Dinah'S Hotel & Apartments

National Labor Relations Board - Board DecisionsJul 31, 1989

295 N.L.R.B. 1100 (N.L.R.B. 1989)

1100 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Dinah's Hotel Corporation d/b/a Dinah's Hotel & Apartments and Professional and Clerical Em- ployees Division of Freight Checkers , Clerical Employees & Helpers Local No. 856 a/w Inter- national Brotherhood of Teamsters , AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 32-RC-2789 July 31, 1989 DECISION ON REVIEW, ORDER, AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY CHAIRMAN STEPHENS AND MEMBERS CRACRAFT AND HIGGINS On October 14, 1988, the Regional Director for Region 32 issued a Decision and Order in the above-entitled proceeding in which he found that the petitioned-for unit of the Employer's front desk employees was not an appropriate unit for collec- tive bargaining, and that the only appropriate unit for bargaining was an overall unit including all em- ployees in the housekeeping, maintenance, and front desk departments of the Employer's facility. Inasmuch as the Petitioner was unwilling to pro- ceed to an election in such a unit, the Regional Di- rector dismissed the petition. Thereafter, in accordance with Section 102.67 of the Board's Rules and Regulations, the Petitioner filed a timely request for review of the Regional Director's Decision and Order. The Petitioner con- tended, inter alia, that the Regional Director erred in failing to find its petitioned-for "front desk" unit to be an appropriate unit under Omni International Hotel, 283 NLRB 475 (1987). The Employer filed a statement in opposition to the Petitioner's request for review. The Board, by Order dated January 3, 1989, granted the Petitioner's Request for Review. The National Labor Relations Board has delegat- ed its authority in this proceeding to a three- member panel. The Board has considered the entire record in this case with respect to the issue under review, in- cluding the Employer's brief on review, and con- cludes, in agreement with the Petitioner, that the petitioned-for unit of front desk employees is an ap- propriate unit for bargaining. The Employer operates a 128-unit motor hotel consisting of several separate buildings located on common grounds. Its operations include short-term rental apartments and hotel rooms, a pool, and a lagoon.' Approximately 35 employees work in the Employer's three departments: housekeeping (13 maids and 4 laundry persons); maintenance (7 regu- lar maintenance and 3 night security/ mainte- nance); and front desk (5 front desk clerks, 2 night auditors, and 1 bookkeeper). The maintenance and front desk employees share common supervision by the Employer's manager, who sets all personnel policies and makes all personnel decisions, and by the assistant manager. The housekeeping employees are supervised on a day-to-day basis by the head housekeeper. The front desk department employees work in the main lobby of the Employer's facility, where both the front desk and the business office are lo- cated. Their primary responsibilities include check- ing guests in and out, handling reservations, taking telephone messages, and maintaining correct bil- lings . The night auditors and the bookkeeper also are responsible for the compilation of daily re- ceipts. The front desk department employees oper- ate the switchboard, a typewriter, and a Burroughs computerized posting machine in performing their duties. All the Employer's employees have similar working conditions and benefits. All are hourly paid, although there are different wage scales for the three departments and wages within each de- partment are based on longevity. The front desk employees are the highest paid group of employ- ees, with wages ranging from $9-$13 per hour.2 Vacation, sick leave, and holiday policies are iden- tical, as are health, dental, and vision benefits. All employees receive the same Christmas bonus, have a paid lunch period, and have the same payday. Employees in all three departments work sched- uled shifts, and these shifts overlap both within a particular department and with the other depart- ments, 7 days a week. There is routine contact between employee groups. For example, when guests report a need for a repair or other maintenance, front desk em- ployees will prepare a maintenance problem report (work order) and give it to the maintenance depart- ment for action. When the job is completed, the maintenance personnel return the form to the man- ager with a notation of what was done. Similarly, there is coordination between front desk personnel and the housekeeping staff regarding availability of rooms and items left behind by guests. On the other hand, there have been no permanent transfers or temporary interchange between employee groups. Also, instances of front desk employees performing maintenance or housekeeping tasks have been extremely infrequent, and do not reflect an actual overlap of job functions (e.g., a front 2 Wages for maintenance employees range from $7.50-$11 per hour, and for housekeeping employees from $5 .60-$9 per hour , however, the head maintenance man and the painter, who also performs maintenance ' The facility also includes a coffeeshop, which is leased out and is not work , earn considerably more than the others in their group, and slightly involved in this proceeding more than the $ 13 per hour top wage for the front desk group. 295 NLRB No. 127 DINAH'S HOTEL & APARTMENTS 1101 desk employee once adjusted a television for a guest; on another occasion, a front desk employee assisted a maintenance employee who needed "a second pair of hands" to install a shower door). The Regional Director found that while there was a degree of functional autonomy among em- ployees in the Employer's three separate depart- ments, there also was, due to the relatively small size of the staff, regular and routine contact be- tween employees in the different groups. The Re- gional Director concluded that those contacts, cou- pled with centralized supervision by the manager and common personnel policies and terms and con- ditions of employment, compelled a finding that the petitioned-for unit of front desk employees was an inappropriate unit for bargaining. Moreover, he noted that the evidence of industry practice in the Bay Area was not dispositive as to the issue of a separate unit limited to front desk personnel. Ac- cordingly, the Regional Director found that the only appropriate unit is a unit of all the Employer's employees. We disagree, and find merit in the Petitioner's contention that the Regional Director erred in fail- ing to apply the principles articulated in Omni International Hotel, in which the Board specifically reaffirmed its commitment to a case-by-case ap- proach to unit determinations in the hotel/motel in- dustry, utilizing the same traditional community-of- interest criteria used in other industries.3 Further, the Board reiterated in Omni the well-established principle that under the Act a union may petition for an appropriate unit, and is not required to seek the most appropriate unit.' In the instant case, the petitioned-for employees enjoy a higher wage scale than employees in other departments; assist employees in other departments only very infrequently; are supervised separately from the housekeeping employees, although they do share common supervision with the mainte- nance employees; do not interchange with the other employee groups; and, most importantly, per- form work which greatly varies in kind from that of the other employees. Thus, as the Board stated in Regency Hyatt House, the differences in the nature of the respective duties and in the respective conditions of employment of these employee groups graphically illustrate that the Employer's s Omni International Hotel, 283 NLRB at 475. Accord; Stanford Park Hotel, 287 NLRB 1291 (1988 ). This general criteria includes distinctions in skills and functions of particular employee groups, their separate super- vision , the employer's organizational structure , and differences in wages and hours , as well as integration of operations , employee transfer , inter- change, and contacts Westin Hotel, 277 NLRB 1506, 1507-1508 (1986), Atlanta Hilton & Towers, 273 NLRB 87, 90 (1984), modified on other grounds 275 NLRB 1413 (1985); Regency Hyatt House, 171 NLRB 1347, 1348 (1968). 4 Omni International Hotel, 283 NLRB at 475. "white collar" force (the front desk/clerical em- ployees sought here) do not share a sufficient com- munity of interest with the Employer's "blue collar" force (the manual/physical service employ- ees) to mandate their inclusion in an overall unit.5 In contrast, in Golden Eagle Motor Inn, 246 NLRB 323 (1979), relied on by the Regional Direc- tor, although the size of the facility and the number of employees were comparable to those of the Em- ployer, the Board found that there was a high degree of overlap of job functions, and a similarly high degree of community of interest among job classifications as to wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. In Golden Eagle, unlike here, the front desk employees performed bell functions and routine maintenance as a daily part of their job duties, and, when working on the afternoon and night shifts, regularly cleaned and made up rooms. Thus, the differences in the nature of the employ- ees' respective duties were frequently and regularly blurred. The Board concluded that the front desk employees did not possess a distinct community of interest.6 In finding the unit sought by the Petitioner here inappropriate, the Regional Director also appears to have relied, at least in part, on the relatively small size of the facility and staff. However, the Board has not considered size a dispositive factor in making unit determinations in the hotel/motel industry,7 and only rarely indicates that it is given significant consideration in other industries.8 In sum, while not to be totally ignored , size is a rela- tively minor factor to be considered when applying the Board's traditional community-of-interest test. Finally, we observe that the petitioned-for em- ployees, unlike the employees the Petitioner would ° In Regency Hyatt House, the Board found that although there was a functional relationship between the hotel clerical employees and the manual operating employees sufficient for it to find an overall unit appro- priate if such had been requested , other factors were present to show that the two groups possessed a separate community of interest warranting es- tablishment of the manual operating employees or "blue collar" force as a separate bargaining unit, as requested . The two groups were paid by dif- ferent methods and were separately supervised , wore different work ap- parel, and had different work functions. The manual employees' duties consisted of various physical services , whereas the duties of the "white collar" force were primarily clerical . As in the instant case, the front office clerks would relay requests for hotel services to the appropriate department , and there was little , if any, interchange between the groups. 171 NLRB at 1349. ° See also Days Inn of America, 210 NLRB 1035 (1974); Holiday Inn, Pittsburgh, 214 NLRB 651 (1974), Holiday Inn-Atlanta Northwest, 214 NLRB 930 (1974). 7 Published decisions in this area seldom mention size , other than to note the number of guestrooms and number of employees as background facts. In a few instances, passing reference has been made to a hotel's "relatively small size" (Days Inn of America, supra) or the fact that a hotel was "sizeable" (Coco Palms Resort Hotel, 201 NLRB 522 (1973)). However , in each case , the Board's analysis and ultimate unit determina- tion were based on traditional community-of-interest criteria. ° But see Abdow Corp., 271 NLRB 1269, 1270 (1984), Fidelity Telephone Co., 221 NLRB 1335, 1336 (1976). 1102 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD exclude from the unit , are akin to office clerical employees . It is the Board 's normal practice not to include office clericals in other units ,9 and the Board has given separate office clerical units (or excluded office clericals) not only in the hotel/- motel industry, but in other industries covered by the Act, where the facts showed such employees shared a separate and distinct community of inter- est apart from an employer 's other employees, re- gardless of the size of the employer 's operations or staff. 10 Accordingly, inasmuch as we find the petitioned- for unit of front desk clerks to be an appropriate 9 L. M. Berry & Co., 198 NLRB 217, 219 ( 1972); Firemen 's Fund Insur- ance Ca , 173 NLRB 982, 984 ( 1968). 10 See, e.g., Legal Services for the Elderly Poor, 236 NLRB 485 (1978); Armour & Co., 15 NLRB 268, 276-277 ( 1939). unit for collective bargaining , we reverse the Re- gional Director 's Decision and Order, reinstate the petition , and direct an election among the follow- ing employees: All full-time and regular part-time front desk clerks, night auditors , and bookkeepers em- ployed by the Employer at its Palo Alto, Cali- fornia, facility but excluding housekeeping and maintenance employees , confidential employ- ees, guards , and supervisors as defined in the Act. ORDER The petition in Case 32-RC-2789 is reinstated. [Direction of Election omitted from publication.]