Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 16
1 after only a few weeks.
2
3 Further, staff often have to work in the evening and at
4 weekends, which can involve long hours inevitably spent in
5 a hot, smelly and noisy environment.
6
7 Further, it is extremely difficult to improve the terms and
8 conditions of work at the restaurants of the first and/or
9 second plaintiff by trade union negotiations since there is
10 no specific trade union for staff.
11
12 Further, the first and second plaintiff discourage trade
13 unions and this has on occasion led to the dismissal of
14 pro-union workers.
15
16 Further, the young people who work in the restaurants
17 contribute towards the huge profits made by McDonald's.
18 Without these workers such profits would not be made and
19 McDonald's are to that extent dependent upon them.
20
21 Further, the absence of a national minimum wage means that
22 McDonald's can pay their workers what they like. Generally
23 speaking, McDonald's are interested in recruiting labour at
24 the cheapest rate possible. This is exploitative,
25 particularly in respect of members of certain groups such
26 as women and black people who are generally disadvantaged
27 in industry.
28
29 Now, those, what we might call base pleadings, in terms of
30 meanings, were developed in the pleadings as we have
31 progressed up to trial and during the trial. Partly
32 because of our inexperience we often could not distinguish
33 between meanings and strict justification pleadings. So
34 there was meanings included.
35
36 But as has been agreed in the case, the pleadings in any
37 way do not nail down all the issues accurately or
38 comprehensively. To some extent we all know what the
39 issues have become as the trial has gone on. I believe
40 some amendments have been made which we have not managed to
41 keep accurate records of in any case, but that is maybe
42 academic now.
43
44 Can I just say one thing before I go on to showing how
45 those beliefs, put down in meanings, have been fully
46 justified by the evidence in the case, i.e., that these are
47 reasonable beliefs without going fully into the facts that
48 have been proved in the case.
49
50 Can I just say on that, in our original pleadings, I don't
51 know -- no, sorry, not our pleadings, McDonald's original
52 pleadings, as we have heard in this case there has from
53 time to time cropped up a confusion about what is meant by
54 McDonald's and the first and second plaintiffs. McDonald's
55 use the word McDonald's to mean all their stores worldwide
56 and everything that they do, unless they do something which
57 is embarrassing, when it suddenly becomes, "well, that is
58 the responsibility of the owner". But I think that the
59 evidence has shown, especially some of the early evidence
60 before McDonald's began to adopt that kind of secondary
