Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 34
1
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: How many people were employed as crew in this
3 restaurant?
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the payroll base was about 100 and
6 something, between 90 something and 100 and something at
7 any given time. At a busy time there would be 30 to 40,
8 maybe even 50 people, in the restaurant.
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10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You have not any specific employee in mind?
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12 MR. MORRIS: Again he has indicated it is a general practice.
13 I could ask him: "Name me 30 employees or something". I
14 do not know if that would help. I could contact him and
15 ask him, but he might just say it was something that was
16 standard or so prevalent. If we named specific employees,
17 then McDonald's might say: "Well, that might have applied
18 to just one or two employees that you have named". This
19 goes to the previous point, which is that if it is just one
20 incident then the Plaintiffs say it is just one incident.
21 It is important to see the overall picture, systematic
22 picture.
23
24 Shall I go on to point C?
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26 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
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28 MR. MORRIS: Point C, weekly time sheets schedules for 1994, can
29 I say that these applications, although they relate to the
30 Bath store, these are documents which may help the court
31 generally to be able to see the working practices in
32 McDonald's stores in terms of how they organise things and
33 how they monitor and record things. I think most of this
34 application are things we have not had any or just one or
35 two maybe we have had copies of before, or just a copy that
36 has not been filled in.
37
38 Point C, weekly time sheets schedules for 1994, we are
39 fortunate in this situation where I think we have asked for
40 this in the past, that Mr. Richards says on page 4 of his
41 statement, line 8, about schedules: "Bath has a policy of
42 storing them for 18 months before disposing of them." So
43 we are asking for, the dispute over scheduling is -- sorry,
44 Mr. Logan has raised it in his page 2 of his statement.
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46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What are you hoping to demonstrate from the
47 schedules?
48
49 MR. MORRIS: He says in his statement: "It was common practice
50 for the schedule to be used as a tool of discipline by
51 senior management", which he had personally witnessed on
52 several occasions, reducing people's hours or giving
53 predominantly unsocial hours to employees they did not
54 consider to perform well. That is something from his
55 personal experience because he was part of the management
56 team.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, but what are you hoping that you will
59 see on a schedule which you will think will help you over
60 that?
