Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 43


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Anyway, I think the answer is you have done
     3        that.  Do you have another week?
     4
     5   MS. STEEL:   Yes.
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Give me that quickly and I can compare what
     8        you have done with what I did and with what Mr. Rampton is
     9        going to give me in due course.
    10
    11   MS. STEEL:   This one is actually better because it is time for
    12        which we have actually got what the minimum rates of pay
    13        were.  It is 18th October 1986 and he worked 94.02 hours in
    14        that period, in that fortnight, and the minimum wage was
    15        £1.99 an hour.  So 78 hours at £1.99 would come out at
    16        £155.22, plus 16.02 hours at £2.98 an hour would come out
    17        at £47.74, and that comes to a total of £202.96.  Mr.
    18        Alimi's gross pay on his payslip was only £201.90, the
    19        point being that these are, even by the argument that
    20        McDonald's are advancing now, illegal.  Obviously, it is
    21        our position, and we would say it is quite clear from the
    22        Wages Council Act that was enforced during 1986, that the
    23        overtime should have been on top of the premium rates that
    24        were paid for the unsociable hours that people worked, in
    25        which case it is clear that the Company were underpaying by
    26        a substantial amount Mr. Alimi and no doubt thousands of
    27        others.
    28
    29   MR. MORRIS:  There were quite a number of admissions which
    30        I have not brought up about the Company being prosecuted
    31        for various accidents - Burnley and Bury, Luton, Guildford
    32        and Slough.  I have not got them all in front of me, but I
    33        just want to make that point.  I do not want to read them
    34        out.  It will take too long.
    35
    36   MS. STEEL:   There are formal admissions on 17th May 1993 about
    37        Guildford -----
    38
    39   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If you want to, please do, but I am going to
    40        go through all the admissions in relation to all the
    41        sections of the case.  We have a schedule of them.
    42
    43   MS. STEEL:   Right.  There are a considerable number of
    44        admissions in relation to offences of employing children or
    45        young people for excessive hours, not allowing them to have
    46        enough breaks, not having enough gaps between shifts,
    47        employing them on too many Sundays in any one month, and so
    48        on, and employing them at too late in the day, and although
    49        they run in the main in the early and mid part of the
    50        1980s, that is relevant bearing in mind that the alleged
    51        publication is -- well, it is now from 1987 to 1990.  So
    52        there is not a great distance of time between those dates.
    53        Obviously, the documents that we have seen in court show
    54        that the practices are continuing; they are just not
    55        getting prosecuted for it.
    56
    57   MR. MORRIS:  Our pleading number -- I do not know what number it
    58        was actually; I have a little 36 against it on page 17 of
    59        my Employment Practices Abstract -- I cannot remember what
    60        happened to this.  I am sure we put it to Mr. Preston that

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