Day 195 - 04 Dec 95 - Page 10
1 about late closes but turned a blind eye to them. In any
2 event, if there are only two or three stores in a
3 particular area, the Area Supervisor is in contact with
4 each store almost daily and, therefore, it is impossible to
5 hide late closes.
6
7 If late shift work would involve a female employee under
8 the age of 18 carrying on past 10 o'clock, or a male
9 employee under the age of 18 carrying on past 12 o'clock,
10 they would be asked if they wanted to work past these
11 hours. If they agreed, they would in fact work the same
12 hours as anyone else. Most people who were asked did not
13 agree to do the extra hours, but a few did and these were
14 always the ones who were asked since it was taken for
15 granted that they would carry on. The management did not
16 put pressure on under 18 year olds to work these hours.
17 Some under 18 year olds worked extremely long shifts up
18 until perhaps 6.00 a.m.
19
20 One of the people I referred to earlier as having worked 26
21 hour shift was a 17 year old girl", is that Tracy Milleine?
22 A. That is correct.
23
24 Q. "I specifically remember that on one occasion, having
25 worked that number of hours, the girl could barely stand on
26 her feet and was close to collapse. As far as I know, she
27 worked those sorts of hours because she desperately needed
28 the money. She had problems at home with her parents and
29 had to leave home and support herself. Sometimes she did
30 not want to work such long hours, but they would phone her
31 up and threaten that if she did not do the hours they would
32 not offer her the 'overtime' again. They knew that she
33 needed the extra hours and took advantage of this fact.
34
35 Other kinds of pressure were applied. For example,
36 employees such as she were told that they would not be
37 promoted if they did not do the extra hours. Some people,
38 if they had been there perhaps for a year or more, did not
39 want to find that they were back at the bottom of the
40 promotion ladder again, in another store or in another line
41 of work altogether, and they would therefore stay. They
42 had too much to lose by this stage. Accordingly, all the
43 extra time would just become part and parcel of what they
44 needed to do in order to keep going and get promotion.
45 People came to terms with it as a fact of life.
46
47 While I was at Colchester, one of the full-time crew
48 members, a 17 year old male, had decided to go part-time
49 and do his 'A' levels by evening course. After having
50 announced this to management, he was approached by the
51 First Manager who said that he wanted a chat with the
52 employee because he wanted to make him an offer he could
53 not refuse. I knew that the boy was going for this chat
54 and knew what had been said by the Manager in advance.
55
56 After the chat had taken place, the boy announced that he
57 had given up the idea of doing his A levels and now wanted
58 to stay on full-time. Later the boy told me that the
59 change of heart was a direct consequence of the meeting but
60 he never told me what was offered to him. I believe that
