Day 150 - 07 Jul 95 - Page 35


     
     1        inconvenience customers or look bad for us in terms of the
     2        perception it might give.  So we could do it and give it
     3        full attention with three or four people out there and get
     4        into all those sort of nooks and crannies that you cannot
     5        really do apart from general mopping and clearing tables
     6        when the restaurant is open.
     7
     8   Q.   If I could now turn to the question of the labour rate, if
     9        you understand.  What I am meaning by that is the
    10        relationship between labour costs and other costs and
    11        profit.
    12        A.  Yes.
    13
    14   Q.   When you were the Area Supervisor at Colchester, when you
    15        were the Store Manager at Leicester, was safety compromised
    16        to get a low labour rate?
    17        A.  No.
    18
    19   Q.   Is it now being compromised, in your experience?
    20        A.  No.
    21
    22   Q.   At the stores you have dealings with?
    23        A.  No, it is not.
    24
    25   Q.   Would you know if it were being?
    26        A.  Yes, because, as I mentioned earlier, part of my
    27        responsibility is to visit restaurants and therefore
    28        I would see first hand if there was anything going on that
    29        would compromise safety.
    30
    31   Q.   Do you experience or have you experienced, particularly at
    32        Colchester in the mid-1980s, pressure from your superiors
    33        to get the labour rate to a lower level?
    34        A.  No.
    35
    36   Q.   I mean, is it a matter of concern what the labour rate is
    37        at all?
    38        A.  I think ----
    39
    40   Q.   Would it matter if it was, just for the sake of argument,
    41        it was 40 per cent, or something?
    42        A.  The education or the business advice, if you like, that
    43        I was given and subsequently gave to the Restaurant
    44        Managers with respect to Colchester was to achieve a
    45        balance, which is getting the right number of people on the
    46        shift in anticipation of the business, and doing that meant
    47        you had to hire the people at the right time to give them
    48        to time to get trained up.  So it would make no sense -- it
    49        would make a financial or profit sense to keep labour low,
    50        but then you would not be getting business in the front 
    51        doors, and so you would be taking an ever bigger slice of 
    52        an ever diminishing pie, so to speak.  So the idea was to 
    53        balance it up so that sales grew and then, in reflection of
    54        that, there were sufficient number of people on to serve
    55        that business.  So working to any fixed percentage is not
    56        going to work.
    57
    58   Q.   In your experience would you say it was, practically
    59        speaking, in McDonald's interest to be under-staffed
    60        without the right number of staff to do the job, if I can

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