Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 08
1 actually.
2
3 Mr. Rampton's line that somehow all the full-timers
4 magically are starting on higher rates, he, of course, says
5 on page 55, line 51 that they naturally would start
6 initially on the starting rate and then the basic rate. If
7 they are lucky, they get a five pence rise after four
8 months or something, or ten pence if they exceed job
9 requirements.
10
11 On page 57 he expressed the view that it is most unusual in
12 the catering industry, which has a high turnover profile,
13 to see such wastage - this is in McDonald's computer
14 printout figures of length of service - such wastage at
15 such short periods of service, and that could potentially
16 throw question marks over turnover rates annually of, say,
17 120 or 150 per cent.
18
19 He was very cautious about dealing with McDonald's
20 statistics and therefore his views are given even stronger
21 weight, we would say, because of his caution.
22
23 Then he said on the top of page 59 about when he visited
24 the kitchens: "I believe I saw an operation - this was in
25 a quiet period - working even then near to its....physical
26 capacity, because these are not large areas of work. You
27 have to remember this. These are not expansive kitchens.
28 They are relatively small premises."
29
30 Then he says: "I was there for a matter of minutes, two,
31 three minutes. That was the evident limit of my
32 observation period." And basically he said that he was
33 basically in the nicest possible way dragged away from the
34 back of house during his expert visit.
35
36 He comments on the accident books that he saw, on page 60,
37 and he says the particular problem he noticed was the
38 problem resulting from wet floors which, of course, is the
39 feature of McDonald's we have heard from our live witness
40 ex-workers.
41
42 That is Mr. Pearson. There were a couple of documents
43 I wanted to look at, just very briefly, from the Health and
44 Safety Executive report, which I have no doubt you have
45 noted. Just three different bits of it. I noted that on
46 bundle page 870 there is a list of the restaurants that
47 were visited and it is 19 McDonald's stores, and on page
48 845 of the bundle in that report the conclusion was, at the
49 bottom of the page, "There were some variations in the
50 condition of the restaurants visited and in two of the
51 older in-stores formal action would have been appropriate
52 by a visiting local authority inspector", which implies
53 that there were breaches of safety regulations requiring
54 formal action by inspectors in two out of the 19 stores,
55 which is something like 11 per cent of stores visited. And
56 which I say is fairly substantial.
57
58 I did not get the references, but clearly in the
59 introduction of the report it says how local inspectors had
60 concerns about safety at McDonald's when they were visiting
