good morning your honour's council may please the court my name is a man or a welsh and i represent the village a broadening of the apple line in this case you are as we are here today to ask this honorable court to reverse the decision one of the eleven categories the numerator in section three are yet in three broad new sergeants consistently use independent judgment when exercising the authoritative functions that they perform on a daily and the city or freeport versus the aisle or be decided where i should preen court are controlling matters in this case would very similar fact patterns that we have in the underlying case are today we believe that the illinois labor relations board  supreme court said that for an employee to be a supervisor the employees main undertaking must differ from the main undertakings of his subordinates the supreme court said no this is not a quantitative test the supreme court has  hell that the evidence that sergeants have the authority just the fact that they had the authority to discipline patrols on patrol officers through verbal and written reprimands was sufficient symbolism again in this court looking at this the metropolitan alliance of police versus i r b and the village above what this court found that the sergeants or supervisors because they had the ability they simply have the ability to issue personal incident reports for officers who violated the partner rules the idea of being ignored all of that when they found they had no levels of indicia presence here that the record is is is complete with facts even if we just look at the administrative has been set by this honorable court in the village of hazel crest that that is enough but that's sufficient in that in the days request matter this court specifically said that having the authority to do that which is not contested in this case and in the chief's testimony has testified and it is uncontested in this matter that the sergeants had the ability to adjust grievances at the first step is in the patrol officers collective bargaining agreement it's in the broader police department rules or regulations which sergeants are are charged with making sure subordinates perform and follow the rules regulations of the department it is uncontested that the sergeants of the broadview police department situation in the village of broadview that makes a determination of which person is going to get arrested in that situation i also believe that it's very important and we can't ignore the fact that it is sergeants who make it least ten thousand dollars more often than than patrol officers and that in a system that is is is shaped in the in the fashion of the military and the strict chain of command is a force that's a very significant factor ran plays a very important factor in this case and within the chief doesn't it on a couple of other instances your on that the the broader the sergeants get to recommend patrol officers forewards in the record he says one hundred percent of the time supervisor pats an employee on the back that doesn't wonders for the morale and department and when a supervisor like a sergeant of the broadview police department reaches out and pats his patrol officers on the back and that moves all the way up the chain of command and the chief of police endorses that pat on the back that does wonders for your department everyone performs better and it's no different than what we see in corporate america across this country in every day we believe on that point exercising their test again we rely on that opinion based on the supreme court precedent that still exists in this great state in the city or freeport the supreme court specifically said that the requiring of a consistent use of independent judgment that registration clearly was not referring to the number of times the supervisor actually exercised his supervisory authority rather the legislature was referring to the number of times in which independent judgment 's clearly meet the standard set out by the supreme court in the free or case as the chief state it your honor we've talked about here these surgeons have the ability to orally counsel the patrol officers they also have which is l j puts in his his findings of fact they have the ability to orally reprimand written reprimand and issued emergency suspensions they can do that without picking up a and calling the chief without picking up the phone and calling the then they go in each and every day and conduct roll call in the sign beats without checking with the chief of the lieutenant first they make determinations are most domestic violence cases without calling the chief  similarly we have a situation on the record that's very important for a neighboring police officer in the village of maywood was shot and killed in october two thousand and six that was in the late evening hours a sergeant who was the highest ranking officer on duty that night made the decision the independent judgment to send broadly police officers over to the village of maywood to assist over there at the same time now he has to also be worried about what's going on on the streets of broadview and he uses independent judgment and called in other officers to assist on the streets and brought the police chief testified to that as one of the examples of of the use of independent judgment similarly it was that the village failed to produce sufficient evidence to show that their principal work duties were any different in the subordinate officers in fact a sergeant wagoner testified that the sergeants in the field operations division spent upward of eighty to village simply did not enter any evidence into the record to demonstrate that the nature an essence of the job these were any different than the subordinate officers that the board had in front of it were these percentages that the sergeants testified to now certainly the village had evidence that the sergeants perform some job duties that are different but that doesn't show that the nature and essence of the job duties twenty different the sergeants patrol the village streets just like the patrol officers do show they approve  what's in the record and ninety percent of the time is this isn't just fifty one percent to forty nine percent of the time in different jobs and this ninety percent of the day to day activities of the sergeants are no different then the patrolling officers and again senior here is whether the board's decision was clear there were only as and given what is in the record the board is again constrained to follow what it has in front of it i don't think there's a formal definite convention that the board made a mistake in finding that the job duties are no different when the sergeants to do exact same things that the patrol officers do and then on occasion yeah they have these other issues but that's because i'm more experienced and i have a higher level of skill that the patrol officers don't have a year or so of the business is and should also sergeants have the authority to discipline the cheap confessed that only a new chemical second himself have the authority to discipline the sergeants to have the authority to really counsel but deploy courts have already h and this there was a paper chris case this court did not read that counseling equals discipline under the act which of hazel chris concerned right does it mean to effectively recommend discipline so there's no evidence of discipline in the record in this case and as to effective recommendation of discipline there's no evidence of that either in haste or crisis there was a specific example of the petition for employees recommending discipline that the chief of police approve there's no evidence of that here there's not one instance where a sergeant has recommended disciplined all the sergeants to his they were misconduct they write to from memos to the chief for example sergeant in one incident he told the suborning officer to take a picture of a crime scene to suborn he didn't do that he told that in the memo and sent it up to the lieutenant for the cheap and then the attendant with a cheap as a chief confess imposes the discipline on their own the only thing that the villagers can rely upon in showing the only evidence the village can rely upon in showing that the sergeants have this purported authority to discipline are the job descriptions that the villages rules and regulations sergeants have the authority to issue a written reprimand so if the chief says the sergeants don't have the authority to issue discipline and in fact you know this job descriptions that's not usually even how it works but the bread has to follow if they have the power but the boards job is to determine whether they have the power and the only way to determine that is to examine what the evidence is and there's no evidence your models regularly answers that you can do right and then the chief legal i doubt a legal issue of law applied to the facts the board finds a fact as to whether or not to appear factual issue of whether or not the sergeants have the authority to discipline actual discipline as for example suppose  that case really isn't an opposite it only deals with effective recommendations of discipline here there's not even a recommendation of disciplined it's ever been issued and sergeants in fact have testified that they don't have the authority to recommend discipline but the power to write here is only supervisory authority under the act if the actions of the sergeants affect the terms and conditions of the subordinates employees job duties and the use independent judgment here there's no we labor boards interpretations never guarantee if so why are i think so i think that the fourth district actually has adopted that nearly sent from ancient services case in two thousand eight fats one reason but two it's a reasonable interpretation of the act t another reasonable interpretation right in the case that says they are because you know the agency's experts in it interpret that specific administrative act that the court isn't due to give some deference as long as the interpretation is reasonable  but going through the evidence of direction for simple things like authorizing overtime to such as don't use independent judgment in authorizing overtime they have a book and a good through the book and they go down the list one by one and whoever has the least amount of overtime gets called for this and it goes all the way to those who have the most amount of overtime scheduling vacations and breaks that comes by seniority the sergeants in every aspect are constrained to follow departmental in two thousand and eight and find that there is no authority to direct with regard to record again really it is only ruled that under that act if it can impact the terms and conditions of the subordinate employees job status and i think that a fundamental misunderstanding is occurring on the part of the village is using these words in the colloquial sense instead of using these words as the word and the courts have interpreted them to be under the act they were it doesn't mean just a pat on the back  granted agree to a just a grievance and again the brit is constrained to follow the evidence that was entered into the record and this really comes down to whether or not the village has satisfied its burden of proof and the village hasn't been discussed and therefore we believe that  represented the sorry i cops as to the sorry just before the board this case as a little able to tell so from the attorney general representing the labor board were here before the court just as a matter hearing rule the starts of bills are brought you are and are not sergeants within the meaning of the act this is or was given by both the administrative law judge after plenary hearing and by the board this is not was based solely on his years of experience knowledge of kill thirty years and that the part they were sort of like i drove through the marine raiders during world war two there was really no command it worked as a group workers such that it is as i said lead work a typical line boss to their subordinates that guided mostly by past experience and skill percent that they do you lose because they don't exercise is a thing that is going work but but you're not losing because it's not different you're losing is there's no independent god is what you're telling village so i meet you can't mix the two and see that they are sergeants sees me that they have supervisors so this it's an argument that sense they they see it so it must be so but the actual testimony of all sources for all these criteria both quantitatively qualit rebuttal the village believes as your honor has pointed out a couple times here this morning that the quantitative standard was used by the illinois river relations board and that standard was improper and on first of all in the village of broadview it's a small community the officers are all asked to do more with less yes they do a lot of the same things that patrol officers do the record shows that but precedence says they can do that they can have a majority of their time doing the same thing that patrol officers do on the other part they're wrong because they want these people to be considered glorified patrol officers they want to reconsider clerks but they also yonder want to have their cake  now rather than a small community it's entirely different and that's our contention here say it's a small community we're dealing with a different element out there in the western suburbs here we have surgeons that want to have their cake and eat it too and i have a perfect example of someone who has risen through the ranks was a sergeant became chief and that's our current chief right now she pelletier this is a person who was a patrol  patted on the back many days by those surgeons who eventually because of that rose to the ranks of chief he started in the village in the early eighty's and he's still in the village today because of the reward of becoming ch the attorney general and mike and the counsel here for the union want to say that there's not one incident of discipline in the record case law says that's not we don't have to prove one incident of discipline case law says they have to have the ability the authority and that's pretty clear just looking at the el jase findings of fact they have the ability and the authority and that hasn't even proven on the record they also have the power to direct no one has acknowledged here today is that it is the sergeants who are in charge of that police department in the late evenings early mornings and on weekends if something goes on in that village in the late evening or early mornings wrong weekends it is a surgeon who makes the terminations on what to do for example of that was what happened one of the neighboring police officer was killed in the village of may what we believe your honor it's that all three elements exists under section three are we believe that the principle work is substantially different from that patrol officers the surgeons have the authority and more than one area of eleven categories a numerated and section three are and we also believe that they consistently use independent judgment when they perform their daily tasks