case arises out of the union's attempt to unilaterally conduct a financial hit of endo under the guise of an information request for a class action grievance the union's attempt fails because the collective bargaining bargaining agreement also called the i does not allow for class action grievances the only grievances allowed under the c p a must be from specific individual employees signed by the employees and submitted to the union within has determined that the this information was relevant to the bargaining between the union in your client and that your client's refusal to engage in because it could be a union requested information that was not germane or related to carrying out its statutory responsibilities and duties the union was requesting information related to what it called a grievance but was not in fact a grievance recognize under the collective bargaining agreement grievances have to be submitted by individual employees this was a document mislabeled as aggrievement drafted by union administration and submitted without any supporting signatures from employees and no evidence that it was submitted within the seven day time limit so the union has not provided any well actually there is no evidence in the record to indicate why the union would have a need to investigate an invalid unrecognizable and move the events for which no redress or relief may be had the union has not disputed the fact that there could be no relief obtained because the grievance was more than seven days old they have provided no explanation how it could get around the requirement that  of when any violations occurred all it had was a list of sections that ando company allegedly violated in the collective bargaining agreement  complete so that the documents are within the scope of relevant discovery in that previous joint industry committee action it was completely unrelated to this one of the separate there was that issue of whether class grievances were allowed under the collective bargaining agreement was not at issue there it was not addressed it was just simply a question of whether underpayment had been made and i believe that the president of and the company had stated that there may have been under payments and therefore it was addressed and settled are understanding here the unions complained or gripe is that the employer is paying these people in cash on the weekend the week you use or cars and those are violations that extend through the whole class of all the papers not just individuals it seems to me that the collective bargaining responsibility of the union is to find out whether that's going on so that they can any action oh yes well yes within within seven days according to the so what we have here is just the union is submitting a document saying that it the company violated a host of collective bargaining agreement provisions but they're not providing the underlying complaints from actual employees that are willing to attest that that is in fact true this is just the union fishing and suspecting that a violation may have occurred at some time in the last two years and therefore requesting that endo spend you know five or six months to gather all this information and provide to them even though it will have no redress and no recourse because it was not submitted within seven days it turned out did not that some of the information requests or by the union did not exist   telling the union that the document or documents didn't exist yes that that was an unfair labor practice think the record shows that endo employees stated that it would take several months to gather all the information that was being requested it was a host of information the union didn't dispute the length of time or that it was a substantial man of info being requested and the administrative law judge also made that determination when enda went through its records as it was going through its records attempting to you know in the worst case scenario have to comply with  information requests it discovered that it did not have the the organizational chart but that was something that that took a while to determine because of the voluminous request and then as the  research center shell company versus an ally be the one thirty circuit decision of one nine hundred seventy one stated that if the information requested has no relevance to any legitimate union collective bargaining need a refusal to furnish it could not be an unfair labor practice therefore it turns on the whole issue of whether you know a document mislabeled as a class of events not recognized by the c p a for which you know no recourse and relief can be had  whether you know requesting information related to that superfluous unnecessary document and a refusal to comply with that request is could be an unfair labor practice turns on on the validity of the the grievance please the court my name is jeff burton here on behalf of the national labor relations board your honour's the company's assertion that the union was in touch not entitled to this information is rooted in its mistaken belief that it statutory obligation to furnish information is directly tied to the contractual provisions that have been reached through a collective bargaining process the reason that this is a case before the national labor relations board as opposed to one that was brought before an arbitra that it is rooted in the national labor relations act obligation of the employer in this case to engage in collective bargaining with the chosen representative of its employees now a portion of that obligation is to provide information requested by the union that is relevant to the union carrying out its duties as the representative of its employees if the union makes a collective bargaining agreement and limits its rights to grievances to those which were individually signed within seven days of the grievance have they given up or statutory right now they have and there's no there's been no assertion in this case that there is any type of clear unmistakable waiver of the right to information or party who's making the charge deal or no deal go on strike or lockout well you're on your aren't there i mean whether or not in a separate situation a union would agree to a clear unmistakable waiver of the broad rights to provide information and the act provides that would be a different case but that's not what we have here we have we don't have the allegation of the assertion by the employer that there is a clear and unmistakable waiver of the right to provide information what we have is a procedural restriction on the ability to bring grievance that does not limit the employees or the unions or right to obtain information on behalf of its employees it's necessary to police the collective bargaining agreement would you concede that if  such and such and such and such because this airtight as possible that be ok if it was airtight possible and met the board's clear and unmistakable waiver for example if it said the only information that was within seven days of a dispute arising needs to be provided there are situations in which waiver can take place there's nothing like that in the agreement here however it's a matter of contract interpretation for us does the contract waive this pledge torrie rights of the union well it's not a matter of saying arbitrator to decide under the arbitration provisions that exist in the collective bargaining agreement and we haven't had that yet because of this dispute has arisen but the question of the strictures of the grievance procedure and the collective bargaining agreement is for an  decide in the first instance and then on very obviously very limited judicial review for a court to review but that's not what we are here the board is here to protect the public right of the employees to obtain information that is necessary to ensure that the contractual rights are being protected whether or not the company believes it believes that it has one or more defenses to that whether it be the seven day restriction of the of the grievance procedure or whether or not a class  s grievances permissible in the first instance this is the type of but temporal defense that would is certainly not for the board to construe in this case that is for the arbitrator what is for the but the board regardless of those type of just provide this type of information two for one of the for many purposes one of which is to merit our ferret out and meritorious grievances another is to make sure the arbitral process is carried out in an effective manner that remove this potential of a two tiered structure in which there is a lengthy process over the relevance of information that sought and only after which do you get to sit the decision about whether or not there was an actual violation of the collective bargaining agreement so the board overall purpose and the reason is that it is the board before you or not the union is because the board maintains that the provision of relevant information is necessary to avoid the type of back and forth jockeying that exists that they have an obligation under the union for representation as your honor indicated earlier to investigate these type of allegations that are made and here we have the type of allegations that are scorching the employer employee relationship over the payment of wages the payment of cash  withholding of certain withholdings the use of employer vehicle or position is a user has a duty to conduct investigations to prove claims are not covered by the collective bargaining agreements no but no that's not our position because it's not been made clear that this is not covered as your honor pointed out for example that the join industrial committee had previously entertained a class grievance the fact that this that the grievance procedure only whether it's covered or not is a matter for policing function of the union can overtake make sure the employers on the level well if when you say that it couldn't be covered i you know maybe i should ask for clarification on that here we have type worry of requests for information that in other that yes or that's that would be i mean of course this is for the board this would be for the what we're getting into hypothetical field here would be for the board to address in the first instance but as a general matter the payment of wages is seen as presumptively relevant now that exists right perhaps for purposes of future bargaining for a future just ongoing maintenance said to be able to say what's been occurring over the past few years with the payment of wages so even if ultimately an arbitrator would determine that this grievance was filed out of time or didn't yes i maybe i misunderstood your question how there is other type of information for example requesting information about the wages of supervisors this is not generally considered presumptively relevant and in that type of situation it does not mean that it's not necessarily relevant but the union has to situation i mean the the obligation of the employer to furnish this information exists independently of any pending or proposed grievance over a problem an alleged violation of that so it doesn't matter that the union is looking into filing a grievance or not if we're talking about presumptively relevant information the union has the right to obtain that even if it is just for maintenance and policing of ongoing policing of even if they have given it up by a contract even if the woman is well that's a different and i as a as we discussed earlier know if there's a clear and unmistakable waiver but the unmistakable waiver is not seven or isn't it seeking in broad hypothetical terms is not a procedural defect for invoking the grievance procedure now i'd have to reiterate of course that this is all it would all be for the board to address in the first instance these type of hypotheticals but here the mere fact that maybe a procedural defect on for example on timeliness does not make the information not relevant it just means that there is a defense in the future and i would direct the court's attention to the acme industrial case where in fact one of the defenses raised was that the first step of the grievance procedure required the grievances be filed within five days and the supreme court said an arbitrator may ultimately decide that this grievance was untimely but that does not change the fact that this information is relevant and that the employer is obligated to furnish this type of information so i think we would you know rely heavily on that case as well as the safeway stores case where this court stated that it may be very attractive to establish policy whereby the greve ability or arbiter ability of an issue is to resolve first because if it's decided against the union's interests then the union may no longer need information however as this as this court stated in safeway stores that's not that the that's not the policy that the board long ago and acted under its general relevant standard and it is for the board as the expert agency charged with enforcing the national should i would like to address what opposing counsel mentioned about needing supposedly the union needing the information to police the collective bargaining agreement or that you know whether ando committed certain violations of the a might affect future negotiations or future bargaining none of that is is true the union at mit is that the only reason it seeks the information in question is to specifically investigate the class grievance messed up twelve  one it made the statement at trial it's an excerpt excerpt of record one at page eighty three that's it's locked itself into admitting that the reason the only reason it wanted this information was to investigate this specific what it mislabeled a grievance so the its right to that information turns on the validity of that of that didn't you say that they needed this information for class grievances using it would be disingenuous for the union to now argue that that in the information it seeking might be relevant to other statutory duties it has or other future negotiations it has with the endo company it was specifically to investigate the grievance grievances and that's a distinguishing factor between all the the many other cases cited by the union in their briefs all of those none of those cases involved a case such as we have here where you know that what was  used for other grievances there wasn't this clear determination or this clear argument that the information they're seeking is related to a grievance that can never be brought and can have no relief for redress it was related to possible future complaints that that the union could bring that's very different from here where you know we have a situation where they didn't submit the required signatures from did yes and i think we had dress that i'm sorry i don't have the exact patient over but i believe in our opening brief that we stated that took issue with the board's finding that we did not raise the relevant issue because it was our entire case was predicated on that