Day 174 - 17 Oct 95 - Page 26
1 MR. MORRIS: The only meetings you had with the union were in
2 the circumstances of -- towards the end of the strike and
3 the Labour Court's recommendations to negotiate with the
4 union; those were the only meetings you had with the union?
5 A. Yes, that is correct. We had a meeting with Mr. Mullen
6 prior to the Labour Court meeting, the Labour Court
7 recommendation.
8
9 Q. To try and resolve the dispute?
10 A. Yes.
11
12 Q. Then you spent months of prevarication after the dispute,
13 avoiding carrying out the recommendations of the Labour
14 Court to allow the union to represent, physically
15 represent, its members at the store?
16 A. If I understand you correctly, Mr. Morris, I think you
17 have indicated two questions there. The first one is that
18 you indicated that we did not carry out the recommendations
19 of the Labour Court, which is not correct; we did; we took
20 the workers back to work, and I believe -- can you repeat
21 the second part of your question?
22
23 Q. The dispute was partly about union recognition, and that
24 was 100 per cent successful; the strikers won the right to
25 be represented by a union; that was the Labour Court
26 decision, was it not?
27 A. Yes. The workers, the people who were on picket, the
28 workers who were members of the -- yes.
29
30 Q. Then, following the dispute, apart from one meeting which
31 you call "informal", which seemed to be right after the
32 Labour Court decision, following that, you avoided meeting
33 the union like the Plague?
34 A. No, that is not correct to say. They did not indicate
35 what business they wanted to discuss, other than they were
36 a cumulative -----
37
38 Q. They were indicating is something working; the National
39 Understanding, is it being implemented, is it not being
40 implemented. These are all valid union concerns, are they
41 not?
42 A. Well, they are valid concerns of any worker,
43 Mr. Morris.
44
45 Q. Yes.
46 A. But the situation was that the implementation of the
47 second phase had been put in place, and we indicated that
48 we had done that to the union. They had not brought up any
49 other point except, as you say, Sunday pay. Sunday pay
50 that we were paying was in line with and probably exceeded
51 many areas of catering, but certainly was in line with
52 labour laws.
53
54 Q. Now, that having been said, Anne Holmes -----
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Are you moving from the generality to her
57 particular situation? Let me complete my note then, and we
58 will have a break.
59
60 (Short adjournment)
