Day 115 - 06 Apr 95 - Page 36


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I cannot hear.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is John Bruton and an address in Hereford.
     5
     6   MR. RAMPTON:  The address does not matter but I would like to be
     7        able to hear the evidence.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Take it nice and easy, loud and clear,
    10        Mr. Bruton.
    11
    12   MS. STEEL:  I will start again.  Were you employed as a poultry
    13        catcher by Sun Valley from 1987 to 1993?
    14        A.  Yes, I was.
    15
    16   Q.   How many days a week or nights did you work?
    17        A.  Five.
    18
    19   Q.   Was it a mixture of days and nights?
    20        A.  Some weeks you would days, some weeks you would work
    21        nights, just depending what shift, time of day or night it
    22        fell on.
    23
    24   Q.   How many hours a day did you usually work?
    25        A.  Usually, we worked between eight to 10 hours a day,
    26        providing everything worked out OK.  If you had major
    27        breakdowns, fork trucks getting stuck in sheds or
    28        breakdowns, you could work anything up to 18 hours a day,
    29        but that was a rare occasion.
    30
    31   Q.   You worked in teams of catchers.  How many catchers made up
    32        a team?
    33        A.  Well, when I first started at Sun Valley we worked as a
    34        team of five men, with four men catching, one man driving a
    35        fork truck.  Then they changed their policy where there was
    36        seven men in a team, six men catching and one driving a
    37        fork truck.  My last days at Sun Valley there was six men
    38        in a team where five men caught chickens and one drove a
    39        fork truck.
    40
    41   Q.   When you first started, you say there were five catchers in
    42        the team, at that stage were you catching as many birds per
    43        night as when you had seven in the team?
    44        A.  No, half as many.
    45
    46   Q.   Roughly how fast would a team be expected to load a lorry
    47        of chickens?
    48        A.  When you say "a lorry", which -- a lorry multiplied by
    49        144 draws which we called a lorry, or sometimes you would
    50        have a lorry and trailer.  We call a lorry and trailer 45 
    51        minutes, sorry, a lorry 45 minutes. 
    52 
    53   Q.   The 144 drawers, was that 12 modules each with 12 drawers?
    54        A.  Yes.
    55
    56   Q.   Then on the trailer how many drawers would there be on
    57        that?
    58        A.  Eight modules.
    59
    60   Q.   With the same number of drawers per module?

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