Children's Communities, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Apr 9, 1974

210 N.L.R.B. 6 (N.L.R.B. 1974)

6 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Children's Communities, Inc.' and American Federa-
tion of State, County & Municipal Employees,
AFL-CIO. Case 14-RC-7465
April 9, 1974
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS JENKINS
AND PENELLO
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Hearing Officer Peter J.
Salm. 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, the Regional Director for Region 14
transferred this case to the National Labor Relations
Board for decision. Thereafter, the Employer and
Petitioner filed briefs.
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. They are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board
finds:
The Employer, organized under the Illinois Gener-
al Not-For-Profit Corporation Act, is engaged in
providing a 12-month home and educational facility
for approximately 158 severely to educable retarded
children at its Waterloo, Illinois, location. The
physical facilities consist of four cottages where the
children live dormitory style, and an additional
building which is a combination office and school-
house.
There is a houseparent, described as a "mother
figure," for each of the three shifts in each cottage. In
addition to these 12 houseparents, there are five
subhouseparents who work when the regular house-
parent is not present. Additionally, there are 50 child
care workers, half of whom are full time and half of
whom are part time. The child care workers work in
the cottages, normally at the ratio of one child care
worker for four children.
There are six teachers, five of whom possess
degrees. Each teacher has one to five child care
workers who are present in the classroom.2
Petitioner seeks to represent all of the Employer's
nonsupervisory employees, with teachers, registered
nurses, and licensed practical nurses, as professional
employees, having the right to a self-determination
election under Section 9(b)(1) of the Act. The
Employer contends that the petition should be
dismissed because the effect on commerce is not
sufficiently substantial to warrant the exercise of the
Board's jurisdiction. We agree with the Employer's
contention.
During the 12-month period ending September 30,
1973, the Employer' s gross income from all services
was approximately $348,000, and the Employer's
total expenditures for goods and services for the
same 12-month period totaled approximately
$50,583, of which only $25,600 was provided to the
Employer from points outside the State of Illinois. Of
its $348,000 gross income, the Employer received
approximately $333,500 from various agencies and
political subdivisions of the State of Illinois.
As Petitioner contends, the Board asserted jurisdic-
tion over childcare institutions in The Children's
Village, Inc., 186 NLRB 953, and Jewish Orphan's
Home of Southern California a/k/a Vista Del Mar
Child Care Service, 191 NLRB 32, without adopting a
specific jurisdictional standard. However, those
institutions were far larger than the Employer's. The
employer in Children's Village cared for approxi-
mately 240 boys, had gross annual revenues of $3.5
million, and annually purchased goods from out of
State valued at $300,000 to $400,000. In Jewish
Orphan's Home the employer cared for approximate-
ly 106 children, had gross revenues of $1.24 million,
and purchased food supplies valued in excess of
$110,000 from a food service company located
outside the State. In asserting jurisdiction in both
those cases, the Board noted that the employer's
revenues and expenditures were sufficient to meet
any of the Board's ordinary jurisdictional standards.
Unlike either Children's Village or Jewish Orphan's
Home, the revenues and expenditures of the Employ-
er herein do not meet any of the Board's ordinary
jurisdictional standards which conceivably might be
applicable to the Employer, with the exception of the
nursing home standard. Petitioner, however, con-
tends that the $100,000 gross annual income stand-
ard for nursing homes as applied to the home for the
aged in Drexel Home, Inc., 182 NLRB 1045, would
encompass the Employer. However, in Drexel Home,
the Board found that the employer could have been
described more precisely as a "nursing home for the
aged" because, inter alia, the 132 beds in the nursing
area were invariably filled to capacity and 50 percent
of all the beds had 24-hour-a-day nursing service.
There are no such indicative factors in the instant
case; accordingly, we do not consider the Employer
to be a nursing home.
We believe that the Employer's operations are
I The Employer' s name appears as amended at the hearing . are of the opinion that the Employer is primarily a child care institution and
2 Although the Employer operates a school and employs six teachers , we not a school.
210 NLRB No. 5
CHILDREN'S COMMUNITIES, INC. 7
similar to those of the Employer in Methodist
Children's Home of Missouri, 209 NLRB No. 20,
where the employer's home for orphans and emo-
tionally disturbed children had gross revenues in
excess of $300,000 and purchased goods in excess of
$14,000 from suppliers outside the State. In that case,
we found that the employer's operation lacked the
requisite impact upon commerce to justify assertion
of jurisdiction. Although the Board may assert
jurisdiction over institutions such as the Employer,
we find that the effect of the operations of the
Employer upon interstate commerce is not sufficient-
ly substantial to warrant the exercise of our jurisdic-
tion.3 Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case
14-RC-7465, filed by American Federation of State,
County, & Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, be, and
it hereby is, dismissed.
3 In the absence of any specific standards for this type of operation, we
have applied existing standards , but we leave open the question of whether
or not to establish a specific standard for such cases . See Children's Village
and Jewish Orphan's Home, both supra.