Collins Radio Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Apr 9, 1974

210 N.L.R.B. 3 (N.L.R.B. 1974)

COLLINS RADIO CO. 3
Collins Radio Company and Chauffeurs, Teamsters &
Helpers Local Union No . 238, affiliated with
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauf-
feurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America.
Case 18-RC-9780
April 9, 1974
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS
FANNING 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 Frank E.
Kapsch, Jr. Following the close of the hearing, the
Regional Director for Region 18 transferred this case
to the Board for decision. Thereafter the Employer,
Collins Radio Company, and Petitioner, Chauffeurs,
Teamsters & Helpers Local Union No. 238, filed
briefs with the Board.
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 they are free
from prejudicial error. They are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this proceeding, the
Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act and it will effectuate the
purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein.
2. The labor organization involved claims to
represent certain employees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce exists concern-
ing the representation of certain employees of the
Employer within the meaning of Section 9(cXl) and
Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act.'
4. The Petitioner seeks an election to determine
1 The Employer filed a motion to dismiss the instant petition on the basis
that the authorization cards , having been submitted by Petitioner in
connection with the pnor case, were no longer current . The Regional
Director dented the Employer 's motion to dismiss, citing Philip Carey
Manufacturing Company, 69 NLRB 214, and General Dynamics Corporation,
Convair Division, 175 NLRB 1035 We find that the Regional Director
followed applicable Board precedent in correctly denying the Employer's
motion.
I Collins Radio Company, 206 NLRB No. 12, wherein the Board
dismissed another petition of the Petitioner that primarily sought a unit of
keypunch operators employed in Computer Services Division A on grounds
that such unit was inappropriate as an arbitrary segment of the Employer's
office clerical employees. Petitioner in that case also requested an
alternative unit of all hourly paid employees in the Employers Computer
Services Division employed at Cedar Rapids (i.e. Division A). A majority of
the Board in the prior proceeding found the record inadequate to enable
them "to determine whether the unit currently represented by the Petitioner
is an appropriate one or whether all division employees possess a
sufficiently distinct community of interest apart from office clerical
whether all nonsupervisory, nonprofessional employ-
ees in the Employer's Computer Services Division A
who are not currently represented, excluding employ-
ees in all other divisions of the Company, profession-
al employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in
the Act, wish to be represented and included in a
divisionwide unit with the employees in the Comput-
er Services Division A who are currently represented
by the Petitioner. Computer Services Division A is
located at the Employer's Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
facility and is part of the larger Computer Services
Division which, in addition to Division A, has
sections in facilities located at Newport Beach,
California, and Dallas, Texas.
The Employer contends that the unit requested by
Petitioner constitutes an inappropriate and artificial
grouping of employees as it consists of only a
segment of unrepresented office clerical employees at
the Employer's Cedar Rapids facility, and that,
further, the issues presented by the petition were
previously disposed of by the Board in a prior
proceeding involving the same parties.2 The Employ-
er also contends that the unrepresented office clerical
employees in the Computer Services Division do not
have a distinct community of interest apart from the
office clerical employees outside of the division to
warrant a separate bargaining unit. The Employer
further submits that the employees in the requested
unit do not have a community of interest with the
employees now represented by the Petitioner in
Computer Services Division A.
The Employer is engaged in the manufacture and
sale of electronic unit systems and components for
communications control, navigation, and computa-
tion in avionics and telecommunications applications
and has a variety of industrial customers. Only the
Employer's Cedar Rapids, Iowa, facility is involved
in this proceeding.
The Employer's Cedar Rapids facility is divided
into five divisions: Avionics, Telecommunications
Equipment, Service, Industrial Products, and Com-
employees outside the division to qualify as an appropriate departmental
unit." Member Fanning, however, would have directed an election in the
alternative unit as requested in that case.
We find that the Employer's rerjudicera contention concerning the issue
of the appropriateness of the broader unit requested in this and the earlier
case is without merit . The Board majority refused to find whether the
alternative divisionwide unit was appropriate only because the record was
incomplete for purposes of determination of that question . Whatever
inadequacy may have existed in the prior case, has, in our view, been
corrected by the introduction of additional evidence in the hearing held in
the instant proceeding. Thus, whereas the record in the past case centered
almost exclusively on the duties and functions of the keypunch operators,
the current record fully treats all the employees employed in Division A,
their respective duties and functions , their interrelationships , and their lack
of integration with clerical employees of the Employer employed in
different divisions in the Cedar Rapids facility. Accordingly, we find that
the state of the record no longer poses an impediment to determining the
issues raised by the Petitioner's petition in this case.
210 NLRB No. 3
4 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
puter Services. The Computer Services Division is
under completely separate management control from
the four operating divisions at Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Unlike the other divisions, Computer Services comes
under the financial branch which is headed by Vice
President R. J. Ruggles and seconded by Mr. Dean
Allen, the head of Computer Services. Mr. Kratzer,
who reports to Mr. Allen, is head of Computer
Services Division A (hereinafter sometimes referred
to as Division A). The Petitioner seeks to join all
employees in the Company's Computer Services
Division A who come under the control and
supervision of Mr. Kratzer.
The Employer's Computer Services Division A at
Cedar Rapids consists of the following sections: data
conversion, which has approximately 68 keypunch
operators; computer operations, which has 39 comput-
er operators; tabulating, with 2 employees; the order
desk, which has 2 employees; document program
library, with 2 employees; and production control,
which has 1 employee.
The Petitioner currently represents a separate unit
of employees in the computer operations and
tabulating sections who are classified as leadmen,
computer operators, tabulating machine operators,
monitor control distribution clerks, electrical switch-
ing systems teletype operators, tape pushers, tape
librarians, and data auditors. The record indicates
that this was an agreed unit in which the Petitioner
was certified by the Board after an election in 1964.
At that time the other computer service employees
were located in a building separate and remote from
computer operations. In 1967, all the computer
service employees were consolidated within buildings
120 and 121, which in effect constitute one building
since they are attached. As a result, the unrepresent-
ed and represented employees in Division A are in
close proximity to each other. And, although the
represented employees have slightly different pay
classifications and fringe benefits from the unrepre-
sented computer service employees in Division A,
this appears to be due to the results of collective-
bargaining negotiations between Petitioner and
Employer since 1964.
The keypunch work consists of transcribing data
from source documents to punch cards so that they
can be read by computers and tabulators. The
keypunch operators use a data-coding machine with
a keyboard similar to the standard typewriter. Many
of the data cards are for recurring reports which the
operators learn to do routinely.
The Employer recruits and hires employees specifi-
cally for keypunch operator positions . Unlike other
clericals, keypunch operators are required to pass a
prehire qualification test, are hired as trainees, and
remain in that status for 6 months. During this time
they receive on-the-job training, which includes
classes and lesson exercises , as well as individual
instruction from their supervisors.
In addition to the 43 keypunch machines operated
by the employees of the proposed unit, there are 19
keypunch machines distributed throughout the four
operating divisions and located in other buildings in
the Employer's Cedar Rapids operation. These are
operated for brief periods by various categories of
employees not classified as keypunch operators,
usually to redo damaged cards as an incident to their
other duties, without sending such cards back to the
keypunch pool. Unlike the keypunch operators, they
are not required to take a qualifications test on the
keypunch machine. Furthermore, there is no occa-
sion for these employees to have contact with the
employees in the keypunch pool.
There is no substantial or routine interchange
between Division A employees and other clericals .3
All the employees presently represented by Petitioner
and those being sought for representation are housed
separately from the rest of the Employer's Cedar
Rapids facilities and are under separate overall
supervision . Unlike other clerical employees engaged
elsewhere in the Cedar Rapids operations who work
only one shift, the keypunch employees, like the
computer operators , work on multiple shifts.
As noted above, the employees in Division A all
work in connecting buildings 120 and 121. They use
the same entrances and the same timeclocks, and
share a common lunchroom. They frequently inter-
change with each other within the division, and
promotion occurs essentially, if not exclusively,
within the division itself. The five clerical employees
in particular have considerable contact with the
employees in the computer operations room. They
work closely with these employees, servicing their
needs and those of the supervisors in Computer
Services, and are the only clerical employees at the
Cedar Rapids facility that work with or for the
personnel assigned to Division A.
The facts show, therefore, that Division A is an
integral and separately identifiable group . It has a
distinctive function of converting data from the
Employer's operating divisions into a form useful to
management in overseeing operations , and its em-
3 Since January 1967 , of current employees of the Employer in Division at Dallas, Texas . We also note the uncontradicted testimony of an employee
A, two employees transferred from another division into the keypunch that she was told by the Employer 's personnel department that transfers
operations of Division A, two employees transferred out of the division into from Computer Services to another division could only be obtained by the
jobs in other sections , and three keypunch operators in Division A prospective transferee's first terminating her employment and then applying
transferred to the same type jobs in the Computer Services Division located for rehire in the different division.
COLLINS RADIO CO.
ployees have functionally distinct work characteris-
tics , use skills which require special training and
aptitude , and are separately supervised . Its opera-
tions are highly integrated and there is frequent
contact among the various computer service employ-
ees, but not with employees outside the division who
are geographically separated from them.
Considering that there is no other union currently
seeking to represent the five clerical employees or the
keypunch operators in Division A, that the division is
separately supervised in a building apart from the
other clerical employees , and that the Petitioner
already represents part of the division ,4 we find that
a divisionwide unit of Division A employees may be
appropriate.5
Accordingly , we find that the following employees
5
constitute an appropriate voting group : all nonsuper-
visory, nonprofessional employees in the Employer's
Computer Services Division A who are not currently
represented , excluding employees in all other divi-
sions of the Company , professional employees,
guards, and supervisors as defined in the National
Labor Relations Act.
We shall direct that an election be conducted
among the appropriate voting group . If a majority of
this voting group selects the Petitioner as their
bargaining representative, they shall be included in a
divisionwide unit with employees presently repre-
sented by Petitioner ; otherwise they shall remain
unrepresented.
[Direction of Election and Excelsior footnote
omitted from publication.]
4 Safeway Stores, Incorporate4 174 NLRB 1274.
5 Computer Systems, Inc., 204 NLRB No. 34.