Day 127 - 23 May 95 - Page 15


     
     1        what I would like to know first, if you can tell us, is
     2        what had been the health and safety structure of the
     3        Company up to the time when you were appointed as Hygiene
     4        and Safety Officer?
     5        A.  Up until then health and safety was an integral part of
     6        the Personnel Department.  They co-ordinated all the work
     7        on safety.  It has been part of what I was trained in when
     8        I was a Restaurant Manager, and there was information but
     9        it was all provided by the Personnel Department.
    10
    11   Q.   Did they have any kind of supervisory group or committee
    12        looking specifically or responsible specifically for health
    13        and safety questions?
    14        A.  Yes, the health and safety task force was set up,
    15        I believe, a couple of years before I came into my role,
    16        and that included people from the Personnel Department but
    17        other disciplines as well, including representation from
    18        our Operations people, Security, Purchasing, Marketing --
    19        anybody who would have an interest in safety.  Their role
    20        was mainly to, if we had any serious accidents, to look at
    21        those and see what could be learnt from those accidents and
    22        to communicate to restaurants if any changes needed to
    23        occur.
    24
    25   Q.   Can I , jumping ahead a bit but it may help us understand
    26        the structure, how many categories of accidents are
    27        recognised within McDonald's, in grades of seriousness I am
    28        talking about?
    29        A.  We generally refer to them with regard to the RIDDOR
    30        regulations, the Reportable -- the Reporting of Injuries
    31        and Dangerous Occurrence Regulations.
    32
    33   Q.   Sorry, speak up, please.
    34        A.  Sorry, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and
    35        Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1985, which divide the
    36        categories up into fatalities and major injuries and
    37        injuries that cause employees to be off for three days or
    38        more.  We call those reportable ones.  Anything else is
    39        non-reportable, but we would expect all accidents to be
    40        recorded in the accident books in the restaurants.
    41
    42   Q.   Of the accidents below the reportables or RIDDOR accidents,
    43        yes, there is another lot -- we will come to numbers later
    44        on -- do you subdivide that remainder in any way in your
    45        own minds?
    46        A.  Well, they are all divided into type of accidents as
    47        well, slips and falls and handling accidents, and these
    48        again though were based on the categories that we used for
    49        RIDDOR, so that we keep a consistent structure throughout.
    50 
    51   Q.   We know that the Company keeps a record of the reportable 
    52        accidents, yes, as you have supplied us with some 
    53        statistics, does the Company keep -- centrally, I mean --
    54        statistics for the non-reportable accidents?
    55        A.  No, we only keep them for centrally for the RIDDOR
    56        ones, but we expect each restaurant to monitor trends in
    57        their own accident book and this is audited by our auditing
    58        procedures as well to make sure that they do  ------
    59
    60   Q.   Auditing procedures, what are they?

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