Day 139 - 21 Jun 95 - Page 40
1 -- he was, in any event, dealing with the matter at a
2 pre-trial interlocutory stage, so what he said, I would
3 have thought, would apply even more so now.
4
5 You have to have some basis. These are not the words he
6 used; he posed a twofold test. But what it really boiled
7 down to was, you have to have some reasonable basis in good
8 faith for supposing that there is a ground for criticising
9 McDonald's in a particular respect.
10
11 I have to say, for the moment, I cannot see anything wrong
12 with an argument over the units, because anyone might
13 say: "Look, it is all right people saying we would like
14 union representation in our restaurant", but if a number of
15 restaurants are run by the same company and the same man,
16 it ought to be all in or all out; and, therefore, I can
17 see, coming fresh to the jurisdiction of the NLRB, the
18 point of deciding what the sensible unit is before you then
19 see whether you have enough cards to justify an election
20 and, if you have, having an election.
21
22 MR. MORRIS: I mean, I do not agree with the NLRB position.
23 Certainly, in Ireland, for example, the dispute in Ireland
24 in 1979 was a successful strike and resulted in judgment,
25 as has been heard, that McDonald's should recognise the
26 union; even if a minority, even if a small minority of
27 workers in a branch, in a store, chose to be represented by
28 a union, they would have that right.
29
30 The point is, if McDonald's are going to make claims and
31 Mr. Stein is going to make claims of no significant
32 disputes, or no Labour Board rulings, or whatever, against
33 McDonald's, then it is important to know where there were
34 other disputes, but maybe they did not get past the first
35 hurdle because of these particular rules.
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: He said he cannot remember a Hawaii or a
38 New York dispute. I am not going to find that McDonald's
39 were anti-union because, quite in accordance with what
40 appears to be the legislation in the United States, one or
41 more of their franchisees takes the point, which it appears
42 it is perfectly valid to take in the United States, that
43 the proper unit is, for instance, all eight restaurants
44 which a particular franchisee is running in an area, rather
45 than just any one of them.
46
47 When we come to Ireland, I will consider Ireland afresh;
48 and if you establish a case that Irish law is such and
49 such, and that McDonald's was trying to get round the
50 situation in an underhand way because, you would say, they
51 are anti-union, then I will consider that afresh.
52
53 Your "sweeteners" is another matter. You have no basis for
54 putting anything like that in Hawaii or New York. All you
55 have is a paragraph in the IUF publication which refers to
56 Hawaii and New York, without even actually saying it was
57 McDonald's in Hawaii and New York, and a witness in the box
58 who says he does not recall anything to do with Hawaii or
59 New York.
60
