is whether it was just improper for the district court to issue a ten j injunction under the national labor relations act when there wasn't any record evidence that the underlying on for labor practices cause disaffection among the employees orders that the evidence that the board submitted in support of the injunction being just improper could not have established what they were trying to show and what they were trying to show is that employees were disaffected by on for a labor practices that the help they committed meaning they turned against the union so if you look at what they actually submitted they submitted six affidavits from five individuals for reform four employee u nion supporters and one union organizer and if you take those affidavits at face value all that they show is that during the may and june timeframe in twenty thirteen the employees had trouble signing up other employees to become union members getting them to sign the union court's back to dave it's also sure that there was a reduction in attendance at union meetings beginning in may twenty thirteen there is a problem with with the boards of events and with their argument the unfair labor practices that issue in this case the terminations of major practices could not have caused the disaffection that's contained in the affidavits submitted by the board so on its face what they're relying on to establish just improper occurred before the alleged on going for labor practices and could not have caused it so that's that's on its face one reason why the injunction could not have been just improper also why do you think that just i mean you know here you have a case where this guy is cited jones for doing unsafe things and he's warned and if you do this very thing again you're going to get fired and he goes off and does the same thing in leads to forklift running and he's so far away from it he doesn't even know when somebody else comes and takes the keys and he's surprised and and so then he gets fired for that and yet the just a corps says you original decision nate jones is mentioned in the statement of facts and in the relief were granted not mentioned at all in the analysis that was zero analysis whatsoever regarding major terminations if you  you know so that's a separate issue and that i was going to get there is reasonable cause but you're there are ready so is and so is the only issue before us whether jones and smith should be reinstated to the positions they were at before the actions your complied with respect to jones and smith that they've been reinstated that they have there are some other folks involved that i guess have left the company or whatever so they're not issue here there were correct and  the just improper point for a minute the evidence of the board submitted wasn't analyzed at all by other poor in terms of whether it caused employee disaffection and the reason that's important because the whole point of attention injunction been sort of cracking down on pro union people and now you have a board proceeding going on you know which in which by the way the l a j apparently agreed with your position so i mean this is just a very odd situation and so the remedial power here they have to make sure that what employ employees don't get so disaffected while the board is looking at this that the whole thing becomes moot make give up on organizing that's the concept you're on yes and you know first of all we've got the causation issue that i've walked through on the timing but if you get beyond and you would get the fact that ok so there are people that wouldn't sign union boards and there were people that didn't attend union meetings to say that that is because of an employee that was terminated in a different account different building it employed it was reassigned to a different position in a different account different building is a real stretch i mean there are a number of reasons why someone would decline to sign a union card and so the board's evidence or their theory doesn't take into account the fact that there are diminishing returns right once you've signed up a certain number of people there are less people to sign up and so you're naturally going to have a reduction in the number of chords that you can get signed once and actually if you look at their affidavit the finance actually attribute different reasons as to why employees wouldn't sign the union chords and why they stopped attending the meeting so the needle wells affidavit talks about employees told her they want to see what the union would do for them before they sided in the car not i didn't sign the union court because the company fired a different boy in a different building i didn't sonny union card because i want to see what the union will do for me that was that was in her affidavit what's the current favorable to the company so the company recognized the union and were targeting right now it is in that mood out this whole business of that moved out the whole problem the boards trying to remedy in terms of maybe employees are going to be the board seeks an injunction to basically maintain the status quo while the board's looking at some of these allegations of bad labor practices the status quo being a certain level of interest among the workers in having the represent them correct meanwhile now the union is in fact representing so why do we need an injunction in order to maintain the you know the military or the workers to be represented i don't think we do i think they answer a question is it's not necessary at this point  when the injunction was issued this missiles also raises another issue which is the timing of all this in terms of the procedural history your honor the injunction was issued two years roughly after the alleged unfair labor practices occurred and so at that point there is no status quo to restore i mean you're two years past when all of this happened the effectiveness of an injunction two years later is really questionable to restore the status quo in the first place but and courts have looked at and we saw the cases in our brief reports have looked at delay of the board in seeking attention injunction as a factor against granet potential injunction so we submit there was a delay in this case anyway and so at the time the injunction was issued it was with the status restorable to the extent that they were trying to restore some type of status quo so you're arguing actual causation is that the board's burden to establish that the anti union activity actually caused a decrease in the union's organization activity or is chilling activity that's anti union that chills the organizational going down before these activities occurred so there's no actual causation but i don't think that's a standard if it if it is you've got a slightly civil on there as i i think it's unfair labor practice if the employer chill's does that chills the the abilities or the efforts to to unionize and that i think that's what the argument is here that the transfer of the one employee and the terminations of the other one for their pro union activities shilled the union's right to choose to try to organize so the argument is chill but the evidence that was submitted in support of the argument that the there was chill doesn't support the proposition at all and couldn't because of the the timing your honor but to your question about about causation there they have to submit some evidence that would adverse actions may have been taken because there pro union activity isn't that a reasonable inference if there was evidence on the record to support it which there's not so just to answer your question  honor the only way that that is a reasonable inference is if there is if there is some evidence of disaffection bigot submitted in support just improper in the board submitted evidence in support of joseph or in this case and the evidence they submitted doesn't support that inference in any way whatsoever that a high standard or a low standard just because it's not a it's abus b although we are discussing in this appeal of the two provisions of the court's injunction order involving smith and jones i would like to read treat the camera a little bit to show the big picture because this case is really about a company that has been for years repeatedly persistently trying to thwart its employees organizing activities by engaging in the same kind of violations over and over again and in this case it was a the union's certification in may twenty thirteen prompted a resurgence in union activists and union support and that activities discharging several employees immediately after the board certification in may in june and eventually the reassignment of smith and the discharge of jones and these violations the early violations because there is an affidavit from the union agent dated may twenty four team right before the petition was filed in june that covers the time span from the early violations in may and june up through the date of the  and that union agent testified about a decrease in attendance at union meetings employees who had signed cards who then asked for their cards back decrease in union signing and  the notion judge griffin that you were alluding to that the chill has to be established the company is simply wrong that is contrary to this court's case law under ten j this court has always recognized that certain violations have an inherent chilling impact a tendency to affect employees willingness to support the union to stick their necks out and continue on organizing activities and in fact the idea that there has to be specific evidence of causation demonstrating that certain specific i mean jones has a record of serious safety violations he was specifically warned not to do this very thing of leaving a forklift running which i can imagine is pretty on attended with nobody in it which is a pretty dangerous thing he was warned about that correct you have warned about that well their final warning that he had was for not wearing a seat belt ok but actually ok throw that on too but he was warned about this forklift on attend business correct but this forklift and i need a yes or no yes yes so he got out and he signed a form that said if you do this again you can be terminated correct correct but but this i'll let you the but that's fair that kind of violation happen and repeatedly by other employees who were treated differently so the question here really yes but then he goes i don't know how many i don't know off the record shows how many times they got worn and if they signed forms but he goes and does it again and as i said before i mean he's talking to some pallet is for like twenty minutes doesn't even know that somebody else sees this and comes and shuts down t forklift and takes the keys and and he gets terminated just as he was told he would get terminated i mean how is this something that i mean that just seems like an extremely justified firing meanwhile the l j you're jay totally agrees with him that this was you know they fired him for exactly the reason they said they're far what is missing from the picture is that  jones had recently been engaged in a confrontation with phil smith at a meeting over the company's reaction to the union campaign so there had been two meetings in which he had had a face off with phil smith makes him a new one from getting fired it raises questions as to why phil smith treated him the way he was treated which was differently from the way other employees were treated  had spoken out publicly about his concerns regarding the company's reaction just like the real war we're being asked to adopt here basically is if somebody has a certain level of activity activity there  again it's a very odd thing ok i mean it's there's all these sort of terms of remedial power and so on ok so as we discussed earlier what are we trying to remedy we're well we're trying we're trying to preserve the status quo so that we don't allow any chill on union activities or we're organizing a pivot is why all the workers are figuring out whether they want to be represented that's fine but i guess i have to two questions about that i mean number one they are they've already they are in fact represented down and they're in collective bargaining so why is it important to have this find that they were bargaining their first project late they've had a rough rough road to it yes two elections finally a certification that was also sort of going through the accident of the original certification not only being tested by support of the bargaining unit there the need to prevent loss of support is actually just as great or perhaps even greater now that they're bargaining this is the point in time when they have to have the support of the employees so that they have the option of threats of economic weapons no lawfully a so that the employees are involved in the bargaining and the union knows what the issues preserve the status quo that's a pretty big strike against the party it's an indication that the injunction probably isn't urgently necessary as they suggest and that's what happened here i mean you guys don't  a series of violations occurring occurring over several months fourteen charges filed by the union and individual charging parties over a period of several months some of them amended over time  the director had to investigate fully always charges give a company due process and an opportunity to respond the final complaint in this case after all these fourteen plus charges were fully investigated issued in april twenty four teen in the injunction petition was filed less than two months later in june so that is not given the realities of the case the violations spanning a period of the just court's opinion as to mr jones i mean they come in and say you know had a district court the the board's own l j just rejected across the board all of these allegations about jones you know being fired for you know retaliatory reasons and it's the a ok said he just flat out or she whatever with whoever flat out didn't believe this guy i mean not to mention smith in the l j is not buying that at all either the person who watched him testify and the district court just says it's reviewed the decision and finds no reason to amend then what's the district the abundant evidence of union animals and the pattern of harassment against employees that there was sufficient evidence of animus here covering all the violations the court says well i mean it seems like probably what's rules but he set the brake he put it on neutral nothing happened he's been reinstated the company has made no argument that he's such an awful employee that his reinstatement has had adverse consequences it's been two years he's been back and there's been no issue i don't know if that's in the record here i mean i well what's in anything that addresses that i didn't ask about it for that reason well what's what's what we can extrapolate from the record is that he's been back the company went back into district court to have the injunction modified and have him removed from the order it was just and made arguments only relating to the ala j d without making any argument that his reinstatement w problems i mean i just wonder what what our role is here i mean you know we have somebody i mean it's a it's not a company wide issue here it's an issue about two individuals and the smith thing you know they reassigned her and i mean heck if i know if being a picker is tougher than being run over the district court did not have to know nor do you have to know i know i know whatever i mean you know that's one thing and that's one thing but when you read the story of the jones situation and then you have the it holds a come in and say i don't basically i don't believe a word this gentleman's telling me about his claim and it's a safety issue it's a serious safety issue and it comes to us and it's it's whether this injunctive relief as to this guy under these circumstances on this record is necessary to maintain the board's power and i mean if if we can't do something about this i mean it would seem that we have an ornamental role in this litigation i mean i just i mean what more could you have in the record that would support the company's decision to remedy itself to initiate the action reports to the person sets it all in motion has animus and knowledge you have unlawful anti union motivation that has contributed is a cause of the action and that that was the case here recognized have an inherent chilling impact there is there was harm shown that was already happening and these two later violations reasonable inference that they built up on it there's a history of persistent wristed of this violations by this company and this injunction did its job there have been no new charges referred to was for injunctive relief there have been five four decisions all court in forest and this is the second injunction and it took five more decisions and two injunctions to stabilize the situation to get the parties to the bargaining table and as to this one and i mean i don't see any evidence that joan germination has has children a thing and i don't see much reason to think that there's going to be any effect at all all with the rest of the injunct both of them in place and one person who sort of did exactly what he's told not to do you know has happened exactly what he was told i would dispense respectfully disagree your are your hon and take these two employees and make examples of them and create the chill that the injunction has been effectively preventing then they can turn around and say you know what jennifer smith is retaliating against you which you  in other instances so it's not the injunction that it's creating that risk it's the company and if and the injunction does not preclude the company from lawfully enforcing its rules in a nondiscriminatory manner there would be no reason to have a just improper analysis as part of the injunction because you're going to say just by the very nature of the allegation that means that an injunction should be given whether or not it's just improper and so  impact so that's that's one point i want to make another point is this concept of judge couples brought this up with respect and agents the minimal union activity or protective concer reference to the fact that he had previously worked at another company and they just paid the employees a couple more bucks more an hour and the whole union thing went away and he was saying why can't you do that for us in fact if you were to page two twenty of the trial transcript the phrase he witness statement so in what way that constitutes a face off with bill smith that somehow infected this whole terminations decision this is not clear at all finally the last point that i want to make is there's an attempt to pile on here there have been findings against the company in the past from the very beginning this union has litigated every time there's disciplinary action for union supporter so there have been the findings against the company but they are a small number of findings compared to the total overall number of unfair labor practice charges that allegations have been filed by the union painting the company as this i think pursuit of this was the word that was used and i can ask you just a practical question has it got a darn thing to do with the law or harm going to decide there's a practical matter i suppose we disagreed with you and  with you and jones the injunction would still be in effect at least as to smith what what have you really worn i mean you still gotta go to the n l r b at some point what is having to do with my decision as going to do with just wondering where you're at at that point with respect to the germans your honor you're right i mean there's not a whole lot to win there but with respect to audit in this proceeding the union has currently pending unfair labor practices against the company if we can't get some clarification of what standard the district court needs to apply in in allies in the us we could be standing back here again you know in a year or two ok all right thank you base will be submitted to call the next