Day 196 - 06 Dec 95 - Page 14
1 Q. When would that have been?
2 A. That would have been beginning of July/August 1991
3 prior to me leaving. There were two subsequent meetings
4 that were being held at the Colchester high street store
5 which involved those people again and also Andy and Tim
6 Taylor, with the last one just being me and Tim Taylor
7 being present.
8
9 Q. Who is Andy Taylor?
10 A. I am sure he was Operations Manager or Vice President
11 at that time. I cannot remember the exact position, but he
12 would have been the Supervisor above the people I was
13 talking to at my level.
14
15 Q. What was he saying at those meetings?
16 A. Although they listened and took in what I actually
17 said, at the end it was basically I either put up with the
18 situation or leave; they were not prepared to make any
19 allowances or adjustments at all. The last thing I was
20 told was basically I either accepted it as it is or go to
21 your new job. So that is the course of action I took.
22
23 Q. You said you complained about having to achieve targets.
24 Can you just explain the kind of complaints you were
25 making?
26 A. Unrealistic targets being expected. For example, if we
27 have a labour percentage of, say, a set figure of 14 per
28 cent to achieve during the course of a week, it did not
29 allow for such things as visits or anything like that. So
30 what you actually doing is you would be having to run
31 really short on different days, send people home, cut back
32 on the number of crew you have in the restaurant, with food
33 and labour costs always wanting to shave that little bit
34 more off to make that little bit more money, so you would
35 always be asked to improve on you what had previously done
36 which actually led to a lot of the cost cutting and corner
37 cutting in the statements, people's clock cards being
38 tampered with, yields being manipulated by watering down
39 things, those types of things, over-held products, anything
40 really you could actually use to improve your profitability
41 and hit the targets that you were set.
42
43 Q. Am I right in understanding that you actually told people
44 at higher levels from yourself about these kinds of
45 practices that were going on?
46 A. I actually expressed that I was fed up with all that to
47 these people, yes.
48
49 Q. You said about under 18s working beyond their legal time at
50 night. I am going through a few details now. How often
51 would that kind of thing happen while Mark ----
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: May I get one thing straight because in your
54 second statement you specifically refer to under 18 males
55 working past midnight?
56 A. That is correct.
57
58 Q. Did under 18 women actually work past 10 or was it really
59 the males?
60 A. It was really the males, for the very thing that with
