Day 214 - 01 02 96 - Page 11
DAY 214
DAVID ROBERTS, Examined:
1 Q. Would you be in the restaurant at times during the week?
2 A. At that time, when I took over the restaurant, I would
3 not have been working at those times. I would have been
4 working at the beginning of a shift, but not at the end of
5 it.
6
7 Q. "Mostly worked past scheduled time, not allowed to go or
8 pressure to stay on for generally anything from 15 minutes
9 extra to five hours, extra", and then the sentence is
10 added: "This happened to others".
11
12 Assuming for the moment that means to Mr. Beech as well as
13 others, do you ever recall Mr. Beech being pressured to
14 work on past the end of his scheduled shift?
15 A. No, I do not.
16
17 Q. Do you ever remember him working on past the end of his
18 scheduled shift for five hours?
19 A. No.
20
21 MS. STEEL: Is that not a bit pointless, seeing as the witness
22 has already said he was not in the store at the end of
23 Mr. Beech's shift?
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: The next asterisk, he says this: "On 4.00 to
26 12.00 shifts, i.e. 4.00 to close" -- here we can say that
27 it is meant to be 1.00 to 2.00 a.m. in reality -- "often
28 not given break in the first hour. The threat was, take it
29 now or maybe you will not get a break at all, or half hour
30 off at the end of the shift. This problem continued until
31 he left".
32
33 That appears to suggest, Mr. Roberts, that it continued
34 while you were Manager during the last three months of
35 Mr. Beech's time. What comment do you have about that
36 allegation?
37 A. On certain occasions people may be asked to take a
38 break early, but they were not pressured to go on it.
39
40 Q. We will come to the threat second, but how often would
41 people be asked to take a break early?
42 A. There is no figure that you could put on it. It is
43 just -- it would be on individual Managers speaking to
44 individual crew.
45
46 Q. At Heathrow, which we have heard is not seasonally affected
47 in the way that some other restaurant might be, what about
48 the days of the week; are there any particular times of the
49 week that you are particularly busy?
50 A. There is a slight difference between maybe Monday and
51 Friday, but not much. In the summer months, it was a
52 fairly consistent business pattern, you know, throughout
53 the week, even including the weekends. So lunchtime,
54 between 12.00 and 2.00, for example, would be busier than
55 between 3.00 and 5.00, but from a Monday to a Tuesday to a
56 Wednesday there would not be much variation.
57
58 Q. What difference, if any, between winter and summer --
59 because you were there for over a year so you should know?
60 A. It remained consistent throughout the year. Slight
11
