eight and twenty six of two thousand and seventeen and acted by the commonwealth violate the contract clause of the united states constitution and the collective bargaining falls of the tunnel of science and in that respect they requested from penn station for their plaintiff's alleged not only a substantial impairment to their collective bargaining agreements but they specified and details the degree of that impairment they specify class by class of the collective bargaining agreements that were affected by the challenge legislation and also that this corporation is a public corporation that generates its own incomes so it so it does not depend on the commonwealth's general fund and most importantly that the corporation is s here is that this corporation as of this hour at the moment of the enactment of these laws that was to address on actual practice of the central government still included the public corporations without any justification of the of this legislation to start an important governmental purpose now why isn't it in the wealth interest to structure as public corporations and such a way that maximizes the revenue stream to the gamma well it is in the commonwealth interest but the problem here is that we we cannot take lightly the fact that this contractual obligations are protected ones that you have in mind because isn't the right way to analyze this impairment by impairment whether the impairment of it is reasonable yes your honor and if we just that there's a set of impairments which directly affect  right and in theory those could be justified i know you can test as those could be justified on the ground that well if they have to pay out less to their employees they'd have more money to give to the commonwealth but the commonwealth needed it so that the that category there's another category of impairments which are not about reducing the payouts to employees but instead i as i understand it about the mobility of the employees so what's the challenge they are could you just describe what that impairment is those what's the rule that being that's in the contract that the puerto rico law impairs and then if you could just explain to me why even if the financial rationale that might applied to the restriction on benefits were reasonable the impairment of that particular  now mobility we have a ledge there that mobility necessarily serves an important governmental purpose and it provides the government the ability to move on ploy is from one agency or public corporation to the other now with respect to our clients who are members of the union they the collective bargaining agreements established a set of benefits that not necessarily would would be equal to those of the employees of the central government and if the ease to have some savings for the commonwealth and have the transfer of with the french benefits for example vacations and sick leave days that are accumulated they are no longer allowed to to be paid for the coming late it days that they have for a vacation they would have to use are represented by the union and they negotiated this collective bargaining agreement with this employer which is the corporation if the mobility what it would imply that the employee would be in another collective bargaining agreement with the corporation which is the employer so with that put the employee in a different bargaining unit but that's not decision that it would impair that right of the employee to be wouldn't it would put the person in a different agency but with respect to the union of the young and not necessarily would be able to represent just now there is there any provision in the collective bargaining agreement that prohibits a transfer the ability that employee being moved to another agency does that mean there isn't one there isn't so the only be the only impairment then is that of the benefits that would be lost as a consequence of the mobility i'm excluded from your union it would be excluded because the union only represents could only represent members and for not the corporation which is the employer provisions of the legislation have had a negative impact on public employees and for these recent says that the statement of motives is that they look just look at the sample consider this is worthwhile to restore the previous scheme before the challenge is that right there yes judge i'm sorry you didn't hear me the time is up ok thank you  want to point out is that listening to palin's arguments you might have the impression that the commonwealth targeted organized labor perhaps even these two unions as a way for dressing the financial crisis for which the argument was almost the opposite not that they targeted them but that they need the sli included them in just a blunderbuss piece of legislation without thinking through how in the applicable of the ration this might be given their different fiscal relationship to the commonwealth relative to other commonwealth agencies and so treating those employees the thing doesn't really fit with the rationale that generally applies to governmental that's not correct they want to argue that they have actually proposed alternative measures which show that these particular measures were not real or necessary so the st argument which is that it's almost as a as a per se mat matter you can't include an agency or a public corporation which happens to be solvent that can't be right it's common sense that the commonwealth when it aims to cut costs government wide it ought to take into account every single department every single public corporation think just had to ask what happens to the excess cash that it produces it until one of the recent laws the answer was that some of its profits actually went to another seventeen implemented what they called a one government employment system so now all employees of all public corporations in the porter in the the island and the government central government employees they all have the same employer so at this point there is one fund that pays for everything if it's only rational given that situation the government would have a very strong interest in making sure that every would make sense that it would be practical to look through and to ignore the parts of the government or the agency which happened to be doing well i'll just mention it well the only reason that c s c happens to be i  believe as they the ledge in better financial shape is that the legislature when it set up the funding mechanism for the c f s city arrange for it to be paid for by employer contributions throughout the island asked about other measures that may not be impairment that may not be tied specifically to a to a cost incentive i'm not clear on that myself i had thought from the briefing that they were alleging that some of the mobility provisions there were provisions in their c b a's which limited the power to move one employee from one public corporation or one governmental department to another i thought that's what they were alleging if they're not alleging that now that that's fine but to the extent that they that they were they are i think the answer to that point is clearly it's an important government interest to make sure that there aren't widespread layoffs widespread layoffs as well as a twenty percent across the board cut in salaries for all public all public employees that would obviously have disastrous effects on the economy and in response to your question just thompson employer governmental system so it's not the case that the more that you'd be taking somebody out of let's just say the f s a employer employee who works there and then transfer into another employer it's all now the same employer they abolished a corporation is there is there a change in the commonwealth this possibility or the corporation that i don't know that that has changed your honor my understanding is again that the way the leg just and it's paid for as i understand it by employer contributions in other words private employers as well as i guess the employers i don't understand if that has changed but given the  predicament of the island and given the general say the economy there if it were to happen that the employers couldn't make the same contributions as before or they weren't able to pay what but what the costs are of the c s e my understanding is that the commonwealth is the last pair of last resort i think that's that's the point i think that's what many businesses were saying ultimately because the public corporation created by puerto rican law someone's got to keep it going and that's the commonwealth and i understand what the current status of the the c v a the employer who's the employer in the sea of the a contract at present it's the public corporation not puerto rico right as i understand  right i guess what i don't understand is that the change which now makes there the one employer is that substituted the new employer for purposes of bargaining purposes or which would mean that the old contract doesn't exist i don't quite get how the change to one employer interacts with a bargaining agreement with a different named employer i don't know the answer to that either your honor they haven't the appellant's haven't really played this  issue the only thing the only point really that i wanted to make with this was just to say that the i think in answer to one of your honor's questions is meant as we're saying is that the problem here is that now people are going to have to work for some other difference your understanding was like mine that the complaint alleges that one of the impairments with of a provision in the c v a that would have restricted transfer are correct could you run me again what the rationale is as to why it's reasonable to compare that contractor so my understanding is that the idea would be that i've been at this if there is a source of labor let's just say one you could transfer sort of the excess labor in order to make sure that that the nd agency is able to do its job and that public services are still being provided as you transfer them but they'd still be switched to this one important one government employer manner but i think the idea was that was that if it turned out that one particular branch of it that the government or one particular department wasn't able to finance to pay for its employees you would have a source of labor someplace else as it sounds like labor unions have been functionally dissolved in puerto rico benefits and about the reduction in vacation pay and sick pay it sounds like based on what they said today they're not complaining about the response your question does behrens they're not complaining about any other provisions i'm not sure exactly what they're alleging and maybe a question for ms mendez as far actually provided other alternative measures and because those alternative measures could have been implemented then these measures are not reasonable necessary this argument fails because they've really needed almost anything concerning what those alternatives measures are as the fortune ok so held their obligation is to please factual content suggesting that other alternatives might exist and they just simply haven't done that what they've said archer network solutions along the lines of you know increase taxes decrease costs and all the problems are solved but you can allege that about any agency any governmental body that's having financial difficulties that doesn't satisfy their burden as the nd circuit said in the buffalo teachers case which before to no court cited it's always the case that to meet a financial emergency taxes conceivably be raised the burden on the plaintiffs is to show that that's a plausible solution not just that you know it could happen if somebody raised taxes or something could you go back to the transfer issue just because if it turns out that your opponent is saying that he's still alive in the case and they haven't abandoned i want to make sure i understand what the government's theory with the when we go theory is as to why that makes sense in this context so if you can just take me through it the idea is you have a labor shortage in one department so you like to take people from the public corporation and move them over to help deal with  under the way the provisions work who pays that new employee the with the one government system if they're all being paid the same of the same fund so this new employee  fund includes the the profits or is the idea now that they get some extra steps have to be taken to draw on those funds that the the money that would have gone to that employee travel with the employee so l to the to the general fund so when you know otherwise they created one pool of money now so the point is given that you want to make sure than that every you can see that performs that's and that's a financial savings and efficiency yes it's a financial savings it's efficiency is also making sure that agencies the provide public services to the citizenry are going to be fully staffed and that you have the right as you said you  don't want to have three people on three base you want to make sure that every face is covered but that's as it literally is going on here the judge thompson's comments in the analogy you just gave the change that that's kind proposes does not result in the baseball player losing their union representation so the question is does the business operate in a way that they have actively do not maybe that that kind of isn't actually being challenged here he said does that i guess i just another understanding who is there they're being represented by union presently with respect to some employer the other part of the bargain agreement i don't i can't quite tell who that is and i'm really having trouble seeing who would be after the transfer i i don't have an answer i don't know what happens to these contracts after the passage of eighty two thousand and seventeen i'm not sure that it's been worked out i just i simply don't know the answer to that as i understand it they're not complaining that law was passed in two thousand and seventeen i don't think anybody complaining right now that they have been moved and as a result of that they don't have  a union anymore or that their bargaining unit is not the same it seems that's not what anybody's complaint is and so somehow that's being managed i think it's being managed because they're all represented still by the same union that haven't changed any and the mobility st because we don't see any justification as to any savings for the government in transferring employees because you are only transferring the expense from one profession to another to another agency now with respect are employees of the corporation and are being paid by the corporation but what happens if that employee is transferred to another agency and the law it's not clear on two  who is going to become the employer because it only says a single employer and i might add that even though all of the last stablished on the ability dispositions about mobility loss eight of two thousand and seventeen was actually alleges that they have been transferred or threatened to be transferred that right well it wasn't actually in the complaint along with all the other benefits that are impaired that that that the right of the employe be represented by its union and being working for its employer it was my question is do we have any plaintiff before us who says that the either had been transferred pursuant that law or that there is a imminent threat of a been implemented yet now with respect to i wanted to to make the point of all the alternatives because we what our principal argument is that the corporation is salt and so why disconnect i thank you thank you for that action everyone's arguments that concludes arguments for today the session of the honorable united states court of appeals is now recessed until the next session of the court god save the united states of america in this honorable court counsel you may disconnect from the meeting