[00:00:00] Speaker 01: case number 15-1135 at L. Fred Meyer Storrs, Inc. [00:00:05] Speaker 01: Petitioner versus National Labor Relations Board. [00:00:07] Speaker 01: Mr. Kogan for the petitioner, Ms. [00:00:09] Speaker 01: White for the respondent. [00:00:51] Speaker 01: Let's let them get out. [00:00:54] Speaker 01: It's a little noisy. [00:00:55] Speaker 02: Yeah. [00:00:58] Speaker 02: Good morning, Your Honors. [00:01:00] Speaker ?: Good morning. [00:01:01] Speaker 01: Well, we're causing here for the court room to clear a little bit. [00:01:07] Speaker 03: I'm sure you're disappointed to learn they weren't all here. [00:01:09] Speaker 02: I thought they were all here for me. [00:01:34] Speaker 02: Now we're going to celebrate out there. [00:01:37] Speaker 01: You can go ahead. [00:01:38] Speaker 02: Thank you, Your Honors. [00:01:40] Speaker 02: May it please the Court, I'm Mitch Cogan here for Petitioner Fred Meyer Stores. [00:01:45] Speaker 02: I've reserved one minute for rebuttal. [00:01:48] Speaker 02: This case involves a dispute over a contractual access provision in a CBA between Fred Meyer and the UFCW Local 555. [00:01:58] Speaker 02: And the past practices that were developed over the course of decades relate to that provision. [00:02:05] Speaker 02: Dispute arose on October 15th, 2009 when eight non-employee union representatives with a photographer in tow descended en masse into Fred Meyer's Hillsboro store. [00:02:21] Speaker 02: Only two of those eight checked in with management as they were required to do. [00:02:26] Speaker 02: Nothing like this has ever happened before in the decades of the relationship between the parties. [00:02:32] Speaker 02: After a 45-minute confrontation on the store floor where the union reps refused to leave when they were asked, three of the union reps ultimately were arrested for trespass. [00:02:49] Speaker 02: Ultimately, the board found that Fred Meyer violated Section 8A-5 by unilaterally changing the terms of the access provision. [00:02:58] Speaker 02: and violated Section 8A1 of the National Labor Relations Act based on some statements made by a manager on the floor during the confrontation. [00:03:09] Speaker 02: And the board ordered Fred Meyer to pay for all of the criminal defense costs for the reps who were arrested. [00:03:16] Speaker 02: In doing so, the board intentionally ignored and failed to material address substantial Fred Meyer evidence [00:03:27] Speaker 02: demonstrating this entire event, including the arrests was planned by the union. [00:03:33] Speaker 03: And in fact, it was the matter whether it was planned by the union or not. [00:03:40] Speaker 02: The important thing is that they did that. [00:03:42] Speaker 03: The union did breach the agreement on your new brief on page seven. [00:03:51] Speaker ?: Uh, [00:03:54] Speaker 03: Do you really need to show that they planned it in order to show they breached that agreement or past practice? [00:04:00] Speaker 02: Well, I think the planning that was involved and all of the evidence that supports the planning is significant because it reinforces the fact that there was extensive evidence in this record that supported Fred Meyer's defense that the board completely ignored. [00:04:21] Speaker 02: And it's for that reason that [00:04:24] Speaker 02: Had the board not done that, the board should have properly found that it was the union, not Fred Meyer, that breached the contractual access provision, and that in doing so, their conduct was unprotected by the act from the minute they walked in the door. [00:04:42] Speaker 02: The board erred in three ways. [00:04:46] Speaker 02: Like to start first with the arrests. [00:04:49] Speaker 02: The board found Fred Meyer liable for the arrests for summoning the police. [00:04:54] Speaker 02: Well, this court has since, in Venetian Casino, made clear that when a situation like this, an employer summons the police in an attempt to enforce what it believes is a state trespass violation, well, that conduct is a direct petition to the government, protected by the First Amendment under the North Pennington Doctrine. [00:05:20] Speaker 03: Did you raise the North printing some document or the First Amendment argument in before the board? [00:05:28] Speaker 02: We did not, Your Honor, because it was not possible to. [00:05:31] Speaker 02: Why not? [00:05:32] Speaker 02: Because this court decided the Venetian Casino case and specifically determined that the Noor-Pennington doctrine applied for a direct petition like this in July of 2015. [00:05:46] Speaker 03: Well, you could have been the first. [00:05:49] Speaker 03: I mean, I don't know. [00:05:50] Speaker 03: Venetian managed to raise it, I assume. [00:05:55] Speaker 03: It's not impossible to raise something that hasn't been decided before. [00:05:58] Speaker 02: True, but at that point in time, this case was, that point was still pending. [00:06:03] Speaker 02: It had been specifically reserved in the earlier Venetian Casino case. [00:06:07] Speaker 02: The board had subsequently, it had been remanded. [00:06:10] Speaker 02: The board had subsequently found, in its opinion, in 2011, that it was not a protected. [00:06:19] Speaker 04: Do you need that too? [00:06:26] Speaker 04: If you are correct, and the board is wrong, that there was a past practice of only one or two union reps and that became sort of the common law of the agreement. [00:06:39] Speaker 04: Then at least six of the people on the store's premises were in violation of the agreement. [00:06:48] Speaker 04: And if that's the case, and there's no dispute about what Oregon trespass law says. [00:06:55] Speaker 04: And so they were on the premises for a reason that the employer did not agree with. [00:07:03] Speaker 04: And you called the police. [00:07:06] Speaker 04: And the actual arrest was not instigated by Fred Meyer, was it? [00:07:12] Speaker 04: It was the police discretionary decision. [00:07:14] Speaker 04: They were escorting these people out. [00:07:16] Speaker 02: Well, that's exactly right, Judge Randolph, and that is our position as we've argued. [00:07:20] Speaker 03: In fact, the evidence says the police officer told them if they would leave, they wouldn't be arrested, right? [00:07:25] Speaker 02: Absolutely, repeatedly. [00:07:26] Speaker 03: And Friedmeier management asked them... It's a little hard to figure out how you approximately caused that if they had the option. [00:07:32] Speaker 02: I completely agree with you, Judge Sento. [00:07:35] Speaker 02: And additionally, we don't necessarily need the North Pennington doctrine because had the board properly evaluated the evidence here and found that the union [00:07:46] Speaker 02: breached the past practice with respect to the number of permissible reps at the outset, well then all of their conduct was unprotected that day. [00:07:57] Speaker 02: So everything, including the arrests, that seems a little overblown. [00:08:04] Speaker 04: Wouldn't it follow that two of the people that were on the premises were engaging in protected activity while the other six were not? [00:08:15] Speaker 04: Why is it that all eight were not engaged in protected activity? [00:08:22] Speaker 02: Well, Your Honor, that's where I think we get to the rest of the record that wasn't evaluated, and what the intent was here, and what the planning the night before, what went on even two days before, reflected that the Union intended to cause this confrontation. [00:08:42] Speaker 02: They wanted to get publicity out of it. [00:08:44] Speaker 02: That's why they brought the photographer along. [00:08:47] Speaker 04: And the two people that were with, how do you pronounce it, Dosser? [00:08:52] Speaker 02: Dosser. [00:08:52] Speaker 02: Dosser. [00:08:53] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:08:53] Speaker 04: That were with Dosser. [00:08:57] Speaker 04: We're not among the three that were arrested separately. [00:09:01] Speaker 02: One of them was. [00:09:02] Speaker 04: One of them. [00:09:02] Speaker 02: Reid. [00:09:02] Speaker 02: Yes, the international rep Reid, who was from California. [00:09:06] Speaker 02: She'd been brought in a month or two earlier by the local. [00:09:12] Speaker 02: in our opinion, just to stir things up. [00:09:15] Speaker 02: And it was after Reid arrived that all of these access issues began. [00:09:19] Speaker 02: Historically, the parties had never really had difficulties with these types of things. [00:09:24] Speaker 04: So what was the justification for refusing to allow those two people who were with Dossett to proceed? [00:09:37] Speaker 04: Why were they kicked out? [00:09:39] Speaker 04: What's the justification? [00:09:41] Speaker 02: Well, the way it played out, Your Honor, is Dostert had an understanding of what the past practice was. [00:09:48] Speaker 02: His belief was that Reed and this other gentleman, Witt, who brought the photographer along, came in and immediately expressed an intent to engage in conduct inconsistent with past practice, and that they said, we're going to go and talk to the people, and we can talk to them as long as we'd like on the floor. [00:10:11] Speaker 02: Now, there's a, quote, brief conversation element of the past practice, which has the board did properly find that brief conversation past practice should be about one to two minutes. [00:10:24] Speaker 02: So when they started saying, look, we can talk as long as we want on the floor, as long as we don't interrupt work or the customers, well, that put Doster [00:10:36] Speaker 02: You know, on his heels, he was like, wait a minute, that's not right. [00:10:38] Speaker 02: I've got to call my boss. [00:10:41] Speaker 02: Things escalated from there. [00:10:46] Speaker 02: Did that answer your question? [00:10:47] Speaker 04: Well, yes and no. [00:10:49] Speaker 04: The board said that there was no evidence of disruption of work. [00:10:54] Speaker 02: Is that true? [00:10:55] Speaker 02: That's absolutely not true. [00:10:56] Speaker 02: And that's part of what the significant evidence that the board ignored. [00:11:02] Speaker 04: If you look through those two people, [00:11:07] Speaker 02: Well, no, actually, there was testimony by Rick Ball. [00:11:11] Speaker 02: It's difficult to find. [00:11:14] Speaker 02: You have to dig into the record. [00:11:15] Speaker 02: The board never even mentioned this. [00:11:17] Speaker 02: Rick Ball, for many years, was Local 555's organizing and collective bargaining director. [00:11:25] Speaker 02: Rick Ball testified in undisputed, unrebutted manner that Local 555 had always believed that the limit for reps on the floor was two. [00:11:37] Speaker 03: and the reason they believe that was uh... because of the civil war is that in the day i'm sorry your time is short where is that in the day and don't give us the whole history if you can get us to it your red lights on we're being that it is four ten or ten four eleven fifteen four sixteen [00:11:57] Speaker 02: The report said the union believed it would be inherently disruptive and would violate the access provision if they came in with more than two. [00:12:05] Speaker 02: Strong evidence, completely ignored by the law. [00:12:08] Speaker 01: I think what Judge Randolph was asking you about the two who were talking to Doster, and at that point, he didn't know the others were there. [00:12:17] Speaker 01: And I guess the question that I have is, [00:12:20] Speaker 01: Those two did check in, so they didn't violate that part of the access rule. [00:12:27] Speaker 01: And so the question is, what is it that they did that did violate it, or how was it that one of them ended up getting arrested? [00:12:38] Speaker 02: Well, Reed ended up getting arrested because she had been determined the night before that she was going to take the arrest. [00:12:44] Speaker 02: She insisted that she would not leave the store without being arrested. [00:12:48] Speaker 01: OK. [00:12:50] Speaker 01: We have that evidence, and let's suppose we didn't know that. [00:12:54] Speaker 01: Yes. [00:12:54] Speaker 01: Is there any? [00:12:55] Speaker 01: What did she do while she was there that would have justified her being arrested if we didn't know that this was planned as a publicity stunt or any of that? [00:13:07] Speaker 02: The reason she was arrested, Your Honor, is that she refused to follow police instructions. [00:13:13] Speaker 04: Period. [00:13:14] Speaker 04: But why was she, uh, [00:13:19] Speaker 02: Well, ultimately she created a 45 minute confrontation on the store floor. [00:13:30] Speaker 02: I mean, even the board determined that the past practice here for brief visitation is one to two minutes. [00:13:39] Speaker 02: So at that juncture, we're talking about 45 minutes in the store that's open with customers all around, and she was causing a disturbance. [00:13:49] Speaker 04: The one to two minute conversation is per employee, isn't it? [00:13:56] Speaker 04: I'm sorry? [00:13:57] Speaker 04: It's in talking to a particular employee, a one to two minute conversation. [00:14:02] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:14:03] Speaker 04: Yeah. [00:14:04] Speaker 04: But the 45 minutes was not, wasn't it talking to an employee? [00:14:10] Speaker 04: Or was it talking to Das? [00:14:12] Speaker 02: Well, she did talk briefly to an employee. [00:14:16] Speaker 02: But at that point, continued to argue and confront Doster for going on 45 minutes. [00:14:29] Speaker 01: All right. [00:14:30] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:14:31] Speaker 02: Thank you. [00:14:43] Speaker 00: Good morning. [00:14:44] Speaker 00: May it please the court? [00:14:45] Speaker 00: Eric Weiss on behalf of the Labor Board. [00:14:47] Speaker 00: I'd like to begin by addressing two arguments that Council of the Employer just made, which I think are very important. [00:14:54] Speaker 00: First of all, to the point of whether it was a breach of the contract to only have two union representatives check in, the employer never made that argument to the board, nor did the employer make the argument in his opening brief. [00:15:07] Speaker 00: So it's both barred by section 10e of the act and by well-established rule of the public procedure, but that argument has been waived. [00:15:16] Speaker 00: The argument that the employer was making is that the very presence of eight union representatives in the store, even though they were all separated in pairs and talking to employees separately, was somehow an inherent breach of the contract. [00:15:32] Speaker 01: So this issue of whether- Well, isn't that true if, in fact, that was the past practice? [00:15:37] Speaker 00: No, Your Honor, because the board explicitly found, reviewing all the evidence, that there was no established past practice. [00:15:47] Speaker 04: And I think the... No, it actually said the judge, the ALJ, found that the parties did not have a clearly defined practice about the number of agents permitted in the store. [00:16:00] Speaker 04: But the ALJ found there is no doubt that the union practice typically involved one agent at a time. [00:16:06] Speaker 00: That's correct, Your Honor, and there's some dispute as to whether the board may have misspoken there. [00:16:10] Speaker 00: I would argue that whether they said the judge found this or not, they clearly made that finding upon reviewing the record. [00:16:17] Speaker 03: Don't they have to deal with adverse record in there to make a non-arbitrary and capricious decision when you have adverse evidence? [00:16:26] Speaker 03: And particularly when you have an adverse finding by the ALJ, shouldn't we expect the board to deal with it? [00:16:31] Speaker 00: Well, it wasn't an adverse finding, Your Honor. [00:16:33] Speaker 00: The dispute is whether the ALJ said he didn't need to make a finding. [00:16:38] Speaker 00: And I would argue that in this case, the question of whether... He said there's no dispute that the... [00:16:43] Speaker 00: And I would argue that in this case is functionally equivalent as to whether he is the same evidence before the board. [00:16:58] Speaker 00: That's correct. [00:16:59] Speaker 03: Upon which he said there is no dispute that what the past practice had been, right? [00:17:03] Speaker 00: No, that's not correct, Your Honor. [00:17:05] Speaker 00: He didn't say there's no dispute over the past practice. [00:17:07] Speaker 00: He said, you know, on a weekly or monthly visits, they sent one or two. [00:17:11] Speaker 00: But he said, I'm not going to reach the past practice issue. [00:17:14] Speaker 00: The board went further and found that there wasn't one. [00:17:17] Speaker 00: But, Your Honor, here it's functionally equivalent as to saying there is no past practice or there's no finding of a past practice, because the burden is on the employer as the one alleging a past practice to prove that it exists. [00:17:30] Speaker 04: So if the board... Under the Supreme Court's decision in Allentown and Mack, though, [00:17:36] Speaker 04: that the board has to consider evidence that's contrary to what one saw. [00:17:43] Speaker 00: That's correct, Your Honor, but the board absolutely did consider all of the evidence in this case in finding that there wasn't a past practice. [00:17:49] Speaker 00: And if I can explain why there wasn't one, the main issue to consider in this case is that this was a contractual access provision. [00:17:57] Speaker 00: So everything in this case turns on an interpretation of the phrase unreasonable interference with employees in the contractual access provision. [00:18:05] Speaker 00: So the employer's argument would have more weight if, for example, the access policy itself was established by past practice. [00:18:12] Speaker 00: So then in that case, you know, they'd only ever sent two. [00:18:15] Speaker 03: Did all the employees that were on, or all the union reps first contact the store manager or person in charge? [00:18:23] Speaker 00: Only two went to the store manager. [00:18:25] Speaker 03: So why aren't they in violation of the contract provision as well as the best practice? [00:18:29] Speaker 00: Well, the employer, first of all, never raised that argument in its opening brief or to the board. [00:18:35] Speaker 00: And secondly, there's no evidence that that was a requirement of the contract. [00:18:40] Speaker 03: The words of the contract are set forth that I just read to you. [00:18:44] Speaker 03: What do you mean there's no evidence that was in the contract? [00:18:47] Speaker 00: Well, the contract says you need to check in with the store manager. [00:18:50] Speaker 03: It does not say every single... So first contact the store manager or person in charge of the store. [00:18:54] Speaker 00: Right and part of the delegation went to contact the store manager and they were prevented from explaining anything else because he immediately said you cannot talk to employees in the store floor and initiated this argument. [00:19:07] Speaker 00: But it also points of course attention to page 31 of our brief where we cite record evidence testimony that going back decades [00:19:15] Speaker 00: delegations of more than two employees have gone into the stores pursuant to the access provision, which the employer completely ignores. [00:19:23] Speaker 00: And there's no evidence that in the past, when you've had more than two employees, that each individual employee has to check in with the store manager. [00:19:31] Speaker 00: So that issue just was not presented to the board and is not properly before the court. [00:19:34] Speaker 00: But even if it was, the employer hasn't carried its burden to show that there is a violation of the contract here. [00:19:41] Speaker 00: And returning to my point about the contractual nature of the access provision, it's well established under contract law, including in the labor context, that if a party has rights under the contract, it doesn't waive those rights merely by not exercising them. [00:19:56] Speaker 00: So since we're dealing with a contractual provision, the mere fact that the union typically sent one or two [00:20:02] Speaker 00: does not establish, does not modify the terms of the contract, and does not permit the employer to put its own gloss on the contract. [00:20:11] Speaker 00: That's what the West Lawrence Care Center case stands for, which we cite in our brief. [00:20:15] Speaker 00: So there's just no evidence. [00:20:17] Speaker 00: The employer has just not carried his burden of establishing that there is a past practice. [00:20:22] Speaker 00: And whether the board affirmatively found there was none, or just did not find that there was one, is functionally equivalent as far as this course review of the case is concerned. [00:20:32] Speaker 00: The other issue that I wanted to raise was the employer mentioned, I'm sorry, yes, Your Honor. [00:20:38] Speaker 01: Before you do that, because I understand you'd be saying there, are you saying that nothing is controlled by past practice here? [00:20:48] Speaker 01: It's just what's in the contract and that's it. [00:20:51] Speaker 00: Well, the contract is ultimately controlling. [00:20:54] Speaker 00: There was past practice as to the length of the conversation, but that was established because there had been back and forth between the union and the employer where there had been an agreement that a brief conversation of one or two minutes [00:21:07] Speaker 00: was what is reasonable within that term, unreasonable interference. [00:21:12] Speaker 00: So that clearly was an established past practice. [00:21:15] Speaker 00: But the employer hasn't pointed to any past history between the employer and the union where there was a disagreement about the number of representatives. [00:21:23] Speaker 00: And I would argue that logically it doesn't make sense to consider [00:21:27] Speaker 00: The mere fact that you have more than two representatives in this massive store would be an unreasonable interference with employees because they spread out into pairs. [00:21:35] Speaker 00: They weren't going up to employees eight at a time and trying to talk that way. [00:21:40] Speaker 00: They were just merely trying to do this faster by sending in four pairs at once rather than one pair as was the typical week-to-week, month-to-month practice. [00:21:49] Speaker 01: So is your position that unless there is some back and forth, in other words, if a practice is just the way things have always been and everybody does it that way, but the question doesn't come up so that there's some kind of negotiation or discussion between the employer and the employees, you would say then there's no past practice? [00:22:13] Speaker 00: I think that's correct, especially where you have a contractual access provision. [00:22:18] Speaker 00: One party to a contract can't just unilaterally place its own gloss on that contract. [00:22:24] Speaker 00: So obviously what's controlling is an unreasonable interference. [00:22:27] Speaker 00: So if you had a situation which was unprecedented, [00:22:30] Speaker 00: which did unreasonably interfere with employees, that would be outside the protection of the contract. [00:22:35] Speaker 00: But as the board emphasized, and as the employer has been unable to point to, despite video surveillance of the entire store, there was absolutely no interference with employees' work or the operation of the store on the morning of October 15th. [00:22:49] Speaker 00: There was this disagreement between two representatives and the manager of the store. [00:22:53] Speaker 00: But there's no evidence that spilled over to employees or to customers. [00:22:57] Speaker 00: to justify the employer's unfair labor practices. [00:23:02] Speaker 00: And the other, returning to the employer's opening statement, he made the argument that the union representatives sought to speak to employees inconsistent with the terms of the store visitation clause. [00:23:14] Speaker 00: Again, that's an argument that the employer did not make in his opening brief and is not [00:23:18] Speaker 00: properly before the court, but even if the employer had raised that argument, the board's finding and everything in this case turns on the board's credibility determinations and findings of facts as to what manager Dostert said. [00:23:30] Speaker 00: And what he said is, sorry, Your Honor. [00:23:32] Speaker 03: Now you've gone into what you want to talk about, but you may want to remember that the three of us get to decide this. [00:23:38] Speaker 03: And one of us, at least, is very interested in knowing where the board gets the power to order these criminal legal fees. [00:23:46] Speaker 00: In terms of the remedy, your honor, I think it's very well established under board precedent that when an employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as causing an arrest unlawfully, that remedy is where you have some, one of the places where you have real problems. [00:24:02] Speaker 03: First place, I'm not sure where the authority came from anyway, but the second place, the record is undisputed that these people were told if you leave, you won't be arrested, right? [00:24:14] Speaker 00: Well, that's not entirely correct, Your Honor, because there was some mention in the employer's argument as to whether the employer initiated these arrests. [00:24:22] Speaker 03: And in fact, the evidence shows... If the evidence is not clear that the police evidence was that if they had left when we asked them to, they would not have been arrested, right? [00:24:32] Speaker 00: That's not entirely correct, Your Honor, because the employer did affirmatively initiate two of the arrests when the police approached Ms. [00:24:39] Speaker 00: Reed. [00:24:39] Speaker 03: What did the police test? [00:24:40] Speaker 03: What was the police evidence in this case? [00:24:42] Speaker 00: There is testimony from the police officers and the arrest reports, but there's also testimony showing clearly that when the police arrived, uh, manager Delsler directed them to arrest Ms. [00:24:52] Speaker 00: Reed. [00:24:53] Speaker 03: Managers can't direct police to arrest. [00:24:56] Speaker 03: Well, they said... The police made the decision to arrest. [00:24:59] Speaker 03: These people made the decision to stay there and be arrested. [00:25:01] Speaker 03: And I don't say you get anywhere close to an approximate cause. [00:25:04] Speaker 00: I mean, Your Honor, that's true in any case where the police arrest someone, but there's... No, there isn't. [00:25:09] Speaker 00: Well, in this case, the manager said they're trespassing, please arrest them, please remove them. [00:25:14] Speaker 00: I don't know how much more direct you could have an employer unfair labor practice be, obviously. [00:25:19] Speaker 03: You could have one where the police officer didn't say, we told them, Liam, they didn't leave, so we arrested them. [00:25:24] Speaker 00: with respect to one of the three employees, Mr. Marshall. [00:25:27] Speaker 00: And the issue with Mr. Marshall is he was trying to leave and he was outside a locked car. [00:25:32] Speaker 00: And while he was trying to explain that, the police arrested him. [00:25:35] Speaker 00: But as to the other two employees, Manager Dostler affirmatively directed them [00:25:40] Speaker 00: I don't want them to be there here. [00:25:41] Speaker 00: Please remove their trespassing, and that's what caused the arrest. [00:25:45] Speaker 00: And if I could just quickly make one final point. [00:25:48] Speaker 00: I'd emphasize in this case, as we point out in our brief, that all of this discussion as to whether there's a breach of a contract [00:25:55] Speaker 00: whether the union represents loss to protection of the Act, et cetera, is irrelevant based on what the unfair labor practices were in this case, because it's undisputed there is a contractual right to speak with employees on the store floor. [00:26:08] Speaker 00: And it's also undisputed that as soon as the two representatives approached Major Doster, he said, you cannot speak with employees. [00:26:15] Speaker 00: If you want to have those type of discussions, you need to go into the break room. [00:26:17] Speaker 00: That itself is the initial 8-8-1 and 8-8-5 violation. [00:26:21] Speaker 00: It doesn't matter if there was a breach of the contract occurring elsewhere. [00:26:24] Speaker 00: It doesn't matter if they were actually engaged in protected conduct, because that has the tendency to restrain something that is protected, which is speaking to employees pursuant to the contractual access provision. [00:26:36] Speaker 00: I think we have very strong arguments that there wasn't a breach of contract, et cetera. [00:26:40] Speaker 00: But the court doesn't even need to reach all of those issues, because the initial 81 and 85 violations occurred in that instant. [00:26:48] Speaker 00: And a continuation of that occurred when he called the police and had the representatives arrested. [00:26:54] Speaker 00: And at all times, what he was affirmatively saying is what matters. [00:26:58] Speaker 00: And what he was vocalizing was, you do not have a right to speak to employees on the store floor. [00:27:03] Speaker 00: It would be a much more difficult and very different case if he had said, you're breaching a contract or something vague like that, and we would be here litigating what he meant by that or whether he was correct. [00:27:14] Speaker 00: But he never said that. [00:27:15] Speaker 00: What he said was incorrect. [00:27:17] Speaker 00: The employer concedes that it was incorrect. [00:27:19] Speaker 00: When he said, you cannot speak with employees on the store floor, that's what violated or derogated the contractual access provision. [00:27:27] Speaker 00: And that's what led to all of the unfair labor practices. [00:27:30] Speaker 00: So the court doesn't need to reach [00:27:31] Speaker 00: the breach and all these other issues if it doesn't want to but even if it does The board would urge full enforcement of its order and if there's no further questions Thank you [00:27:50] Speaker 01: I think you had no time remaining, but we'll give you one moment for rebuttal. [00:27:54] Speaker 01: One minute. [00:27:55] Speaker 02: Okay, just briefly, Judge Santel, to address the question about the arrests. [00:28:00] Speaker 02: In fact, Mr. Doster did ask the representatives to leave in the presence of the police because the police told him he must do that under Oregon state law. [00:28:09] Speaker 03: Yeah, and that's undisputed, and counsel can't change that. [00:28:13] Speaker 03: Don't worry about it. [00:28:14] Speaker 02: And with respect to the past practice issue, the Sunoco case 349 and LRB 240 clearly states that a past practice need not be universal, but it's just something that occurs with such regularity and frequency that employees could reasonably expect the practice to continue or recur. [00:28:31] Speaker 04: I just checked the JA citations on page 31 of the board's brief. [00:28:37] Speaker 04: And there is testimony that in two other stores, not this store, that more than two union representatives came in at the same time. [00:28:50] Speaker 04: The problem is that both of those instances occurred at just about the same time as this incident occurred. [00:28:58] Speaker 04: That is in October of 2009. [00:29:01] Speaker 02: Right. [00:29:01] Speaker 02: And that testimony was by international rep Reid, who also testified she had absolutely no training about what the past practice was with regard to stored visitation. [00:29:14] Speaker 01: Just one other question. [00:29:16] Speaker 01: I think that counsel agreed that the one to two minute limit was, in fact, an accepted past practice. [00:29:27] Speaker 01: And both sides agreed to that. [00:29:29] Speaker 01: The board in its decision says, we've repeatedly testified during her testimony that the purpose of her store visits was to meet with employees, educate them about the union's bargaining position, give them flyers, and solicit them to sign a health care petition. [00:29:50] Speaker 01: That actually sounds like rather more than one to two minutes. [00:29:54] Speaker 01: But what counsel also says is the first word that Dostard ever says to her is you can't talk to employees at all. [00:30:05] Speaker 01: So I look through the record trying to find what I could piece together of the confrontation between them. [00:30:12] Speaker 01: And I'm just wondering if you, if there's any more to that, does the record actually reflect that that is the first comment that he makes to her? [00:30:23] Speaker 02: Absolutely not, Your Honor. [00:30:25] Speaker 02: There was initial discussion between Dostert, Reed, and Witt in which Dostert believed that Reed and Witt were expressing an intent to violate that past practice with respect to the length of time. [00:30:39] Speaker 01: As that was occurring, I'm sorry if I'm... Well, what I'm trying to find out is where is that? [00:30:44] Speaker 01: I had a terrible time with this record trying to find that conversation. [00:30:50] Speaker 01: So can you cite to some place specifically in the record of the testimony of those two people? [00:31:53] Speaker 01: Okay. [00:31:53] Speaker 01: I'm having difficulty finding this moment as well. [00:31:56] Speaker 01: Perhaps I can ask that you either submit later to us where you think in the record that actually appears or if we could have the record supplemented so that we could have that actual testimony. [00:32:13] Speaker 02: So the testimony specifically about the initial interaction. [00:32:16] Speaker 01: The initial interaction of both of those witnesses. [00:32:23] Speaker 02: between Reid and Daschle. [00:32:24] Speaker 01: Yes. [00:32:25] Speaker 02: I'd be happy to do that. [00:32:28] Speaker 01: Oh, okay. [00:32:29] Speaker 01: That's true. [00:32:32] Speaker 00: Mr. Weiss, perhaps you know where... In terms of the... Yes. [00:33:27] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:33:44] Speaker 02: So would you like me to supplement that as well. [00:33:53] Speaker 02: Thank you.