please the court my name is patricia of the legal aid society employment law center and i'm counsel for appellant stefan morel who is in the courtroom today i would like to reserve five minutes if i might the principal issue in this case whether air france is a joint employer of the ground handling service company employees who provide catering cleaning cargo baggage in handling services to air france this is a question of law that can be determined on the basis of this record appellant is not asking that this court find as a matter of law that all of the employees of any single ground him service company are joint employees only those that we have identified as providing service to air france and even then based on the undisputed record here there is only a handful only a handful are needed seven are needed to bring air france within the thirty minute fifty minimum of cloyd requirement under the family medical leave act take an unpaid leave the task before the court today is to decide the appropriate factors to be used in analyzing the joint employment test under the family medical leave act and of course one must always start with the statute here  definite law of which requires direct supervision and control and we fear a little underbrush out here to the air france hire any of these people now it's not pay them it paid them overtime indirectly  hired by other companies supervised by them paid by them disciplined by them good air france have the ability to terminate these people now but but you're saying something else about what they did regulation your honor which can be found at section eighty five point one  confirms that those definitions specifically referenced to the n f l as they are to be interpreted similarly under this act i submit to you your honor that if you look at the language of the joint employment regulation which a lengthy comment period where people have any comments to the secretary of labor what you will find is that the relationship between air france and the ground handling service company personnel tracks the family employment regulation very closely here the ground here and we service company personnel perform work which simultaneously benefits two or more employers their work benefits the primary employers the ones that hire them that receives compensation from the contract but it also th training regarding how we watch that cargo handling to take place of course and in fact every arrow ground employee who handled dangerous goods has which has an air france training and what we are saying in that in this instance because of the degree of supervision and control in training that air france provided and required the ground handling service companies to perform that is one of the bases for finding that these are join that that's not present correct that's correct supervised and controlled employee work schedules or conditions of payment well as i mentioned before to the extent that it is written in the contract and i believe that overtime narrow definition under the fair labor standards act the supreme court in darden made that very clear and now you have a joint employment regulation that is entitle to deference by this court is the law that's determines joint employment status under the threshold so as long as they're providing any kind of services to air france's regular employees its customers they're in the number you know your honor i think it's more than just any any kind of service i that again you have to look at what the regulation says in terms of whether it's common control here and there is common control there is no evidence in this record whatsoever that any other airline in the world  weight it provides its own expensive mandatory training the weight watchers how the employees actually perform their work and then tells them when they're not doing something correctly the weight verifies that all the work is done correctly and according to air france france standards and so i actually don't think this happens in other airports where an airline has one flight a day but no your hon worked at arden for about nine years before it became sky shaft and in the catering department and he was the coordinator for the air france account this is what you stated in his declaration of the ex other airlines with which it was under contract for example in the six months that i've been assigned to air canada air canada has sent only one employee into the sky shots kitchen on a single occasion i think what you will find to look at the nature and degree of control and supervision exercised by the secondary employer in france over the workers to to look at the permanency duration of the working relationship between the primary in the secondary employers three look at whether the workers perform they that they were scrutinised and supervised in the way that the other employees were perhaps what they would be but there is no evidence to that effect and we don't believe that that in fact air france exercise that kind of control over them this kind of control i'm talking about know action this is very different i think than somebody that fuels an airplane then a security worker in an airport for example i'm not sure whether i've answered your question  probably the most important thing one of the most important things for you to keep in mind is that when you're looking at this test no one factor is decisive we were guided by the principle that the list of factors is merely a guy grower with the winner avoiding the responsibility as the employer as i mentioned it's the quality not the not the quantity of the factors in addition to the supervision and control i think it's very important to look at where the work was done the work was not if you were to look at the duration and permanence of the relationship between air france and the ground handling service company employees you'll find that they have long term contracts with one another if you were to look at the interpol nature and that's probably the key to this case whether air france could actually perform the services it needs to perform without brand and handling services without catering without cargo i think you will find think can i ask you about aero grounds specific well yes because i kind them a little bit different in nature than the people who clean the plane or supply the food the the agreement actually require or ground to to dedicate a certain number of people including supervisors to work for france is that right well ground decides when they want to move somebody out of that function and so forth all that the contract says is that this number of people in sneaking in our opinion to actually fulfill the with respect to the regulations and regulations as an issue has this respected joint employment give some i think very clear guidance about how to determine whether company so we can you tell from the record i'm still not going on air or ground can we tell from the record that's available whether the scene here or ground employers or any of me you've got five people sam smith etc total of five people that those same five people from air or ground work for air france or any extended period of time or did they those individuals keep what happened because we all know there are people who sometimes don't do their jobs what happened when an air or ground employee was not performing to the standards that here for france  not say he never made a judgment some individual is not doing his job he simply didn't make that judgment and he didn't do anything that would interfere with the way oh yeah down there with the cargo in there's a guy proper whether a food was properly cooked and so forth that he would say no that's not right it should be there but he unself in it that he could take no action with respect to any individual he simply had to go through the supervisor supplying people there in the business of supplying services and those services are dependent on those companies making major capital investments in premises and equipment and in express were passengers got off of flights from paris and got on the smaller jets that were going to fresno or modesto that said air france express and the pilots have their france express uniforms on and it turned out that air go to is the issue of economic dependency on whom are these service workers economically dependent none of them are dependent on air france in fact it was the air france in fact terminated the contract with anjan and often by the way has a collective bargaining agreement and deals with its employees based on that but when that contract was terminated  used the situation that we're looking at where the purpose of the statute is it's very much impacted by that kind of situation the purpose of the statute is to guarantee a certain they would be different from that yes that's that's the same kind of operation that that is discussed by the department of labor in the regulations they are saying if you as an employer decide to contract with another company should bring in let's say thirty or forty employees to do the jobs that you would ordinarily have to hire people to do and put them on your payroll then you can't escape the obligations under the statute to provide leave to your the schedule so they decide ok we're going to send fifteen people today rather than ten people that's entirely up to them and then when and if there is any delay in the flight and this is a distinction  paid for your services what we do is we pay you x for taking care of a particular kind of aircraft and you have a grace period of an hour beyond the scheduled departure time if the flight is delayed more than that then you're going to have to pay us x plus and the rate into account in terms of what it would cost to pay people on overtime basis but there's no in evidence in the record that those people are actually paid overtime because if they are now into a new eight hour schedule they'll bring in people from that area they'll get the money from air france but they don't we don't know what they pay  to their employees and we don't care as long as they get the job  thank you you may have one minute starting to rosemary going national air france personnel person she testified before the crew of passengers could begin boarding the plane the plane had to be perfect it was quote easier to get cleaners to fix the problem immediately before they leave