General Electric Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board DecisionsSep 3, 1964

148 N.L.R.B. 811 (N.L.R.B. 1964)

GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 811 Teamsters , Chauffeurs , Warehousemen & Helpers of America, as the law re- quires. This union is the exclusive bargaining representative of the following employees in the appropriate unit: All production and maintenance employees employed at our potato proc- essing plant and warehouse and cold -storage plant at American Falls, Idaho, including truckdrivers , warehousemen, and laboratory employees, but ex- cluding office clerical employees , guards, professional employees, and supervisors. WE WILL NOT consider for disciplinary purposes any notice of absence slip that any employee who participated in the October 1963 strike may have received. All our employees are free to remain or to become members of Teamsters , Chauf- feurs, Warehousemen & Helpers Union , Local No . 983, International Brotherhood of Teamsters , Chauffeurs , Warehousemen & Helpers of America , or any other union, and they are free not to join any union unless at some time a valid union -shop con- tract may be executed by us with a union. LAMB-WESTON, INC. AND F . G. LAMB CO., Employer. Dated------------------- By------------------------------------------- (Representative ) ( Title) This notice must remain posted for 60 consecutive days from the date of posting, and must not be altered, defaced, or covered by any other material. Employees may communicate directly with the Board 's Regional Office, 327 Logan Building, 500 Union Street, Seattle , Washington , Telephone No. Mutual 2-3300, Extension 553, if they have any questions concerning this notice or compliance with its provisions. General Electric Company and Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council , AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case No. 19-RC-3440. Septem- ber 3, 1964 DECISION AND ORDER Upon a petition duly filed on May 25, 1964, a hearing was held be- fore Hearing Officer Harold D. Kessler, on June 19, 1964. The Hear- ing Officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, the Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member panel [Chairman McCulloch and Members Fanning and Jenkins]. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds : 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 2. The labor organization involved claims to represent employees of the Employer. 3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa- tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Sections 9 (c) (1) and 2 (6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons : Petitioner seeks a unit of 27 motor messengers , mail handlers, and addressograph operators employed at the Employer's Hanford proj- ect. The Hanford project is operated by the Employer for the Atomic 148 NLRB No. 80. 812 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Energy Commission under cost-type contracts. Alternatively, Peti- tioner would accept 10 additional employees, or a total of 37, whose primary work function, according to the Employer, entails the collec- tion and delivery of mail. The Petitioner contends that the unit thus sought is appropriate in that it consists of employees who are engaged in a separate, distinct, and readily identifiable activity on the Hanford project and that, in addition to their handling of mail, a further identi- fying feature which gives them a distinct community of interest is that most of the employees sought for the, unit spend a., substantial part of their time driving automobiles. The Employer contends that the employees sought are actually office clerical employees and have always been so considered. As such, they are only a segment of a much larger appropriate unit. The Hanford project is located on a 650-square mile tract in Wash- ington State. The central project facility is located in downtown Richland, Washington, and the most distant project facility is about 40 miles from Richland. As of May 1, 1964,.the Employer employed about 8,300 persons in work at the Hanford project. There are three major production departments within the Hanford project. These departments occupy 12 separate buildings within the project area. The central mail and addressograph operation, located in downtown Richland, in an administrative office building, services all the United States mail for the project, channeling the mail to and from the post office and the other departmental mail operations. Of the 371 employees in the proposed unit, 16 work in the central mail and addressograph operation. Other mail and addressograph operations are located in the irradia- tion processing department which is located approximately 30 to 40 miles from Richland, and contains 7 of the 37 employees in the pro, posed unit; in the chemical processing department, approximately 25 miles from Richland, employing 4 people in the mail and addresso- graph operation; in the Hanford laboratories, 7 miles from Richland, with 4 employees engaged in handling and delivering mail; in the production fuels division of the irradiation processing department, 7 miles from Richland, with 5 employees in the mail and addresso- graph operation; and in the Hanford utilities and purchasing opera- tion, in the outskirts of Richland, employing 1 person in its mail operation. The 37 employees involved in the petition have little contact with production and maintenance workers who are already represented by the Petitioner. They deliver mail to offices of individual addressees or to mailrooms. It appears that the mail operations are in no way a 1 It is impossible to determine from the record which of the 37 employees listed in the Employer 's Exhibit No 2 were among the original 27 petitioned for by the Union. Thus all references to particular groups of employees must be made in terms of a proposed unit of 37. GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 813 part of the production activities in the plant. The Employer has con- sidered these 37 employees to be office clerical workers, part of a work force of 750 office clericals employed. Of this group the Petitioner presently represents 10 telephone-switchboard operators as the result of a consent election in April 1964. As a part of their job, 36 of the 37 employees sought are required to have both a State driver's license and a Federal Government driver's license which is obtained by taking a Federal test. Other employees at the project have such licenses, but the 36 people involved in this petition are the only employees who are required to obtain a license in order to perform their primary job functions. Of the 36 licensed drivers involved in the petition, 21 have regu- larly scheduled runs. The other 15 drive on a replacement basis and during periods of heavy mail volume. The 37th is a receptionist-mail clerk. The 16 employees in the central mail and addressograph operation constitute a separate group for vacation and overtime purposes. All' 37 employees have the same working hours as the office clericals and are paid on the same graded scale basis. The 16 central mail and addressograph operation employees are under 1 supervisor in a separate subdivision of the operation. The other 21 employees report to 7 different supervisors and these super- visors have other office employees under their supervision. The eight supervisors in turn report to eight different departmental managers. The job classifications into which the 37 employees are categorized include: Addressograph operators: There are four in the project. Their functions include making address plates, running material through the addressograph, and assisting in stuffing envelopes. In addition, 15 percent of the time is spent on handling, sorting, or pitching mail. These employees also run the collator, stuffier, and folder machines. Foot messengers: The two foot messengers in the project do pri- marily intrabuilding work. They deliver mail to the offices within a building and maintain lists of the employees whom they service. They also do some miscellaneous typing, filing, and general clerical work. Motor messengers: There are 16 in the project. They have regu- lar mail runs which involve driving to those buildings which are not within walking distance. Their driving amounts to 10 or 15 miles per day. They also pitch and sort mail and perform clerical duties in the office. Approximately 60 percent of their time is devoted to handling mail; the other 40 percent to general clerical work. Area delivery motor messengers: These five employees in the cen- tral mailroom pick up from and deliver to the mailrooms in the out- lying areas of the project. This involves about 110 miles per day of 814 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD driving. This function takes up 80 percent of their working time, the remainder being spent in incidental office work not related to the mail. Postal clerk: This job involves handling and sorting of the mail for 70 percent of the time and 30 percent involves clerical duties. There is one such employee in the project. Mail location clerk: The one employee in the project who performs this job keeps lists of the locations of employees, forwards mail to those who have moved, and assists in other related operations. Seventy percent of his time is spent in maintaining lists; 30 percent in gen- eral clerical work. Teletype operator: There is one Teletype operator who receives wires, notifies the recipients, and records them. The job involves 65 to 70 percent Teletype operations and 30 to 35 percent mail service and addressograph work. Leader-mail and addressograph: Four employees are classified as "leaders." They work with all the mail handling employees, includ- ing the drivers, and keep the schedules coordinated. They spend 70 percent of their time handling mail and 30 percent in training new personnel and doing general clerical tasks. Clerk-library-mail and stack: There is one employee in this posi- tion. He spends 45 percent of his time handling incoming mail, pitch- ing, sorting, and delivering it to work stations; 20 to 25 percent in motor messenger functions; and 30 to 35 percent in shelving books in the library stacks. Administrative clerk: There is one administrative clerk in the proj- ect. He attends to all mail in the nuclear reactor department, occupy- ing 35 percent of his time in this function; 65 percent is spent in filing work and keeping check on Government cars used on the project. Receptionist-mail clerk: She handles delivery of mail for the pur- chasing department. One-half of her time is spent in this area ; the remainder in receptionist and clerical duties not related to the mail. The record indicates that there may be as many as 14 female em- ployees in the group of 37, in such categories as addressograph and Teletype operators, foot messengers, and receptionist. They are re- quired to have stenographic skills and, unlike the male employees in the group, are hired with the possibility of advancement to steno- graphic work. They must take aptitude, personality, and typing and stenographic tests, but they need not meet the company standards for typing and shorthand until a position is actually available. The Employer testified that it is standard personnel practice to seek women from the mailrooms to fill clerical positions and that the transfers are permanent ones. All 21 of the motor messengers are male employees. They have some contact with all areas of the project's operations, are in a posi- tion to request transfers to any part of the operation, and such re- WHEELING ELECTRIC COMPANY 815 quests are frequently honored. The Employer testified concerning the progression of 29 mail employees from irradiation processing; 17 of these taking "clerical" positions 2 and 12 taking other types of work such as drafting, laboratory analysis, and patrolling. Apart from driving in order to distribute mail, the mail-handling functions of these employees, as well as the additional clerical func- tions they perform, are similar to those of office clerical employees. They share the same wage basis and the same hours, and many of them have the same supervision and progression pattern. Appropriately all these mail-handling employees would be included in an office cleri- cal unit unless the fact that they do some driving in connection with the work sets them apart. Customarily the Board has not found ap- propriate a unit limited to a segment of the office clerical employees, even though, unlike here, the grouping sought was based on an ad- ministrative or functional division.' With respect to their driving duties we note that only the five area delivery motor messengers, who drive the long runs, spend the majority of their time in driving. The 16 motor messengers, who do exactly the same sort of work but have regular short runs, apparently spend less than half their time driving, 40 percent of their time being devoted to clerical work not involving mail handling. Most of the remaining employees sought drive only occasionally. In these circumstances we think that the driving function of some employees in the requested unit is not such as to set the whole re- quested unit apart from other office clerical employees, in the manner, for example, that truckdrivers may be considered to have interests distinct from production and maintenance employees.4 Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition. [The Board dismissed the petition.] 2 Whether these were office or plant clerical positions does not appear. 3 Solar Aircraft Company, 116 NLRB 200, 202 ; Detroit Marine Terminals, Inc., 115 NLRB 822, 824. See also E. I. Du Pont De Nemours & Company, Inc., Construction Divi- sion, Savannah River Plant, 107 NLRB 734, 745-747. 'See E. H. Koester Bakery Co., Inc., 136 NLRB 1006, 1008. Wheeling Electric Company and Utility Workers Organizing Committee, CIO, Petitioner . Case No. 6-R-809. September 3, 1964 DECISION AND ORDER CLARIFYING CERTIFICATION On March 9, 1964, Utility Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, Local No. 264, filed a motion for clarification of the certification issued to its predecessor, Utility Workers Organizing Committee, CIO, on 148 NLRB No. 87.