Day 189 - 20 Nov 95 - Page 07
1 explained to me what was happening and why the
2 O'Connell Street workers had decided to go out on strike --
3 which was basically, as he explained it to me, over pay and
4 conditions of employment, general conditions of
5 employment.
6
7 There had been rumblings in the Grafton Street store since
8 I started work there, in 1977 to 1979, over these issues,
9 over issues of pay, over issues of conditions of
10 employment, over late night working, over how staff were
11 left to get their own -- make their own way home. So
12 I immediately joined the union and did not pass the picket,
13 and came out on strike on that day.
14
15 Q. You said there had been rumblings before. Had there been
16 any means of bringing this up with McDonald's, with the
17 management, before?
18 A. Well, McDonald's operated a system where they called
19 their staff crew members. They operated a system where
20 they had crew meetings every couple of months, any
21 grievances or concerns that workers had, where there was an
22 opportunity for them to raise those issues. But if I can
23 say that most people, because it was attended by
24 management, most people did not feel secure enough to
25 express those grievances in terms of maybe there would be
26 some repercussions made on them by management if they
27 expressed concern over their wages or conditions of
28 employment.
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause there. (Pause) Yes?
31
32 MR. MORRIS: Were you actually a union member earlier on?
33 A. I had been a member of the Irish Transport and General
34 Workers Union in my first employment, but my membership had
35 lapsed. I had not -- when I left Woolworth, I had not
36 continued to pay my card. But I had been a member at one
37 stage.
38
39 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That was at Woolworth's, was it?
40 A. Yes.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: Did you not take any action to set up a union at
43 Grafton Street before the strike?
44 A. Well, as I said, there had been a lot of talk about
45 people joining the union over the year and a half prior to
46 the strike, but people felt very -- people felt very
47 apprehensive about doing so. They were of the view that
48 because, to their knowledge, McDonald's was not unionised
49 in any other country, they felt that McDonald's had an
50 anti-union bias. So they were reluctant because,
51 basically, for fear that they would lose their jobs. So
52 that was the difficulty in trying to organise a trade union
53 in the store.
54
55 There was also -- I added in that -- a lot of people were,
56 a lot of part-time people, a lot of -- some full-time
57 people, but a lot of young workers, which may have
58 contributed to -- their self-confidence would not have been
59 assured as an experienced, maybe, trade unionist in
60 organising a union.
