Day 119 - 02 May 95 - Page 53
1 MR. MORRIS: OK. So, if I worked for the Company and I wanted
2 to go to the local paper and say: "Conditions at
3 McDonald's are terrible, they boss you around, the pay is
4 no good, the food handling is unsafe", those would be the
5 kind of things which this is meant to -----
6 A. I would say that most certainly is the kind of things
7 it is meant to -----
8
9 Q. If somebody went to the press and said: "In my store
10 people under the age of 18" -- this is when it was the law
11 in that period -- "are working illegal hours, past
12 midnight", or something like that, that is the kind of
13 thing?
14 A. No, I do not -- I think that would require
15 investigation. If we found it was substantiated, it would
16 not be the person who went to the press who would be dealt
17 with, although they might be reprimanded for it, but it
18 would be the manager that permitted it to happen.
19
20 MS. STEEL: Why should any member of staff be reprimanded for
21 saying something like that to a newspaper?
22 A. Well, because there are rules and that is one of the
23 rules; you do not go to newspapers. There is an internal
24 procedure for dealing with complaints of that nature.
25
26 Q. So, even if it is to alert the public and other people, if
27 it was a local newspaper, who might be thinking of working
28 at McDonald's that there was something illegal going on
29 there and management at the store was not concerned about
30 it, you do not think, or the Company does not think, the
31 crew would be justified in going to the local paper about
32 something like that?
33 A. I think there is a grievance procedure open to them
34 that goes beyond the local store management. I hazarded a
35 suggestion that they would be reprimanded. I think
36 something would certainly be said to them. There is a
37 procedure they can follow that is laid down in their
38 Handbook and that is the procedure they should follow. If
39 they get no satisfactory redress at local store management
40 level, they go to their supervisor. Then you follow the
41 procedure set out in the Crew Handbook.
42
43 Q. So you think that the Company would be justified in
44 reprimanding them for reporting such a thing as breaking
45 the law to the local paper?
46 A. Well, it depends upon the circumstances. It depends
47 upon how grievous the law has been broken. It depends upon
48 circumstances. You look at every case on its own merit.
49
50 MR. MORRIS: Do McDonald's have any monitoring of grievances,
51 what the main grievances are? When I say "monitoring",
52 I think we have a misunderstanding on this word -- any
53 compiling of information or statistics ---
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You want to know whether ---
56
57 MR. MORRIS: -- which establish trends -----
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- they keep records so that they can see
60 there is a particular bone of dissatisfaction or
