Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 69
1 got paid in any one week was ú35. For this,
2 I was doing 15 to 20 hours of very hard physical
3 sweaty work. I once followed up the fact that
4 my wages appeared to be far too low and did not
5 seem to correspond with the number of hours that
6 I believed I had worked. They showed me my
7 clock card in order to substantiate the amount
8 that they had paid me and these appeared to
9 tally. However, I still did not believe them.
10
11 I actually felt quite guilty when I left
12 McDonald's because I felt that I should have
13 seen the union enrolment through to the end.
14 However, my personal problems were very pressing
15 at the time and I just did not feel that I could
16 stay. I handed on the union material to another
17 employee who said that he would see the union
18 work through to the end, but I do not know if he
19 did. I am no longer in touch with that person.
20 I so much wanted to see the union issue through
21 to the end that I even considered joining the
22 McDonald's in Manchester just to start a union.
23
24 So far as I am aware, there is only one
25 McDonald's store in the entire British Isles
26 that is unionised. This is the store in
27 Dublin. Otherwise McDonald's is totally
28 ununionised. I regularly heard it said by other
29 crew members that if anybody starts a union
30 'they will get rid of you'.
31
32 Whilst working at Seven Sisters I heard a rumour
33 regarding the store which was completely shut
34 down by management because the crew formed a
35 union. Several employees at the Seven Sisters
36 Road had cited this story when I was trying to
37 recruit members for the TGWU. The story was
38 used as the basis for saying 'they will sack us
39 all if they find out'.
40
41 So far as I was aware, there were no regular
42 dismissals from my store. People were sometimes
43 suspended, however, for reasons such as
44 'answering back to management'. I was once
45 suspended because I took a left over hamburger
46 home after the store had closed without asking
47 permission. In my store, staff were allowed to
48 take home food that was left over when the store
49 was closed if they asked permission. Permission
50 was never refused. On the occasion when I was
51 suspended I did not ask and was suspended for 24
52 hours. (It is interesting to note that I have
53 seen stated by McDonald's own literature, I
54 believe in the Crew Handbook, that staff are not
55 allowed to take food home at the end of the
56 day. It must be thrown out).
57
58 Everyone who worked at the Seven Sisters store
59 had burns at one time or another. I remember
60 noticing one black girl in particular who had
