Day 151 - 10 Jul 95 - Page 23
1 is this just in your experience?
2 A. No. I think it is general practice to ensure that we
3 keep to those sort of guidelines, certainly.
4
5 Q. When you were area supervisor at Colchester, what action
6 would you take to ensure that that did not happen, that
7 crew were not scheduled to work more than 39 hours?
8 A. To make sure that situation did not arise, we would
9 anticipate our hiring needs; for example, perhaps during
10 the summer -- especially in Clacton, as I mentioned earlier
11 on -- and leading up to Christmas, just in terms of when
12 the school holidays were, they generally would be the
13 busier times and then they would require more staff.
14
15 Q. Were crew ever scheduled to work more than 39 hours a week?
16 A. Not to my knowledge.
17
18 Q. So, if they ever worked more than 39 hours a week, it was
19 because they had to stay on late or something like that?
20 A. Well, as I say, my only knowledge is that they did not
21 work more than 39, so I could not sort of hazard guesses
22 about why they would have to go over that. I know
23 I mentioned about floor managers earlier on and that, if
24 anyone would work any more hours, they were generally floor
25 managers, to my knowledge -- to my recollection, certainly.
26
27 Q. So were you making checks about whether or not crew were
28 ever working more than 39 hours a week?
29 A. As I mentioned, one of my responsibilities was to
30 ensure that we hired in line with anticipated business. So
31 that, as I say, I do not recall there ever being a need for
32 it but, certainly, to prevent such a situation occurring,
33 one of my responsibilities was to sit down with a
34 restaurant manager in both those restaurants and anticipate
35 our required hiring levels in anticipation of the sales
36 volume which, traditionally, was, as I mentioned, the
37 school holidays and -- well, school holidays, really.
38
39 Q. Did you ever check to make sure that whatever you were
40 scheduling was actually happening in practice or whether
41 some crew were, in fact, working more than 39 hours a week?
42 A. No. Certainly, in terms of -- if, for example, we were
43 discussing at the tail end of Friday the idea of how many
44 people are required for that particular part of the day,
45 one of the things I would do was check to make sure, if
46 I sat down with the manager and we decided that 25 people
47 were required for a Saturday lunchtime, that 25 people were
48 on shift, and then -- yes, 25 people were on shift. So in
49 terms of checking our scheduling requirements -----
50
51 Q. Yes. But it could be 25 different people, or some of those
52 people could be different people. Did you actually check
53 whether any crew were working more than 39 hours in a week?
54 A. Yes. I think part of my responsibilities, again, as a
55 supervisor/quasi Human Resources person, was to ensure that
56 we did not have those excessive hours.
57
58 Q. Did you actually ensure that that never occurred?
59 A. Back to "prevention is better than cure", part of my
60 responsibilities was to anticipate the sales volume, so
