Day 140 - 22 Jun 95 - Page 41


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Quite frankly, it seems to me that it can
     3        read either.  I just do not know which, but just reading
     4        that alone -----
     5
     6   MS. STEEL:  I suggest to you that that is what the survey was
     7        of, what the wage rates were in May.  It was mailed out to
     8        participating restaurants in June 1990 and returned in
     9        July?
    10        A.  I would suggest you look at the second paragraph
    11        dealing with the decision to conduct such a survey.
    12        I think that relates to the May in the first paragraph
    13        but -----
    14
    15   MR. MORRIS:  Which paragraph?
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you have a basis for suggesting that the
    18        difference would have been considerable between the two
    19        dates?  I mean -----
    20
    21   MS. STEEL:  Yes.  There is a basis for that, because by May 1990
    22        all these stores and the Company had come under
    23        considerable pressure over the wage rates, had they not,
    24        which was precisely why you were down there?
    25        A.  No, that is not correct.
    26
    27   Q.   By that time, they may well have changed their wage rates.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Are you suggesting that they had?  That is
    30        what I need to know, if you say something may have
    31        happened.
    32
    33   MS. STEEL:   Because we have not got their survey,
    34        mysteriously -----
    35
    36   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  All I am asking is if you have a basis for
    37        it.  Put it anyway, that they were changed.
    38
    39   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord -----
    40
    41   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, Mr. Rampton.  Every time I make -- not
    42        every time, I am sorry, but four out of five times, when
    43        I start to say something, you want your six pennyworth
    44        halfway through.
    45
    46   MR. RAMPTON:  I was going to make a different point.  I will
    47        make it later.
    48
    49   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I was going to say is this, there is a
    50        difference in what you put, that someone may have done 
    51        something significant and actually has done it.  So make it 
    52        clear that you are not just suggesting that something is 
    53        capable of a sinister interpretation, but that you are
    54        actually putting that such and such happened.  If you get
    55        an answer you like, that is the end of it.  If you get an
    56        answer you do not like, then put your ammunition, if you
    57        have it.
    58
    59   MS. STEEL:  (To the witness)  I suggest to you that the wage
    60        rates had changed and had decreased their differential

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