Day 151 - 10 Jul 95 - Page 51
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have to say, I think we are going round in
2 circles on this, because you say that the labour rate is
3 low; McDonald's witnesses so far have said it is not; and
4 that may be a matter I have to decide, which I prefer on
5 it. But your questions have got to accept that there is
6 this difference between what you are putting and what they
7 are answering.
8
9 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You do not have to accept that you are wrong
12 and they are right, but that -----
13
14 MR. MORRIS: No chance of that.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not say you should give up hope, but
17 once you have asked the witness the question, and certainly
18 once you have asked the question twice, I think you have to
19 leave it there.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: I thought that brought in a new perspective, the
22 too low perspective.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think all I am saying is that we do not
25 want to get bogged down.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: Yes. (To the witness) If you look at paragraph 7
28 over the page. I do not know if we directly referred to
29 it, but when you dealt with the under-18s, which we have
30 just finished the questioning on, you did not mention in
31 your statement about checking actual hours worked; you just
32 said you checked they were not scheduled. So was that an
33 omission in your statement, or was that because you just
34 dreamed that up when you were asked questions about it five
35 minutes ago? This is 7 in your first statement -- point
36 7.
37 A. I think what I have been able to do there is to clarify
38 some of that in the supplementary. But, certainly, I would
39 do both. "Part of my job was to ensure that managers did
40 not schedule under-18s to work past midnight."
41
42 Q. Yes. It did not say anything about checking up the actual
43 hours?
44 A. Right. But I believe on supplementary
45 page 4: "Equally, when I was an area supervisor for Clacton
46 and Colchester, this is one of the things I regularly
47 checked on my two or three weekly visits to the
48 restaurants" -- on page 4, "young people (under-18s)".
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is what we were looking at a little
51 while ago.
52
53 MR. MORRIS: Well, that may be.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think we are back where we were before.
56
57 MR. ATKINSON: It is a little unfair to say he dreamed it up
58 five minutes ago because he did not refer to it on Friday
59 in chief.
60
