Day 123 - 09 May 95 - Page 56
1 Q. Yes, but 466 is a large number of violations, even if they
2 were all only 10 minutes over the hour. So, it seems that
3 the Company has double standards when it comes to
4 violations by crew members who face gross misconduct and
5 summary dismissal in a large number of circumstances ---
6 A. Well -----
7
8 Q. -- and a management, as you claimed before, who have higher
9 standards, can, effectively, make hundreds of violations
10 and still be there the following week, so how do you
11 explain that?
12 A. Let me answer your question this way. First, I think
13 that is a gross mischaracterisation of what occurred.
14 I stated earlier that we are not privy to all of the
15 day-to-day dealings that go on in all of our restaurants.
16 We try to be as informed as we can. In that particular
17 case we, obviously, did not have knowledge at the time of
18 those violations, but once we were informed or once the
19 franchisee was cited, we assembled a team of folks,
20 whatever we needed to do, to address that situation so that
21 the matter was handled. I do not say that -- in saying
22 that I certainly do not think there is a double standard.
23
24 Q. If a crew member had 466 violations of -----
25
26 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, you may have a good point, but that
27 cannot possibly be analogous to someone who is running
28 maybe eight stores at a time and, for all I know, had
29 something like 50, 500, crew members working for him. I am
30 not saying you are not making a good point, but you cannot
31 compare it with a single crew member, can you?
32
33 THE WITNESS: They had at least 500 employees and 30 some
34 management people.
35
36 MR. MORRIS: You said earlier on that you had a supervisory
37 system which was set up in precisely to see, to find out,
38 if these kind of violations of, say, child labour laws were
39 going on; yet you said that it was the authorities that
40 alerted you to this, so how can that be then?
41 A. Well, I think it is important that we all know the
42 facts. At the outset, I indicated to you I am not an
43 expert on that, that I had certain recollections of the
44 case, and I think that maybe it would be more appropriate
45 to query Mr. Stein on specifics, if that is important and
46 pertinent, my Lord. But, as far as I am concerned,
47 whenever we found out, whether we found out first or
48 whether the authorities found out first, the matter was
49 addressed.
50
51 It very well may have happened that we found out and, in
52 the course of us finding out and taking action to address
53 that situation, the authorities, you know, also saw that
54 there were violations and publicised them. It was highly
55 unusual that you would have that many violations, No. 1
56 and, secondly, that it would occur in McDonald's.
57
58 I think the fact that it received the publicity that it did
59 was that it happened with a McDonald's franchisee, and
60 there were so many violations. I mean that was -- I can
