Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 70


     
     1        management, achieving excellence in safety management,
     2        there was a moral reason in terms of the safety and the
     3        well-being of employees, there were the cost implications
     4        and, third, the legal requirements.  You said that there is
     5        no conflict at all between those three things?
     6        A.  Accidents cost money.  They can cost you a lot of
     7        money.  If somebody has an accident on your shift, it
     8        really does impact the service you can give your customers
     9        and the business that you are doing -- never mind the fact
    10        that if that person is injured severely enough they are
    11        going to be away from work.
    12
    13   Q.   Not if it is a minor accident, they would continue working,
    14        would they not?
    15        A.  Obviously, a minor accident will not have such a big
    16        impact, but also, remember, as we said earlier, a lot of
    17        the very minor accidents, it is virtually impossible to
    18        prevent them.  There is hot surfaces and there is hot
    19        equipment in a kitchen.  It is a kitchen used for preparing
    20        food.  We advise people of that.  We train them how to do
    21        things, but they are all humans beings and occasionally
    22        they are going to get the co-ordination wrong.
    23
    24        I just cannot-- you know, I would love to stand here and
    25        say to you:  Look, it is possible in McDonald's to prevent
    26        all accidents happening".  But, in a real world, it just is
    27        not; yes, we still feel we have some way to go on the
    28        serious accidents and we are all behind doing that, but
    29        with some of these very, very, very minor accidents, there
    30        is just no way we are going to prevent them all.
    31
    32   Q.   No, but in terms of the cost, you were saying that it cost
    33        money, but if there is a minor accident it probably costs
    34        less money than skimping on paying the wages of an addition
    35        employee for a year?
    36        A.  You know, there is still moral reasons.  There is no
    37        way I want any of our employees to get hurt at all.
    38
    39   Q.   If the moral obligations or moral reasons are so important
    40        to you, why did it take you 18 months to fit the RCDs?
    41        I mean, you said that part of the reason it took that was
    42        because it was costly?
    43        A.  Part of the reason why it took that long was because,
    44        logistically, it was very difficult.  With the newer
    45        restaurants, it was quite easy to do because of the
    46        technology involved.  With some of the older restaurants it
    47        involved work on site before we could even start putting
    48        the RCDs in, and it just takes time to organise.  You
    49        cannot do that sort of thing overnight.  The sort of
    50        contractors that we trust, that we are used to working in 
    51        our restaurants that we know are up to the right standards 
    52        are limited in number. 
    53
    54   Q.   We are not talking about overnight, though, we are talking
    55        about 18 months.
    56        A.  Yes, but we had, what, 450 restaurants at the time.
    57
    58   Q.   If you had been prepared to put more money into it, you
    59        could have done it much more rapidly than that?
    60        A.  Look -- rubbish -- the EHO, as I said to you, never

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