, of Mr. Magee's
28 statement. Again, I will read it to you. He says:
29 "Another matter which did not help was that I was
30 thoroughly fed up with working on a Saturday night". Was
31 anybody compelled to work on a Saturday night?
32 A. No. Whatever availability would be put by the person
33 wanting employment on his application form, whatever they
34 put down, that is what we would adhere to. That is what
35 the crew availability is.
36
37 Q. So there would be no question of somebody saying: "Well,
38 I want to work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays" and you
39 saying: "Sorry, mate, you cannot. You have to come in on
40 Saturday night"?
41 A. No.
42
43 Q. He goes on: "I felt that I was working so many hours and
44 getting so little pay" -- we will ignore that -- "I was
45 convinced that I was being cheated" -- notice that word,
46 please -- "and not being paid for all the hours that
47 I worked". Are you conscious, Mr. Giardina, of ever having
48 cheated anybody that worked for you by not paying them for
49 the hours they worked?
50 A. No.
51
52 Q. He goes on: "My average weekly pay was approximately œ25
53 maximum. The most I ever got paid in one week was œ35.
54 For this I was doing 15 to 20 hours of very hard, physical,
55 sweaty work". How would you characterise the kind of work
56 which an ordinary crew member does at McDonald's?
57 A. Based on the restaurant, once you have got your system
58 set up, you have got your people -- I can only speak of
59 that sort of scenario -- but once we had enough people,
60 once we had the right calibre of staff, that is why the
