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
