Day 302 - 18 Nov 96 - Page 36


     
     1        page 9, line 48 - he saw back of house areas, off peak
     2        times, both stores seemed to be near the limit of their
     3        safe working capacity.  And then he later goes on to say
     4        how they were quite small kitchens compared to the amount
     5        of work being done in them.  And that was off peak times.
     6        Obviously at peak times there would be more staff, more
     7        pressure; no doubt that is why he was not allowed to see
     8        them at those times.
     9
    10        On page 10 he talks about the turnover and he said that the
    11        60 percent labour turnover figure which was quoted in the
    12        fact sheet was double.  He said there was about double the
    13        industry average for the restaurant sector.  We now know
    14        that the actual turnover rate at the relevant time was
    15        something like three times greater, which would have been
    16        five or six times the industry average for the restaurant
    17        sector.
    18
    19        He talks about the difficulty of recruiting people into
    20        unions with that kind of turnover level.  And he points to,
    21        of the 27 witness statements from former employees - this
    22        is on page 11 at the top - that we had given him to read,
    23        14 referred to trade unionism and that company hostility,
    24        real or perceived, featured in most of those cases.
    25
    26        He did not make a calculation, but he said that most of the
    27        staff will not be covered by general industrial tribunal,
    28        wrongful dismissal protection, because, I mean, how many
    29        part-time staff at McDonald's have worked for more than
    30        five years.  We can say it is probably less than half a
    31        percent.  And full-timers for more than two years.  The
    32        point being that a lot of full-timers who end up working
    33        that long tend to be absorbed into management grades and so
    34        the amount of people covered by wrongful dismissal
    35        legislation rights may be less than 3 or 4 percent of the
    36        entire workforce, may indeed be less than that, apart from
    37        people who have become management grades, who obviously
    38        still have rights.  But the point is, they begin to see
    39        things through the company's eyes, they have made their
    40        choice to move up into the management grades.
    41
    42        He said, including the Crew Handbook conditions which debar
    43        the distribution of union literature or the collection of
    44        union dues, et cetera, whether the staff are on or off
    45        duty, along with the turnover levels, concludes for these
    46        reasons:  The McDonald's staffing and labour relations
    47        system in my view is fundamentally inimicable to unions.
    48        This may appear in the form of a prevailing anti-union
    49        initiatives culture at store management level as would
    50        appear from the employee statements, or in the arrival of
    51        senior personnel at the scene of tentative first attempts
    52        to establish union presence.  Which we heard is what
    53        happened with Mr. Nicholson in the examples that we had
    54        managed to get information about.  Also, it applies to
    55        Mr. Stan Stein jetsetting around the world whenever there
    56        was any union disputes.  Which would send out a message to
    57        the workers involved in that dispute of a certain kind.
    58
    59        And he talks about the rumours of McDonald's closing down a
    60        unionised restaurant.  And then he says the company appears

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