Day 152 - 11 Jul 95 - Page 61
1 instance, you know, somebody might say: "Well, last week
2 I had three closes and I felt probably I only should have
3 been scheduled for two", or on pay maybe: "I would like to
4 check through the payroll just to check that last week
5 I was given the correct pay". That would be an individual
6 person maybe. So generally they were very happy.
7
8 Q. I was driving at something a little bit more sour than
9 that, Mr. Davis. How often, if ever, did you hear somebody
10 say something to this effect: "I think that the wages this
11 Company pays for the work that we do stink; they are rock
12 bottom and they are over working us"?
13 A. Nobody has ever said that to me in a rap session.
14
15 Q. Mr. Morris seems to think that was funny. Were you
16 intending a joke?
17 A. No.
18
19 Q. That is the truth, is it?
20 A. Yes.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Did you ever have someone say: "I have a
23 friend who is", and then give a similar kind of work
24 perhaps in the area or in another kind of restaurant or a
25 shop, "and they are getting a bit more than I am", or
26 something like that?
27 A. Not generally because, generally, the type of work that
28 we are dealing with in catering and retailing, we were
29 competitive with the local rates. On top of that not many
30 of the other retailing establishments offered things like
31 performance reviews as an ongoing thing within the
32 restaurant. Somebody might have said, you know, it is out
33 of town -- one does actually stick out in my mind in that
34 nature is Bury St. Edmunds there is a sugar-beet factory
35 that paid about œ4 an hour during the summer months.
36 I seem to remember that coming up in a rap session once,
37 which was more than the rate we were paying at the time;
38 the difference being that the sugar-beet factory was a
39 seasonal operation. Basically, if you went to work for
40 them, it was like a six months contract. That is one of
41 the instances which you were referring to, I suppose, could
42 be an example.
43
44 MR. RAMPTON: Mr. Davis, the Defendants will not believe
45 anything you have said and they will suggest to you that
46 the reason why either that you are lying or the reason why
47 nobody ever complained about the hours or the pay is they
48 were all scared rigid that they would be sacked if they
49 uttered a word of complaint about the system or about the
50 management?
51 A. Right.
52
53 Q. Tell us a bit about the atmosphere at these rap sessions.
54 Are there a lot of cowered, sheepish employees hardly
55 daring to speak, or not?
56 A. It varied a lot from restaurant to restaurant. In some
57 cases they could be quite volatile and noisy, and there may
58 be a couple of individuals who are trying to sort of voice
59 all their opinions and not let everybody else have a say.
60 But my view in general of rap sessions is that nobody is
