Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 33


     
     1        compliance among crew.  Mr. Harrison told the court that an
     2        authoritarian them and us attitude was created between crew
     3        and managers which aimed to exploit crew members wherever
     4        possible.  He left, he said, due to "the job, the hours and
     5        mounting dissatisfaction with the Company philosophy in
     6        general".
     7
     8        Can I say that a lot of the criticisms aired by our
     9        witnesses were admitted to some, usually much smaller,
    10        extent by McDonald's own witnesses and also are reflected
    11        in the documentation, such as it was, that we had from the
    12        Colchester store, such as performance reviews and rap
    13        session notes and whatever.  It is only a shame we did not
    14        have the clock cards, which we should have had, because, as
    15        we know, there are legal specifications on how long such
    16        documentation should be kept.
    17
    18        We had pleaded to Colchester, I think as early as 1993 or
    19        something, 1992, and all the relevant documentation should
    20        have been kept going back five years previously.  We might
    21        have saved a lot of court time because that probably would
    22        have shown the reality quite easily.
    23
    24        Kate Harrison, who had worked at five different McDonald's
    25        stores, told the court about the harsh reality -- well, of
    26        the pressure of working, stated that crew members were
    27        often denied breaks in busy periods and sometimes worked
    28        whole shifts without a break.  At three of the stores she
    29        had witnessed under-18s working illegal hours.  She
    30        recorded two occasions when sewage came up out of the
    31        drains into the kitchen but staff had to continue preparing
    32        and cooking food.
    33
    34        There were other witnesses as well, but finally there was
    35        Ray Coton, who was the Store Manager from August 1987 to
    36        1991.  He backed up the allegations made by the defence
    37        witnesses from the store, and explained how he was under
    38        continual pressure from McDonald's supervisors and above to
    39        boost profits and how he eventually resigned, as a result.
    40
    41        His evidence obviously is very interesting because
    42        McDonald's suddenly switched their line completely, when
    43        faced with the former Store Manager.  Initially it was kind
    44        of they were going to deny everything, but once we had
    45        found the Store Manager prepared to back up what the other
    46        people were saying, suddenly yes, all these practices were
    47        going on but only under him because he was a poor manager,
    48        which is just a line to discredit someone who was obviously
    49        in a position where their evidence could not be challenged
    50        in terms of the truth because he would know everything that
    51        was going on.
    52
    53        But effectively they are admitting our case for us, because
    54        if it was going on under Ray Coton, and it was clearly
    55        going on under Mark Davis, because the same patterns appear
    56        in the documentation that we all looked at overall, but in
    57        particular McDonald's are now accepting certain things were
    58        going on for a substantial part of the period that we are
    59        talking about at the Colchester store, basically only
    60        damages their case further.

Prev Next Index