Day 123 - 09 May 95 - Page 50
1 Q. Apart from concerns over the insurance premiums, does the
2 company keep details of employee accidents?
3 A. We do not keep a lot of details, to my knowledge, to my
4 recollection. You perhaps might be able to get a little
5 more information from a subsequent witness, from
6 Mr. Stein. As I indicated in earlier testimony, the bulk
7 of our restaurants in the United States are franchised. 84
8 per cent of them are franchised, so we have no way of
9 collecting all of the data and information from each one of
10 those restaurants, 8400, 8500 restaurants in the United
11 States.
12
13 Q. So in fact you might not really know what is going on then
14 in terms of ----
15 A. I would not make that leap. I would not conclude that.
16
17 Q. How would you know what is going on if your franchisees
18 were not telling you what was going on?
19 A. I think we are informed. We certainly do not know all
20 of the day to day details of what is going on in each and
21 every one of those restaurants, but if there are matters of
22 some significance that would have some bearing on impact on
23 the system, on other restaurants, then we want to know or
24 we would make ourselves better informed.
25
26 Q. What if they did not want to tell you?
27 A. What if they did not want to tell us?
28
29 Q. Yes, you wanted some documents off them.
30 A. It is not that we are ignorant to what is going on in
31 the restaurants. We visit their restaurants on a regular
32 basis. We have consultants, Human Resource consultants,
33 and others that visit the restaurants from time to time to
34 look at the level of operations, to look at policies,
35 procedures, that sort of thing and make recommendations to
36 the franchisees.
37
38 Q. But if they did not want to give you certain documents that
39 you wanted, or would they have to if you asked to see some?
40 A. Documents like what?
41
42 Q. I do not know, maybe accident records, for example. Is
43 part of the agreement that they have to show you any
44 records which you want to see?
45 A. Well, I cannot think of any instance where the
46 information that we have asked for has not been provided,
47 particularly if that information is helpful in determining
48 whether or not they have violated any laws, state, federal
49 or local laws. I mean, it is important that they operate
50 their restaurant in an upstanding manner and they do not
51 violate any regulations or laws, and if there is some
52 evidence that they have done so, or there have been
53 complaints to that effect, then we certainly would want to
54 research that information, collect whatever data we could
55 to ascertain that, in fact, they have violated some law.
56
57 Q. But they would not want to show you things which would
58 indicate that they were breaking the law, would they, so
59 how would you get access?
60 A. Well, you are making the assumption that we do not have
