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

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