J. W. Robinson Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 30, 1965

153 N.L.R.B. 989 (N.L.R.B. 1965)

J. W. ROBINSON CO. 989
employment, we find that in the circumstances of this case they are
entitled to a self-determination election before being added to the
existing bargaining unit.
We base this conclusion on the following factors : The functions of
cleaning and sanding bobbins and of copper dissolving, deironing, and
filtration were in existence at the time of the Board certification in
1952. At that time these functions were being performed by former
supervisors who had become production employees. After the certifi-
cation until the present time, this work had been performed by salaried
production employees. The Petitioner made no effort to represent
these employees until 14 years after the Board certification. Neither
the contract executed pursuant to the certification nor any subsequently
executed contracts include salaried production employees. In fact, the
Petitioner has in the past specifically demanded the work be performed
by hourly employees rather than seeking to represent the employees
doing the work.
In view of the foregoing, and upon the entire record, we find that
the petition for clarification raises a question concerning representa-
tion which may not be resolved through a clarification of the existing
unit. The proper procedure is a petition pursuant to Section 9 (c) of
the Act seeking, an election. We shall therefore grant the Employer's
request that the Petitioner's petition be denied.4
[The Board denied the petition to amend and clarify certification.]
• Sterilon Corporation, 147 NLRB 219.
Associated Dry Goods Corporation d/b/a J. W . Robinson Co.'
and New Furniture & Appliance Drivers, Warehousemen &
Helpers, Local 196, affiliated with the International Brother-
hood of Teamsters , Chauffeurs, Warehousemen & Helpers of
America, Petitioner. Case No. f1-RC-8508. June 30,1965
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer
Barton W. Robertson. The Hearing Officer's rulings made at the
hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to Section 3(b) of the Act, the National Labor Relations
Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel [Chairman McCulloch and Members Brown and
Jenkins].
1 The name of the Employer appears as amended at the hearing.
153 NLRB No. 117.
990 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Upon the entire record in this case,2 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 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.
4. The Petitioner seeks a unit of all warehousemen, stockmen, mark-
ers, shipping and receiving clerks, furniture repairmen and finishers,
order fillers, and forklift operators employed at the Employer's serv-
ice building located at 910 East 61st Street, Los Angeles, California.3
The Employer contends that the unit sought is too restricted in scope
and is based solely upon the extent of the Petitioner's organization
which, as a controlling factor in the Board's determination, is pro-
hibited by the Act. There appears to be no bargaining history for the
employees here involved.
The Employer is engaged in the operation of a retail department
store enterprise in and around Los Angeles, California. Its opera-
tions consist of six department stores and a central warehouse or service
building. The Employer's downtown Los Angeles store is its largest
store; other stores are located in Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Panorama
City, Anaheim, and Palm Springs. The service building is located in
Los Angeles, about 5 miles from the downtown store, the closest of the
six stores, and about 150 miles from the Palm Springs store, the one
most distant of the six from the warehouse.
Approximately 85 employees in the service building engage in typi-
cal warehousing activities, including the receiving, marking, and stor-
ing of goods and the loading and delivery of goods to the various
stores, and also the wrapping and shipping of goods direct to customers
upon directions received from the various stores. In addition, service
building employees engage in furniture repair and refinishing, fur
storage, and preparation of merchandise for shipment by United
Parcel Service.
The Employer also engages in certain warehousing activities at its
department stores. Thus the downtown store receives goods, not only
for sale at that location, but also for transfer to other stores. Each of
the stores has transfer docks for the receipt of goods from the service
building or downtown store, with employees engaged in receiving clerk
functions and in checking and marking functions. Each of the stores
also has employees classified as porters. In addition, the downtown
2 The Employer and the Petitioner filed briefs with the Board which have been fully
considered by the Board in making its decision in this case
3 The description of the unit appears as amended at the hearing.
J. W. ROBINSON CO. 991
store has 11 employees who perform packing and wrapping functions,
employees classified as supply clerks, and several employees classified
as IBM keypunch operators. Finally, the truckdrivers who transport
the goods from the service building and main building to other loca-
tions report to the downtown store and are carried on that store's
payroll .4
The Employer's operations are divided into 89 merchandising or sell-
ing departments, each selling different types of merchandise. Receiv-
ing, checking, and marking functions for 28 of the 89 merchandising
departments are performed at the downtown store; while similar func-
tions for 25 of the 89 merchandising departments are performed at the
service building. Receiving, marking, and checking for the remainder
of the departments is done at all store locations. Forty selling depart-
ments have stock regularly stored in the downtown store, while only
17 have merchandise regularly stored at the service building.
The operations of the service building are conducted under the day-
to-day supervision of Warehouse Superintendent Peterson, Assistant
Superintendent Galloway, two area managers, and at least two other
supervisors, Ball and Hale. All receiving, checking, and marking
employees in the warehouse work under the immediate supervision of
Ball who in turn reports directly to Peterson. Employees on the trans-
fer dock and in the furniture room, as well as the packers, craters, sup-
ply clerks, porters, fur storage employees, delivery truck loaders, and
IBM keypunch operator, work under the jurisdiction of Galloway.
The area managers are first-line supervisors who assist Galloway in
the overall supervision of the warehouse. The record shows that cer-
tain supervisors located in the downtown store have functional respon-
sibility for certain warehouse operations. However, actual supervision
of employees in the service building lies strictly with Peterson, Gallo-
way, and their assistants.
The Employer contends that buyers located at the main store super-
vise employees in the service building. Buyers who are required to
visit the service building do so infrequently-not more than once a
month-except at certain peak periods; e.g., the holiday seasons and
during inventory. Otherwise, their only contact with their respective
stockmen is by telephone to discuss their own merchandise. A buyer
may report his dissatisfaction with one of the stockmen to Peterson or
Galloway, and there is testimony of a buyer's reprimand of a stock
employee in the service building for calling him "Buddy" or
"Daddy-O." However, there is also testimony by a service building
employee that he asked Galloway "if he had to listen to a lot of guff
from the toy buyer" and was told "definitely not, if she calls out here
... you refer to me. I am still running this warehouse...." The day-
' Petitioner does not seek to represent the truckdrivers.
992 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
to-day assignment and transfer of employees within the service build-
ing from one function to another is, for the most part, the responsibil-
ity of the service building supervisors. Thus, a buyer may occasionally
instruct an employee on how to rearrange his particular stock, but can-
not transfer an employee from one function to another without first
clearing such move with Galloway. Since only some 17 of the 89
departments in the division have merchandise stored in the service
building, most buyers, and the divisional merchandise managers to
whom they in turn are responsible, have no contact whatsoever with
the service building. On the basis of the foregoing, we reject the
Employer's contention that buyers supervise employees involved in
this case within the meaning of the Act.
The record does not reflect any significant amount of interchange
between employees in the service building and those in the division's
six stores. Further, the exhibits submitted by the Employer reflect
approximately 20 permanent transfers of employees between the down-
town store and the service building during 1962 and 1963. The exhib-
its also reflect only 16 temporary transfers, some for as little as 4 hours,
between the service building and the downtown store during a 3-month
period.
A separate unit of warehousing employees is presumptively appro-
priate where (1) the warehousing operation involved is geographically
separated from its retail store operations; (2) there is separate super-
vision of employees engaged in the warehousing functions; and (3)
there is no substantial integration among the warehousing employees
and those engaged in other functions a In the recent Sears Roebuck
decision,' the Board ruled that the tests set forth in A. Harris did not
require that all employees engaging in warehousing functions, what-
ever their location, must be included in a single unit, in order to find
a separate unit of warehousing employees to be appropriate for pur-
poses of collective bargaining.
On the record as a whole, it appears that there is a distinct geo-
graphic separation between the service building and each of the stores;
the warehouse superintendent and his assistants at the service build-
ing exercise direct and immediate supervision over the operation and
its personnel; interchange and transfer of employees is insignificant;
and there does not appear to be a bargaining history or a request by
any labor organization for a larger bargaining unit. Moreover, it
appears that the unit requested includes all employees employed at the
service building, and that certain functions performed by those employ-
ees, such as furniture repair and refinishing, fur storage, and prepara-
tion of merchandise for delivery by United Parcel Service, are not per-
A llarns S Co. 116 NLRB 1628 Sears . uoebucS and Co, 151 NLRB 1356, of
Stewart d Co.. 139 NLRB 342
6 Supra, footnote 4.
LOCAL 895, INT'L BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, ETC. 993
formed at any of the Employer's other locations. Thus, it appears
that the conditions laid down in both the Harris case and the more
recent Sears Roebuck case, supra, for the finding of an appropriate
warehouse unit are met herein. We find, therefore, that the employees
in the Employer's service building have a separate community of inter-
est and that there is nothing in the Act or in our past decisions to pre-
clude the establishment of the service building employees in a separate
bargaining unit.
We find that the following employees constitute a unit appropriate
for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Sec-
tion9(b) of the Act:
All warehousemen, stockmen, checkers, markers, shipping and receiv-
ing clerks, furniture repairmen and finishers, order fillers, and forklift
operators employed at the Employer's service building located at 910
East 61st Street, Los Angeles, California, excluding office clerical
employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication.]
Local 895, International Brotherhood of Teamsters , Chauffeurs,
Warehousemen and Helpers of America and its Agent Dean
Fox; and Local 294, International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America and its
Agents Nicholas Robilotto and Howard Bennett and Eastern
New York Construction Employers, Inc. Case No. 3-CC-268.
July 1, 1965
DECISION AND ORDER
On November 6, 1964, Trial Examiner Stanley N. Ohlbaum issued
his Decision in the above-entitled proceeding, finding that the
Respondents had engaged in certain unfair labor practices alleged in
the complaint and recommending that they cease and desist therefrom
and take certain affirmative action. The Trial Examiner further found
that the Respondents had not engaged in certain unfair labor prac-
tices alleged in the complaint and recommended that the complaint be
dismissed with respect to those allegations, all as set forth in the
attached Trial Examiner's Decision. Respondents, Local 294, Nicho-
las Robilotto, and Howard Bennett,' file joint exceptions to the
1 The answer to the complaint herein states in part:
Now coMms , Local 294, International Brotherhood of Teamsters , Chauffeurs, Ware-
housemen and Helpers of America and its Agents Nicholas Robilotto and Walter [sic]
Bennett and states ... .
This is sufficient in our view to constitute an appearance of the named agents of Local
294 in this proceeding. We also note that at no time has this appearance been withdrawn,
153 NLRB No. 81.
796-027-66-vol. 153-64