Day 304 - 22 Nov 96 - Page 08
1 get any premium hours, i.e. after eleven o'clock at night
2 because they would not have been working after eleven
3 o'clock at night unless they were working illegally. So
4 -----
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: These are the under 18s, are they?
7
8 MR. MORRIS: The under 18s.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you mean after ten with the women and
11 twelve with the men?
12
13 MR. MORRIS: Yes. What I mean is, up to that time, when it was
14 illegal for them to work after ten o'clock at night, any
15 women under the age of 18 who worked overtime were clearly
16 not have been getting any shift, premium shift rates, would
17 not have been able to unless they were working illegally
18 anyway. So that should be taken into consideration when we
19 consider the systematic nonpayment of overtime on a large
20 scale and the number of under 18s that would be
21 full-timers. Because, do not forget, a third of the
22 workforce are under 18 at McDonald's and that would affect
23 men as well, because they would not be allowed to work
24 after 12 if they were under 18. So their number of
25 overtime hours, the number of premium hours they could
26 notch up would be quite small, unless they were working
27 illegally. So, again, that would prevent them from bumping
28 up their basic.
29
30 The final point is, as we have heard -- and I have not got
31 the exact date this took place but I think it was 1986,
32 1987 -- was when, if you remember, up to that point we had
33 heard that the wage increases ordered by the Wage Council
34 was clawed back out of the performance related pay. I do
35 not know if you remember that.
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
38
39 MR. MORRIS: So, up until that time, basically people were not
40 accruing hardly any performance related pay over a number
41 of years; it was being clawed back. Therefore, again, that
42 has to be taken into consideration when we consider
43 national systematic nonpayment of overtime on top of the
44 specific examples that we have got in the documentation
45 about.
46
47 MS. STEEL: A final point on pay is that when you are
48 considering a point about whether or not McDonald's take
49 advantage of the absence of a minimum wage to pay what they
50 like, I think that if you look at the rates of pay paid by
51 McDonald's in comparison to the Wage Councils rates -- I
52 mean, Mr. Nicholson accepted that basically they paid only
53 at the minimum rate or a few pence above it, whilst there
54 was a minimum rate, and if you look at the way McDonald's
55 wages have risen over the years, in 1987 the provincial
56 rate for over 18s was £2.10. Then it went up to £2.20 in
57 1988, went up to £2.38 in 1989 and it went up to £2.60 in
58 1990, £2.90 in 1991 and £3 in 1992. We have not got the
59 figures for 1993 and 1994, but we heard from Sean Richards
60 that by 1995 it was only £3.05 per hour. That was on day
