General Electric Co.Download PDFNational Labor Relations Board - Board DecisionsJan 28, 1970180 N.L.R.B. 1094 (N.L.R.B. 1970) Copy Citation 1094 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD General Electric Company and James Joseph Epping, Petitioner and International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, AFL-CIO and its Local 1110. Case 38-RD-42 January 28, 1970 DECISION AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS FANNING AND BROWN Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Michael B. Ryan on September 23, 1969. Following the hearing, 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. Thereafter, the Petitioner, Employer, and Union filed briefs. The Union also filed a motion to reopen the record which the Employer has opposed.' An amicus curiae brief was filed by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case 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, 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 Petitioner, an employee of the Employer, asserts that the Union, a labor organization, is no longer the representative, as defined in Section 9(a) of the Act, of the employees designated in the petition. 3. The Petitioner seeks to decertify the Union as the representative of all production and maintenance employees of the Employer at its Bettendorf, Iowa, Apparatus Service Shop, including truck drivers, shipping and receiving employees, stockroom attendants, and all other employees engaged in field service and equipment installation operating in and out of said service shop, excluding all office clerical employees, plant clerical employees, professional employees, technical employees, salesmen, guards, 'After the hearing, the Union filed a motion to reopen the record to admit into evidence certain posthearing contract proposals of the Employer. The Employer has requested that the Board deny such motion unless testimony is adduced showing the circumstances surrounding such proposals In reaching our decision herein, we have found it unnecessary to consider such proposals and shall therefore deny the motion and supervisors as defined in the Act. The Union contends that the petition should be dismissed because the unit in which Petitioner seeks an election is not coextensive with the existing collective-bargaining unit, and, therefore, is not appropriate for decertification. The Employer and the Petitioner assert that the individually certified bargaining unit is the appropriate unit in which the election should be held. The record shows that since 1950, the Union has become bargaining representative for employees at various plants of the Employer throughout the country. Presently it represents approximately 90,000 employees under Board certifications issued to the International and its constituent locals. Commencing in 1950, the Employer and Union, have engaged in multiunit bargaining in negotiating a series of national agreements including the 1960, 1963, and 1966 agreements.' Article I of the three agreements entitled Union Recognition provides in part: 2. Where the Union or any of its Locals through National Labor Relations Board certifications shall have been lawfully designated as the exclusive bargaining representative for any additional bargaining units of Company employees, such certified representative shall be recognized as provided above and become a party hereto, and the terms of this National Agreement shall thereupon be applicable to the employees within such unit . [Emphasis Supplied.] In order to conduct negotiations for the national agreements entered into with the Employer, the General Electric Conference Board was established by the Union. The Conference Board is a constitutional body of the Union composed of elected delegates from IUE locals across the country representing General Electric employees. Each local is entitled to one delegate, and additional delegates are sent by large locals to a maximum of four delegates from any one local. The Conference Board in turn designates from among its delegates a negotiating committee to carry on bargaining with the Employer. The Conference Board, which submits to the negotiating committee various union proposals, has the final authority to reject or accept a contract or any proposals thereon worked out by the negotiating committee, and any such action taken by it is binding upon all locals regardless of their individual consent. The nationwide agreements made between the Union and Employer have included the substantive terms usually found in collective-bargaining agreements . For example, the contracts include such subjects as wages , working hours, vacations, holidays, and a grievance and arbitration procedure. 'A more detailed analysis of the bargaining history appears in General Electric Company. 150 NLRB 192 at 205, 206, and 207, enfd. 418 F.2d 736 180 NLRB No. 162 GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. Under the grievance and arbitration procedure set out in the national agreements , the locals handle their grievances through the first two steps of the three-step grievance procedure , but at the third step, the grievance is "referred to the National Officers of the Union for submission to an Executive Officer of the Company or his designated representative." The Conference Board decides whether to proceed to arbitration on any particular grievance. However, not all negotiations take place on the national level. Certain subjects such as the layoff and rehiring procedure and an additional holiday have been reserved to local bargaining. The unit appropriate in a decertification election must be coextensive with either the unit previously certified or the one recognized in the existing contract unit.3 The issue before us is whether the pattern of bargaining between the Union and Employer has brought about an effective merger of the individually certified units into a multiplant contractual unit thereby precluding the processing of the instant decertification petition. We are satisfied that such a merger has taken place. Here, the Employer, with the Union's acquiescence, has and is recognizing a multiplant unit rather than the previously certified separate units. Thus, from the inception of the bargaining relationship 19 years ago the Employer and Union have obliterated the separate units by negotiating on a multiplant basis. This multiplant bargaining is the rock on which the collective-bargaining relationship has been built. Such bargaining has resulted in a series of national agreements , multiplant in scope, fixing terms and conditions of employment in the represented plants with matters of individual plant concern reserved for local bargaining. This local bargaining can hardly be termed inconsistent with the nationwide bargaining for it would be unrealistic for the parties to attempt to make uniform national provisions on all subjects with no allowance for variation to take into account purely local conditions.' In addition, the record discloses that these local agreements cannot be in contradiction of the national agreements. With regard to contractual coverage the national agreements not only apply to the currently represented employees but also provide for immediate automatic coverage of newly organized locations. This of course forecloses employees organized after the latest national agreement from negotiating their own contract. As shown above, through centralized negotiations, the locals have surrendered their autonomy to reject or accept the contract applicable to their location. The Conference Board , by majority vote of the delegates, decides whether to ratify or reject negotiated national agreements , with such decision 'W T Grant Company , 179 NLRB No. 114, and cases cited therein. ,in N.L.R B. Y. General Electric Company, 418 F.2d 736 (C.A. 2), the court stated that "the national agreements frequently provided that some matters, usually minor , would be left to local agreement ." (Emphasis supplied ) 1095 binding upon all local unions . The Conference Board also decides whether or not to invoke arbitration under the national agreement and normally handles such arbitrations for the Union. Similarly, the Employer's Corporate Employee Relations section, now headed by P. D. Moore, Vice President, centrally controls labor relations on the national level such as handling national negotiations and grievances at the third step of the grievance procedure. Also of significance is the Employer's approach to collective bargaining which treats all employees uniformly regardless of which union they are represented by or whether they were represented by any union at all.5 While there are factors which might tend to support the Petitioner's and Employer's contentions that bargaining has not been on the basis of a single multiplant unit's we are of the opinion that these factors are outweighed by the long continuous bargaining history, and the manner of negotiation, execution, coverage, and application of the agreements between the parties. These factors are consistent with a finding of a single multiplant unit. Moreover, such a finding is more in step with the realities of the relationship between the parties than would be a contrary finding. We therefore conclude that the record establishes a controlling history of multiplant bargaining resulting in the establishment of a single multiplant unit embracing all of those plants of the Employer in which the Union has been recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent and which are covered by the national agreements.' We shall therefore dismiss the petition which requests an election in a single-plant unit. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. 'Genera! Electric Companv. 150 NLRB 192, 209 'Such as reference in the national agreements to "units," in the plural, negotiation of supplemental agreements on the local level discussed above, the absence of any explicit admission on the record that the parties intended to merge the separate units into a single multiplant unit and the grouping of various employees of different occupations into a single unit. The Board has held that the negotiation of supplemental agreements on a local basis and references in national agreements to "units" are not inconsistent with a finding of multiplant bargaining . See General Motors Corporation. Cadillac Motor Division, 120 NLRB 1215, 1220, 1221 With regard to intent , the record supports the Union 's position that despite the absence of an explicit admission as to intent, the parties have, in fact, by their own conduct , as set forth above, merged the separate units into a multiplant bargaining unit We are also not disturbed by the lumping together of several groups of employees with different occupations for the reason that the lengthy bargaining history involved herein shows that in fact the present grouping is a basis for collective bargaining and that whatever separate community of interest that may have existed prior to this history of bargaining is today of little importance. 'See Genera! Motors Corporation. Cadillac Motor Division , 120 NLRB 1215. Swift & Company, 124 NLRB 50, relied on by the Company for a contrary result is distinguishable on the ground that the bargaining history of the master agreement negotiations , many provisions of the agreements themselves, and the scope of matters left for inclusion in local agreements were as indicative of the fact that the parties were engaged for their convenience in centralized negotiations for many separate units as of the 1096 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD tact that they were negotiating for one overall multiplant unit In these circumstances , the evidence that the bargaining representative had participated in numerous Board proceedings without urging that the separate plant units had become merged into one and had affirmatively argued for separate plant units , together with the parties' execution of a supplemental agreement providing for elimination from coverage by the master agreement of plants in which the certified representative subsequently lost its certification, precluded a finding that the parties had by work or deed mutually consented to a merger of the separately certified units In contrast , since the beginning of the bargaining relationship between the parties, "GE for all practical purposes has dealt with the IUE through its GE Conference Board as a de facto accredited bargaining representative of all IUE represented employees in a single overall bargaining unit" General Electric Company , 150 NLRB 192, 206, affirmed General Electric Company, 418 F 2d 736 (C A. 2) We reject General Electric ' s claim that it did not intend that which its practice demonstrates it accorded the Union, namely , recognition as the representative of employees in a single multiplant unit * U S GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1971 0-384-271 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation