Day 302 - 18 Nov 96 - Page 37


     
     1        to take few, I'd say no, steps to ensure that all staff are
     2        aware of their right to join a trade union and that union
     3        membership would not put their employment in jeopardy.
     4
     5        I think this is very important, because I have not seen one
     6        word in any McDonald's document, and I might be wrong, if
     7        Mr. Rampton can find one, he might find one document, that
     8        actually says about people having a right to join a trade
     9        union.  That is actually a document that would have been
    10        shown to staff.  Not only to join a trade union, but to
    11        take part in trade union activities without fear of
    12        dismissal.
    13
    14        Then Mr. Pearson, on pages 11 and 12, talks about the kind
    15        of things that a union negotiation agreement would
    16        involve.  I will not go into that because we dealt with
    17        that on Friday.  He was very critical of the HSE
    18        conclusions about the company, the Health and Safety
    19        Executive report.  He said, in work areas with hot
    20        surfaces, hot liquids, electrical machinery, and sometimes
    21        wet floors, hustle is inherently a high risk culture.
    22
    23        Then he moves on to, on page 12 at the bottom, about    how
    24         -- he quotes from their document "profit unit activity 3"
    25        which begins with the statement "as you know, labour costs
    26        are controllable in the same way food costs are." And this
    27        is a document to -- this is the management, I think it is
    28        from the management development programme, how managers are
    29        educated in the McDonald's system and practices.
    30
    31        And he said the constantly monitored food and labour costs
    32        control systems form a discipline integrated approach to
    33        cost management.  The system depends on a highly - the word
    34        "depends" is important - highly flexible employment
    35        contract with staff flexing their hours willingly or not.
    36        It is central - and I underline the word "central" - to
    37        management's approach to planning, programming and
    38        budgeting within restaurants, and within the wider
    39        organisation.
    40
    41        The point there is that it is not some -- the problems that
    42        we see on the local level, with the wage costs, pressures
    43        to keep wage costs down, stems from the discipline
    44        integrated approach to cost management which no doubt
    45        applies worldwide and is monitored hourly in many cases,
    46        which basically reduces staff to cogs in a wheel,
    47        controlled by management, and it is central to the whole
    48        employment conditions at McDonald's, to understanding
    49        management culture.  Because there is always somebody
    50        higher up looking down on the one beneath them and costing
    51        them.  Even the managers are costed and monitored.
    52
    53        One thing I wanted to note, actually, was that on page 13,
    54        line 39, we go back to the decency threshold, which by 1994
    55        had gone to up £221.50 a week, i.e., it had gone up
    56        something like £14 a week, whereas McDonald's wages,
    57        I think in that time - now I might be wrong because I have
    58        not got the wages in front of me - went up something like
    59        five pence an hour, because once the Wage Council
    60        protection was abolished, McDonald's wages, I think, only

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