Chuck Miller testified that he remembers meeting with Connie and believes he doubted the Employer's authority. Kieth Zovin testified that he does not recall the meeting. The fact that Miller and Zovin inquired, together with Ms. Koneczeno's response, persuades me that the hours of the Sign Shop seasonal workers had not previously been shifted to later in the day. The question then becomes whether shifting the hours of the two seasonal employees later in the day on June 14 th was a proper continuation of an established past practice of flexibly scheduling seasonal employees, or rather whether the non regular hours should have been posted as overtime. Ultimately the grievance regarding the flexing of the hours of the Sign Shop seasonal employees calls into question the reasonableness of the Employer's use of the flexing practice.
Several observations are in order.
First, the work done by the Sign Shop seasonal employees, while not the exact same work they might normally perform, was work within the responsibilities of the Sign Shop Division. More importantly, the full-time employees within the Division each received six hours of work at overtime rates for working the same non normal hours as the seasonal employees. Two other Sign Shop seasonal employees worked only the normal hours. Therefore it cannot be said that the only reason for flexing the two seasonal employees was to avoid the payment of overtime to regular employees, because two seasonals were not flexed when the two regular employees received overtime. Therefore, I find that, while the Employer's flexing of the hours of two seasonal workers on June 14 th was a small expansion of an established past practice of working seasonal employees outside of the normal schedule of hours without either paying them overtime or posting the hours, that it was not an unreasonable expansion of that practice.