Day 133 - 12 Jun 95 - Page 39


     
     1        A.  Yes.
     2
     3   Q.   That has been the case now for, at any rate, so far as we
     4        have been told, as long ago as 1986?
     5        A.  Yes.
     6
     7   Q.   My first question is this:  How difficult is it to get one
     8        of those performance related increases in McDonald's?
     9        A.  Well, it is fairly easy, normal, usual, for people to
    10        achieve a performance increase, so to receive one of those,
    11        and what you do tend to find is that you will have more
    12        people receiving 5p and 10p increases probably than the
    13        people at the top rate because, as in any sort of
    14        performance distribution, you are likely to get more people
    15        operating in the sort of the middle of the bell curve, so
    16        you will get more people falling into that category.
    17
    18   Q.   In all the time that these increases have been available to
    19        McDonald's workers, we in this country have had as a
    20        companion of our daily life what I think we would call,
    21        generally speaking, inflation.  Is there any sense in which
    22        you think, or the Company thinks, that the value of those
    23        available increases at McDonald's might have been eroded by
    24        the effect of inflation or, indeed, any other
    25        considerations?
    26        A.  Well, one of things that we did when we received the
    27        crew opinion survey results was to look at the reasons why
    28        people expressed some dissatisfaction about their pay
    29        increases, so that is one of the things that we have looked
    30        at.  I think that, yes, inflation will form part of that,
    31        that what 5p represented years ago is, perhaps, less now in
    32        absolute terms.
    33
    34   Q.   Is this wage structure and, particularly, the performance
    35        related increases, both their availability and their value
    36        to the crew member, something which the Company keeps under
    37        review?
    38        A.  Yes.  We review pay and so on regularly anyway and that
    39        certainly is obviously part of it, because you need to make
    40        sure that the two things together are integrated, so
    41        certainly that is something that we are reviewing.
    42
    43   Q.   Put in its proper context, of course, the basic starting
    44        rates have increased more or less annually ---
    45        A.  Yes.
    46
    47   Q.   -- over a long period of time?
    48        A.  Yes.
    49
    50   Q.   But the increases have not done so? 
    51        A.  Yes, that is right. 
    52 
    53   Q.   Do you think now -- when I say "you" I mean the Company --
    54        there is an argument for increasing the size of those
    55        increases or converting them into percentage terms or
    56        something like that?
    57        A.  Yes, that is an option we have considered, we have just
    58        started considering really, which would, perhaps, bring it
    59        to be more similar to how management receive increases.  So
    60        that is something that I think we are going to consider

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