Day 133 - 12 Jun 95 - Page 39
1 A. Yes.
2
3 Q. That has been the case now for, at any rate, so far as we
4 have been told, as long ago as 1986?
5 A. Yes.
6
7 Q. My first question is this: How difficult is it to get one
8 of those performance related increases in McDonald's?
9 A. Well, it is fairly easy, normal, usual, for people to
10 achieve a performance increase, so to receive one of those,
11 and what you do tend to find is that you will have more
12 people receiving 5p and 10p increases probably than the
13 people at the top rate because, as in any sort of
14 performance distribution, you are likely to get more people
15 operating in the sort of the middle of the bell curve, so
16 you will get more people falling into that category.
17
18 Q. In all the time that these increases have been available to
19 McDonald's workers, we in this country have had as a
20 companion of our daily life what I think we would call,
21 generally speaking, inflation. Is there any sense in which
22 you think, or the Company thinks, that the value of those
23 available increases at McDonald's might have been eroded by
24 the effect of inflation or, indeed, any other
25 considerations?
26 A. Well, one of things that we did when we received the
27 crew opinion survey results was to look at the reasons why
28 people expressed some dissatisfaction about their pay
29 increases, so that is one of the things that we have looked
30 at. I think that, yes, inflation will form part of that,
31 that what 5p represented years ago is, perhaps, less now in
32 absolute terms.
33
34 Q. Is this wage structure and, particularly, the performance
35 related increases, both their availability and their value
36 to the crew member, something which the Company keeps under
37 review?
38 A. Yes. We review pay and so on regularly anyway and that
39 certainly is obviously part of it, because you need to make
40 sure that the two things together are integrated, so
41 certainly that is something that we are reviewing.
42
43 Q. Put in its proper context, of course, the basic starting
44 rates have increased more or less annually ---
45 A. Yes.
46
47 Q. -- over a long period of time?
48 A. Yes.
49
50 Q. But the increases have not done so?
51 A. Yes, that is right.
52
53 Q. Do you think now -- when I say "you" I mean the Company --
54 there is an argument for increasing the size of those
55 increases or converting them into percentage terms or
56 something like that?
57 A. Yes, that is an option we have considered, we have just
58 started considering really, which would, perhaps, bring it
59 to be more similar to how management receive increases. So
60 that is something that I think we are going to consider
