Day 310 - 04 Dec 96 - Page 15


     
     1   MR. RAMPTON:   I have suggested that it probably did.  I am
     2        being a little -- what is the word -- cautious about all of
     3        this because I am bound to say I find it very difficult to
     4        see how these can be comments, and I -----
     5
     6   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   You may be right.  But I want to explore the
     7        possibility.
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:   Yes, I understand that.  If you say the pay is
    10        bad and it is a comment, people will merely think, when
    11        they read it, that what you are saying is that, in your
    12        opinion, the actual rate for the job is not very good, or
    13        is low or is poor.  They are not going to reflect upon it,
    14        unless you tell them to do so, which this leaflet does not,
    15        of other features in the pay structure, or which affect the
    16        pay structure, which are not mentioned in the leaflet.
    17
    18   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   I think the final general matter, and then I
    19        will just see what specific matters I wanted to ask about
    20        which I have not already covered, is:  Suppose, at the end
    21        of the day, I thought that bad pay was justified but bad
    22        conditions were not.  Suppose that were so.
    23
    24   MR. RAMPTON:   Yes.
    25
    26   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Is the bad pay, would that be serious enough
    27        to justify the lot?
    28
    29   MR. RAMPTON:   No, quite plainly not.  If your Lordship found,
    30        as a matter of fact, that the pay was bad, for whatever
    31        reasons, that would be effective to reduce the damages,
    32        I do not know how much by, but it would for this particular
    33        allegation; but given that conditions are of as much
    34        importance to the ordinary person who works for anybody, or
    35        almost as much importance, as the pay, that is an
    36        allegation of equivalent seriousness.  Add on to that the
    37        allegation of getting rid of pro-union workers and the
    38        exploitation of disadvantaged groups -----
    39
    40   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That I see, at the moment, as a separate
    41        sting anyway.
    42
    43   MR. RAMPTON:   I see.  I thought, when you said "the whole lot",
    44        you meant -----
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   It is quite true I did say "the whole lot".
    47
    48   MR. RAMPTON:   I am sorry.  That is my fault.  I misunderstood.
    49        No, even if you take those two bits in isolation, you could
    50        not say, I would submit, that just because a company paid 
    51        bad wages but its conditions were OK or pretty good, you 
    52        could not say that the bad pay was overall a justification 
    53        of the sting that he was a bad employer, because there is a
    54        significant residual damage in the unproved allegation that
    55        the conditions are bad.  So, section 5 does not work and
    56        bad pay reflects only in a reduction of damages.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is partly because I had that question in
    59        mine that I wondered whether the overall sting was not the
    60        combination of bad pay for bad conditions, as I said

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