Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 06
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Whether there is anything particularly
2 unusual about these figures for hourly paid workers, in -
3 let us suppose your description of the work is menial - in
4 menial work, I do not know.
5
6 MR. MORRIS: Right.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: In the days, which I have now said are a
9 long, long time ago, so I prefer not to rely on at all,
10 when I did menial jobs, one knows how people drifted on and
11 off building sites and things like that when more work was
12 available. It is just a fact of life.
13
14 MR. MORRIS: I think that we will accept there is an element of
15 that, yes. But the point I am saying about the cross
16 referencing it to that other document from the 'One Every
17 Mile' researcher where it says the main reason or the most
18 common reasons given for leaving is to go to another job
19 which is not reflected in the chart, then I think we have
20 to add that category of people basically, obviously, as you
21 say, seeing McDonald's as a stopgap to something better.
22 That is a substantial additional category of reasons for
23 leaving, on top of the expressed dissatisfaction.
24
25 Anyway, there was a discussion with Mr. Pearson -- sorry,
26 discussion, testimony from him on page 43, line 25, where
27 he has expressed concern about the less serious but not
28 minor injuries that are a feature of the catering industry
29 in general and McDonald's in particular, because of course
30 he had seen accident books on his visits, what he called a
31 run of really not reportable injuries which do not get
32 reflected in the statistics but are in his view serious,
33 not minor.
34
35 He says that the industry is a risky industry. That is at
36 line 36 on page 43, wet floors, hot surfaces, crowding,
37 sharp instruments, and the injuries you would get tend to
38 be non-fatal, they would tend to be not reported and not
39 appear in the official statistics; it is a cuts and burns,
40 fracture and fall industry.
41
42 I am going to come on to that. I suppose I might as well
43 do it. I will come back to that after I have finished
44 Mr. Pearson.
45
46 He talks about how employers do not categorise. If they
47 want to get rid of someone because of union related
48 activity, on page 48, it is very difficult to. Employers
49 will know that of course people have a right to claim for
50 unfair dismissal for trade union activities, so basically
51 employers do not state that; they find other ways of
52 getting rid of people, which might explain why it is hard
53 to find specific cases of where the Company has clearly
54 admitted or been found guilty of such things, even though
55 it is inherent in their operational procedures in the Crew
56 Handbook that people will be disciplined and dismissed for
57 any union type activity.
58
59 He actually criticised the Crew Handbook on page 50, line
60 37. The activities were just circumscribed by the Handbook
