Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 26
1 fined. But the point I wanted to bring up was that the
2 facts of the matter were exposed about an union on the
3 islands, and one reason why McDonald's do not like unions
4 is because they can expose illegalities.
5
6 In Canada 1993, 1994, we heard how Sarah Inglis at the age
7 of 16 with two or three colleagues and an outside union
8 adviser had enabled a majority of the workers in her store
9 in Ontario to join an union. In response, managers
10 organised a quite bizarre and nationally controversial
11 anti-union campaign which included creating a climate of
12 fear against pro-union staff, putting on special anti-union
13 video and slide shows, prompting an anti-union campaign run
14 by managers, and trying to use their position to get staff
15 to leave the union, giving out anti-union badges to try to
16 intimidate those that would not want to wear them.
17
18 Actually, that was something that I think Mr. Stein denied
19 about these badges. He said it was something to do with
20 drugs, or something, no badges. I cannot remember what he
21 said, but it was rubbish, and at one point, as we heard,
22 some of the workers on an outing from the store had laid
23 down in the snow to form the words 'No to Unions'. A
24 majority of these workers were under 18 and it was
25 completely clear -- the Manager was shouting "Do we want
26 unions?" -- that they were hyping up these vulnerable
27 children, vulnerable youths, using the weight of the
28 company's experience and position of power and influence
29 over them to create a most disturbing and sinister and
30 controversial situation in response to a majority of people
31 who wanted to join an union.
32
33 Not surprisingly, some months later, the union members and
34 union activists lost a secret ballot in the store for
35 recognition. Then, according to the evidence from our
36 witness Joel Henderson, who had been one of the union
37 activists in the store, after the ballot "things have
38 returned to the slave-like working conditions that crew
39 must endure every single shift that they work" from the
40 temporary improvements that had come in during the
41 unionisation drive.
42
43 We also heard from the Civil Evidence Act notice from
44 somebody that reported a conversation between McDonald's
45 personnel store managers -- or whoever, I cannot remember
46 now -- in a restaurant where he was working, about how they
47 were very interested to use what had happened there as a
48 model for when they got potential disputes in other places.
49
50 It is also important... I cannot remember one of the
51 points I was going to bring up, I cannot remember now.
52 Just to say that with the Chicago '78 store what I forget
53 to say was, of course, that the union activists were
54 harassed and the sweeteners were brought in for other
55 staff, and basically we can see a kind of pattern
56 throughout all these incidents of McDonald's carefully
57 crafted strategy to oppose any unionisation attempt if they
58 can.
59
60 We heard from Thomas Yenssen from Norway where there had
