Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 03

     
     1        lack of them.  That is not really that central.
     2
     3        He did say, on page 12, line 34, that the people he
     4        leafleted outside McDonald's stores when they had their
     5        recruitment campaign were what he called par for the course
     6        sympathetic, and a positive response in terms of union
     7        sympathies.
     8
     9        Then he talks about the fact that no hours are guaranteed
    10        at McDonald's, he had concerns about that.  This is on page
    11        13.  And he did not see how it could sit with page 643 of
    12        the Wages Council document concerning guaranteed payments.
    13        I think that is our page 643.
    14
    15        He explains why the Wages Council provides for a guaranteed
    16        payment under three conditions.  The full-time worker does
    17        36 hours a week, and that the flexibility is that if your
    18        usual option is not available you do something else.  There
    19        is an inbuilt guarantee strategy protection for people
    20        defined as full-time that they should get those number of
    21        hours each week.  Of course, at McDonald's it is very much
    22        in management hands at the time when the Wages Council were
    23        in operation.  It says that the purpose of that is to
    24        protect employees.  That is the top of page 14.
    25
    26        At the top of page 16 he explains how Pizza Hut pitches
    27        themselves at the upper end.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, you said that already.
    30
    31   MR. MORRIS:  Yes, that is the reference to it.  Then he said
    32        about union rights at tribunals, or elsewhere indeed, is
    33        not a question of having them, it is a question of
    34        enforcing them in a realistic way.  And, for example, at
    35        the top of page 19, he says he does not know a single
    36        case in the last ten years of someone who is not a trade
    37        union member actually effectively exercising their rights
    38        to oppose unfair dismissal for union sympathies, and all
    39        the -----
    40
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That was generally?
    42
    43   MR. MORRIS:   No, about union matters.
    44
    45   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I know, but was that his experience
    46        generally, not with McDonald's as an employer but with
    47        employers generally?
    48
    49   MR. MORRIS:  He was relating it to the difficulty of supporting
    50        Dave McGee.
    51
    52   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That was his experience, whoever the employer
    53        might be?
    54
    55   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.  I mean, the sting of what he was saying about
    56        the so-called legal protection against discrimination
    57        against union activity is that it is extremely hard to
    58        enforce.
    59
    60   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I have got that point.