Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 70


     
     1   Q.   Under "Alan Charlesworth", the last part, it says, "sends
     2        people home without a good reason".  Do you recall that as
     3        something that Mr. Charlesworth did or not?  If you cannot
     4        remember, then just say so?
     5        A.  No, I cannot remember.  I cannot even read it here.
     6        I do not remember him sending people home.  This may mean
     7        when it is, sometimes when it was very quiet, if we were
     8        unexpectedly slow or something had happened in the store,
     9        like once we had a -- there was a leak in the roof and some
    10        of the tiles came down and he tried to make sure that
    11        everybody, you know, had got as many people to go home as
    12        he possibly could ---
    13
    14   Q.   Why?
    15        A.  -- you know, even if people did not want to.  He wanted
    16        to save on labour because he was not going to be able to
    17        open the store, and it was considered that it would blow
    18        labour.  You know, if he had a whole day where people were
    19        just cleaning and people were being paid and they were not
    20        doing anything, there was no money coming in the store, it
    21        would blow labour for that month.  So, you know, most
    22        people were asked to go home.
    23
    24   Q.   Right.  Did most of them want to go home?
    25        A.  I do not know.  On this one incident, when the roof
    26        leaked and some tiles came down, it was -- I would say half
    27        of them wanted to go home and I had to coerce some of
    28        them.  He, Alan Charlesworth, coerced some of them.
    29        Because all you had to do was say:  "Look, if you are not
    30        going to go home, you are going to have to go and detail
    31        the trash room" and they would soon go home.
    32
    33   Q.   Right, OK.
    34        A.  But sending people home, I do not know if that might
    35        relate to disciplinary things, but if it was not a
    36        disciplinary thing, if people wanted to go -- if people --
    37        if we needed to get rid of people, it normally was not a
    38        problem.  If you said:  "Who wants to go home?" you would
    39        normally have a few people, you know, putting their hand up
    40        saying:  "Yes, I want to go home".  But sometimes if it
    41        was, like you say, with sewage in the store, when we
    42        eventually had to shut, it was people do not want to go
    43        home, yes, because they are earning money.  They are -- you
    44        know, why should they go home?  It is their eight hour
    45        shift.  They are going to miss out on the money.  They are
    46        not going to make it any other way.  But you used to, you
    47        know, then they think, "Oh, excellent, you know, I will do
    48        a bit of cleaning, a bit of this", but then you try and,
    49        you know, used to make a point of -- as long as -- once the
    50        store was confirmed that it was definitely shutting for the 
    51        night, you know, you try and get rid of everybody you can, 
    52        just because the labour is going to go through the roof 
    53        otherwise.  That used to be the perception of it.
    54
    55   Q.   OK.  If you turn to page 199, I will not deal with the
    56        break points on here, but just under "Payroll" it says:
    57         "Crew would like a payroll surgery".  What do you know
    58        about when payroll surgeries were held at the Bath store?
    59        A.  I saw one notice once saying that there was a payroll
    60        surgery on a certain day, but I know it never happened on

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