Atlantic Richfield Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jan 4, 1974

208 N.L.R.B. 142 (N.L.R.B. 1974)

142 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Atlantic Richfield Company and Oil Chemical and
Atomic Workers International Union, AFL -
CIO-CLC, Petitioner . Case 4-RC-10353
January 4, 1974
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS JENKINS
AND KENNEDY
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing in this case was held before Hearing Officer
Francis W. Hoeber on June 12, 13, 14, and 15, 1973.
Following the hearing, and pursuant to Section
102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules
and Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series
8, as amended, this case was transferred to the
National Labor Relations Board for decision.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the
National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
authority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds that they are
free from prejudicial error. The rulings are hereby
affirmed.'
Upon the entire record in this case, including the
briefs filed by the Employer, Petitioner, and Interve-
nor,2 the Board finds:
The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of about
2,200 employees of the Employer consisting of all
hourly employees at its Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
refinery, Product Quality, Research and Develop-
ment, Philadelphia, Supply and Transportation
(Marine), and Marketing, excluding salaried employ-
ees, professionals, guards, and supervisors. In the
alternative, Petitioner will accept two units, one
consisting of hourly production and maintenance
employees at the Philadelphia refinery and related
facilities, and a second consisting of hourly employ-
ees in marketing. As a third alternative, Petitioner
will accept a unit, or units, which includes salaried
employees who are not office clerical. In effect,
Petitioner seeks to represent a single-facility unit
limited to the Employer's Philadelphia refinery. The
Employer and Intervenor contend that none of the
units requested by Petitioner may be established as
there is an established historical multiplant bargain-
1 At the hearing, the Petitioner was permitted, over objections, to amend
its petition in a manner which adds several hundred employees and deletes
several hundred others from a unit which it seeks to represent In their
respective briefs, both the Employer and the Intervenor contend that the
amendment should not have been allowed because it was too extensive in
scope to be considered as an amendment to the petition. This contention is
without ment Under Sec. 101.18(a) of the National Labor Relations Board
Rules and Regulations , a petition may be amended during the hearing at the
ing unit which extends to 15 States and which is
represented by the Intervenor under a current
national multiplant 2-year contract that came into
effect between the Employer and Intervenor on July
1, 1971. On the foregoing basis, the Employer and
the Intervenor move for the dismissal of the petition.
The Petitioner opposes this motion to dismiss and
asserts that the Employer has not been bargaining
with Intervenor on an extensive multiplant unit basis,
but rather on a multilocation basis involving six
independent bargaining units, each covered by its
own individual contract. In this regard, the record
reveals that in addition to the above multiplant
contract expiring June 30, 1973, the Employer and
the Intervenor have also negotiated six supplemental
agreements relative to special local problems among
six groups of employees. It is these latter six
documents on which the Petitioner now grounds an
argument that the Employer and the Intervenor have
not effectively established a multiplant unit because,
the Petitioner claims, the basic contract is only
general and superficial whereas the real terms and
conditions of employment are set forth in the six
supplemental agreements.3
As appears from the above, Petitioner does not
dispute the existence of a long history of collective
bargaining between the Employer and Intervenor on
a multistate multiplant basis encompassing, among
others, the unit(s) sought by the Petitioner. Nor is
there any question that the current contract defines
the unit covered as a single, 15-state multiplant unit.
Petitioner's major claim appears to be, however, that
the terms and conditions contained in the above
multiplant contract are not sufficiently extensive to
render the overall historical unit controlling. We do
not agree.
The Employer, a Pennsylvania corporation with
headquarters in Los Angeles, California, is engaged
in the production, refining, sales , and distribution of
crude oil, petroleum products, and petrochemicals in
several States. The current organization of the
Employer is a result of the merger of the Atlantic-
Refining Company with the Richfield Oil Company
in 1966 and the Sinclair Oil Company in 1969. Its
operations are organized on a functional basis, the
same as it was under its predecessor, the Atlantic
Refining Company. The latter recognized the In-
tervenor as the representative of its employees at
least 35 years ago. Presently, out of some 27,000
discretion of the Hearing Officer upon such terms as he deems just.
Moreover, no party was prejudiced by the amendment.
2 The Atlantic Independent Union was allowed to intervene on the basis
of a contractual relationship with the Employer as the longstanding
bargaining representative of many of its employees.
3 The employees sought by the Petitioner in its amended petition are
those who are covered by only two of these six supplemental agreements.
208 NLRB No. 57
ATLANTIC RICHFIELD CO.
employees of the Atlantic Richfield Company, 5,300
are represented by the Intervenor, all of whom, but
for 280 former Sinclair employees, work in those
divisions which were formerly the old Atlantic
Refining Company.
The record shows that, since 1938, the Intervenor
has represented the Employer's employees in a single
multiplant unit under a series of master contracts
negotiated and executed periodically at the Employ-
er's headquarters. Oftentimes, the master contracts
were followed by supplemental agreements entered
into between the Intervenor and the Employer to
meet local needs of specified groups of employees.
The 1971-73 national agreement placed in evi-
dence and the record as a whole establish that such
matters as pensions, employer contributions to
medical plans, a general percentage wage increase,
deduction of union dues, and certain other economic
items are negotiated on an overall basis. In addition,
grievance, layoff, and seniority provisions are con-
tained in the national contract. On the other hand,
other economic items, such as the medical insurance
carrier, uniform allowances, local wage differentials,
meal allowances, and mileage allowances, are part of
the supplemental agreements.
Negotiation sessions for the national agreement
take place in Philadelphia. The Employer is repre-
sented by members of management designated by its
president. The Intervenor is represented by the
Executive Board of the Union, which consists of 4
national officers and 15 local representatives.4
The ratification of the national agreement is
effected only on a unitwide basis by mailing
ratification notices to all employees represented by
the Intervenor. The ballots, which are color coded to
correspond to the Unit Councils, are thereafter
returned by each employee to a national organiza-
tion of the Intervenor whose function is to handle
referendums and elections. Subsequently, the votes
are sorted out and tabulated on a Unit Council basis,
with the decision by the majority of the 11 Unit
Councils determining the fate of the agreement. The
majority vote of the 11 Unit Councils put together is
final and binding on all members of the Union
irrespective of the particular votes of the individual
employees or Unit Councils.
Supplemental agreements result from negotiations
between the representatives of the Employer and the
individual Unit Council of the affected employees. It
appears, however, that at these local negotiations two
or more national officers of the Intervenor are
4 The president of the Union is the chairman of the Intervenor's
negotiating committee The other national officers of the Union are the vice
president, the secretary, and the treasurer.
For administrative convenience , the Intervenor is organized into what it
calls Unit Councils, each representing more or less a subdivision of
Employer's operations . There are I I such Unit Councils Functionally, a
143
always present and participate in the negotiations on
behalf of the Unit Council involved. Ratification of
such supplemental agreements is made by the
employees within the affected Unit Council.
In addition, the method of settling employee
grievances, which is provided by the national
agreement and used by the parties, also indicates that
the Employer and the Intervenor intended to
negotiate on the basis of, and have established, a
single, overall multiplant bargaining unit. In this
regard, the respective Unit Councils may process the
grievances of their member employees through the
first four levels of the grievance procedure estab-
lished by the national agreement. Beyond the fourth
level, a persisting grievance must go before a national
group, the Arbitration Review Committee, who
subsequently sends its recommendation to the
Executive Board. The Executive Board, and not the
Unit Councils, has the ultimate authority to decide
what cases go to arbitration.
The only strike in the Intervenor's long history of
collective bargaining with the Employer occurred in
January 1971. The record shows that the issue of
whether the Union was to strike or not was also
decided on the basis of overall unit referendum,
almost in the same general manner as the foregoing
ratification of the national agreement was handled.
However, even though the overall vote, as to whether
or not to strike, favored striking, the employees in
those Unit Councils that voted to strike largely
refrained from going to work, whereas the employees
in those Unit Councils that voted against striking
largely continued to work. The Petitioner claims that
this action on the part of the Unit Councils is
illustrative of the autonomy and independence of the
Unit Councils and therefore is supportive of its
major contention that the Employer and the Interve-
nor have in effect maintained not a single , overall
multiplant unit but rather six different bargaining
units. However, we are not persuaded that the failure
of some employees to honor a majority decision
made by their union following a unitwide referen-
dum necessarily evidences the existence of multiple
bargaining units . We are especially impressed by the
record evidence which shows that such failure was
not widespread among employees represented by the
Union; that it took place during the only strike in the
over 30-year history of representation by the Union;
and that, above all, the actions of the employees did
not engulf the entire members of any one given Unit
Council, but rather that, while some employees from
Unit Council is an administrative group of employees within the Union who
are elected to office by the general membership of the Union within a given
local or an operational subdivision of the Employer. The chairman of each
of these Unit Councils and 4 additional representatives from Unit Council
#2 constitute the 15 local representative members of the Executive Board.
144 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
any one given Unit Council disregarded the national
vote and went to work , some others of the same Unit
Council honored the strike vote of the Union, thus
rendering the incident almost insignificant on the
subject matter of unit determination.
Such factors as there are which might tend to
support the Petitioner 's contentions that the parties'
bargaining relationship has not been conducted on
the basis of a single multiplant unit are outweighed,
in our opinion , by the long continuous bargaining
history, and the manner of negotiation. execution,
coverage , and application of the agreements between
the parties on a single , 15-state , multiplant unit basis.
We conclude that the record establishes the existence
of a controlling history of multiplant bargaining
which has resulted in the establishment of the single
5 In this regard we note the reference in the national agreement to Unit
Councils, each of which in fact represents the employees described in and
covered under each of six supplemental agreements , negotiation of such
supplemental agreements on the local level as discussed above, and the fact
that any of the six supplemental agreements may be opened for negotiations
at any time by employees affected thereunder The Board has frequently
held, however, that negotiation of supplemental agreements on a local basis,
multiplant unit covered by the existing national
agreement and embracing all of the 5,300 employees
represented by the Intervenor including the approxi-
mately 2,200 employees sought by the Petitioner.
Accordingly, as the Petitioner in this case requests
elections in units limited to only a portion of the unit
covered by the national agreement, the units sought
are too narrow in scope and therefore inappropriate
for purposes of collective bargaining. We shall
therefore dismiss the petition herein.6
ORDER
It is further ordered that the petition filed herein
be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
for strictly local problems, and reference in national agreements to "units"
are not inconsistent with a finding of multiplant bargaining See General
Motors Corporation, Cadillac Motor Car Division, 120 NLRB 1215, 1220,
1221 See also St Regis Paper Company, 97 NLRB 1051, 1056, The
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 105 NLRB 674.
6 Cf Si Regis Paper Company, 101 NLRB 656