Day 172 - 12 Oct 95 - Page 47

     
     1        Managers at the branch.  There was no real awareness of a
     2        legal minimum wage.  ...  The Wages Council order was not
     3        pinned up on the noticeboard in the crew room, or indeed
     4        anywhere else in the branch.  The only thing up on the
     5        walls relating to the law was a copy of the Shops and
     6        Factory Act, which was archaic and unreadable.  As far as I
     7        was aware, the stars were not connected with the salary
     8        paid.  Merit rises were few and far between, and any rises
     9        given were generally the standard Company rises once every
    10        four months.
    11
    12        6.  I worked Monday to Friday from 7.00 a.m. until 4.00
    13        p.m., and I only ever worked in the backroom and on the
    14        tills, not on any of the cooking jobs.  Occasionally, if
    15        the store was very short-staffed, I was asked to work the
    16        odd extra hour, although this only happened if they were
    17        desperate.  I generally refused.  I occasionally used to
    18        ask the management, when they approached me to do extra
    19        work, why they did not have stand-by staff available.  They
    20        just used to laugh at me.  The majority of the employees
         worked well over the 39 hours per week specified in the
    22        Handbook.  The limit was a joke.  ...  A few people at the
    23        store even did 24 hour shifts.
    24
    25        7.  The Management really did not know how to respond when
    26        I refused to work extra hours.  I was considered a bit of a
    27        phenomenon, so they let me get away with it, although
    28        people were regularly dismissed for behaving like that
    29        without notice.  I remember in particular one occasion when
    30        I was sitting in the crew room during my break with several
    31        other employees.  A Manager burst through the door, pointed
    32        successively at several employees and said, 'You, you, you
    33        and you ... out'.  It happened to a friend of mine.
    34        However, it was more common where Management wanted to get
    35        rid of an employee for them to force the unwanted employee
    36        to leave by being particularly unpleasant to that employee.
    37
    38        8.  The store did not follow the training procedures it was
    39        supposed to. ...  I was not shown any [training videos].
    40        The Marble Arch store had a training room and all sorts of
         training facilities but they were never used.
    42
    43        9.  The clock used by McDonald's for clocking-on and
    44        clocking-off was extremely unusual.  Each 'hour' was
    45        divided into 100 minutes instead of 60.  I found this
    46        impossible to understand, and could not find anybody in
    47        McDonald's who could give me an explanation. ...  All
    48        employees were made to clock on and off each time they took
    49        a break.  I was amazed by the fact that if an employee
    50        clocked-out for a break and forgot to clock back on again, 
    51        his or her wages were actually docked.  This was meant to 
    52        be a deterrent. 
    53
    54        10.  McDonald's never had any heating on in the crew room
    55        (where employees had to go to take their breaks) for the
    56        whole time I was there.  The Management used to claim that
    57        the air conditioning had broken down.  I have worked in the
    58        building trade for a long time and I did not believe their
    59        story for one minute.  It was nonsense. ...  The air
    60        conditioning was fully operative in all other parts of the