Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 32
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2 I do not know if that might be ----
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4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you want to take your break then? Five
5 minutes. Do you want longer than that or is that enough?
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7 MR. MORRIS: No, that is enough.
8
9 (Short adjournment)
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11 MR. MORRIS: Very quickly going through the Colchester Store of
12 the Year, we would say it is significant because it was
13 clearly, as Mr. Nicholson said, an exemplary store and it
14 takes time to achieve that. I think that was recognised -
15 I cannot remember which witnesses now. It was not
16 exemplary for one or two months, it must have been
17 exemplary over a period, including that whole year and no
18 doubt the years either side, in McDonald's terms.
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20 Whereas the reality, as Mr. Simon Gibney, who was a manager
21 at the store, said, that they were watering down products,
22 working amidst sewage on a couple of occasions, illegal
23 hours are being worked by under 18s, there was an obsession
24 with cutting labour costs to the bone, and fiddling of time
25 cards. These are all standard things I am sure you have
26 noted.
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28 As we heard, there was also formation of a grouping which
29 the staff called the McDonald's Freedom Fighters which the
30 staff considered a fairly lighthearted thing but it started
31 off in terms of defence of their rights to use a crew room
32 that had been closed by the management, but in fact the
33 Company took it very seriously and wanted to weed people
34 out that were involved.
35
36 Siamak Alimi -- we called a number of witnesses from this
37 store and McDonald's countered with their own current
38 employees of managerial grade, which we would say obviously
39 there can be some use in that kind of testimony but it
40 cannot have the weight of someone who is independent --
41 Siamak Alimi told of high pressure of work, long hours
42 including 20 hour shifts, with few breaks and low pay,
43 workers under 18 working illegal hours, and there were
44 threats of the sack for joining a union or protests against
45 in-store conditions. And we have heard about how he worked
46 a substantial amount of overtime without being paid for
47 it.
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49 Kevin Harrison worked at the store in 1986/87, and also at
50 Ipswich, up to the level of Assistant Manager. He told the
51 court how pressures to reduce costs all round led to the
52 secret cutting of food servings and using out-of-date
53 food. He criticised the managers use of hustle to get work
54 speeded up. McDonald's, he stated, "is a very pressurised
55 environment and no where else are you expected to work at
56 that level for such long periods of time". That is from
57 his statement.
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59 He complained that managers were encouraged to use their
60 power over work schedules to discriminate and to foster
