Day 154 - 13 Jul 95 - Page 30
1 Q. They might be slightly slower?
2 A. Well, a lot slower.
3
4 Q. They are left on stations on their own after only a couple
5 of days, are they not?
6 A. Depends. Say, they were trained upon one particular
7 station, say, for instance, the fry station for a couple of
8 days, then they may be left alone on that fry station after
9 a couple of days, but they would not be put on any other
10 station until they had been trained on that station.
11
12 Q. Throughout their three to four weeks of training they are
13 not unproductive, are they?
14 A. They are not totally unproductive, no, but they -- it
15 probably takes five to six weeks before somebody becomes a
16 useful member of the crew, I would say, as in "productive",
17 as you would term it.
18
19 Q. They are productive from more or less the start; they are
20 just not as fast as other crew?
21 A. Marginally productive, you could argue, although fairly
22 ineffective as a useful member of the staff at the moment
23 they walk through the door.
24
25 Q. If they are ineffective as a useful member of staff, how
26 can you leave them on their own working a station?
27 A. I did not say that. I said after two days training on
28 one specific station, you could probably then leave them on
29 their own.
30
31 Q. Right. So they do have a use and they are being
32 productive?
33 A. Yes, but if we wanted to put them on any other station,
34 then we would have to train them up on that specific
35 station. So whilst they may have been productive on their
36 third day on the fry station, maybe the day after that we
37 would then train them on the till area, and that would take
38 them two or three days of being trained before they were
39 productive on that particular station.
40
41 They would only be -- when they first go on their own, they
42 are obviously not as productive as somebody who has worked
43 in the restaurant five or six weeks or longer.
44
45 Q. Trainees, or crew that are still on training, they do not
46 get any more food than the other crew, do they?
47 A. The allowance is the same.
48
49 Q. So it does not cost you anything more in terms of food to
50 have new crew?
51 A. No, but whilst they are not as productive, they are
52 still eating the same amount of food as any other crew.
53
54 Q. Yes. That is relating to the other point about how
55 productive they are; that is not related to any extra cost
56 in terms of food, is it?
57 A. But I thought the original -- when that point was
58 originally put to me, that was a concern about the costs of
59 turnover; and my point I made was that whilst if you were
60 continually turning over crew in the first few weeks of
