Day 175 - 18 Oct 95 - Page 37
1
2 It was that time that a number of people started talking
3 about the need to be unionised, and initially that was a
4 small group and discussions spread amongst the staff, but
5 people had to be careful because everyone was of the
6 opinion that McDonald's was an anti-union Company, and the
7 Managers had always said whenever there had been a
8 discussion about unions: "You will never get unions here
9 because they will never have it". So, people knew that
10 that was not something you could discuss openly.
11
12 So, when it became quite clear that quite a lot of people
13 felt there was a need to unionise, a number of us organised
14 a meeting in a local pub, to discuss the issue out of the
15 -- away from the ears of the Managers.
16
17 Q. How many people went to that?
18 A. It was around 15 people that went to the pub; some of
19 them were already on that shift, other people came back for
20 the purposes of the discussion. During the discussion it
21 was agreed that about five of us would start co-ordinating,
22 finding out what we should do and how to go about it. But,
23 obviously, these sort of discussions and things were picked
24 up by the management on the work on the shop floor,
25 whatever you want to call it. People were aware of it
26 being discussed.
27
28 It was not -- it was not discussed openly but it was
29 obvious these discussions were taking place and a sort of
30 paranoia developed amongst the Managers where they would
31 not allow group discussions to take place on anything that
32 was connected to the job or politics, and would break the
33 discussions up and threaten to discipline people for not
34 doing their work or for anything really. They just got
35 extremely paranoid and aggressive about it and, I suppose,
36 frightened about the idea of people wanting to talk about
37 unions.
38
39 Q. Sorry, just a question I was going to ask you: The core
40 group of this, you said about five people or something,
41 were these part-timers, full-timers?
42 A. Full-timers. Maybe one of them was part-time but the
43 rest were full-timers.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not think you told me -- it may be in
46 your statement and I just have not remembered -- just pause
47 a moment -- what were you doing during the first two and a
48 half years, or whatever it was, while you were part-time?
49 A. I was at college.
50
51 Q. Yes.
52
53 MR. MORRIS: Regarding rap sessions, you have stated the general
54 situation. What was your personal involvement? How many
55 did you attend?
56 A. When I started working at the store I had been told a
57 lot of things in my, sort of, induction before I started,
58 and I naturally I asked the other staff about them. One of
59 the things I was interested in was this concept of rap
60 sessions, where people can go along, air their grievances
