St. Joseph's Infirmary

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Nov 29, 1971

194 N.L.R.B. 356 (N.L.R.B. 1971)

356 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Extendicare of Kentucky, Inc., d/b/a St. Joseph's
Infirmary and Service Employees International
Union, AFL-CIO, Local 557, Petitioner. Case
9-RC-8958
November 29, 1971
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS JENKINS
AND KENNEDY
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing
was held before Hearing Officer Edward C. Verst of
the National Labor Relations Board.
Following the hearing and pursuant to Section
102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules
and Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series
8, as amended, by direction of the Regional Director
for Region 9, the case was transferred to the Board for
decision. Briefs have been filed by the Employer and
the Petitioner.
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 Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing
are free from prejudicial error, and are, hereby
affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is a Delaware corporation
engaged in the operation of a large proprietary
hospital at Louisville, Kentucky. The parties have
stipulated, and we find, that the Employer is engaged
in commerce within the meaning of the Act, and we
further find that 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(c)(1) and
Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act.
4. Petitioner seeks to represent a unit described as
all employees in the Employer's dietary (food),
maintenance (engineering), laundry, and housekeep-
ing departments, and also surgery aides, excluding all
clerical, technical, and professional employees,2
supervisors within the meaning of the Act, and all
employees charged with patient care. Specifically
agreed to be excluded from the unit sought by
Petitioner were any employees falling within the
classifications of orderlies, surgical technicians, labo-
ratory helpers, licensed practical nurses, registered
nurses and nurses aides.
The Employer contends that only an overall unit of
all its hospital employees, whether or not their
principal function is dealing directly with patients, is
appropriate. In this regard the Employer contends
particularly that Petitioner has not produced ade-
quate evidence to demonstrate that employees in the
proposed unit constitute a functionally distinct group
of employees who have a sufficient community of
interest to be established as a separate unit for
collective-bargaining purposes. The Employer also
argues that even if this contention is rejected,
fragmentation of the overall unit into any smaller
units should be denied because the likelihood of
strikes which would imperil life in hospitals would be
increased thereby.
Petitioner replies that employees in the requested
unit constitute a distinct and homogeneous service
and maintenance unit which provides basic suppor-
tive services to the employees who essentially provide
the hospital's principal service, patient care and thus
comprise an appropriate unit.
The record shows that the Employer employs about
100 employees in its dietary department. They work in
the main kitchen, cafeteria, coffee shop, and washete-
ria areas. They are responsible for preparing food for
patients, hospital personnel, and others. Dietary
department employees deliver all food prepared for
patients on heated thermal trucks to nursing stations
on the hospital floors. From such locations it is
delivered to the patients by Nursing Service Depart-
ment personnel. After patients have eaten, their trays
are picked up by nursing service personnel and
returned to the thermal trucks, which are returned to
the dietary department by dietary employees.
About 35 maintenance employees in such classifica-
tions as plumber, electrician, gardener, yardman, and
air-conditioning mechanic are employed in the
Employer's engineering department. They work
throughout the hospital maintaining its equipment'
and grounds. Much of their time is spent in shops
located in the basement of the main building or in a
separate building which houses the laundry, where
they repair and maintain equipment.
In the laundry department the Employer employs
about 50 employees sorting, washing, drying, and
ironing the goods and linens which are used through-
out the hospital, and delivering them to storage areas.
There are about 65 employees in the Employer's
housekeeping department, who clean patients' rooms,
' The Employer declined to stipulate that Petitioner was a labor 2 The parties have stipulated that all registered nurses, registered
organization within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act , but the record pharmacists, and registered radiologists in the X-ray department are
clearly shows that Petitioner meets the necessary statutory criteria. professional employees within the meaning of Section 2(12) of the Act.
194 NLRB No. 51
ST. JOSEPH'S INFIRMARY 357
as well as surgery, delivery, and recovery rooms, and
who move beds and clean carpets and wax and buff
floors and major hallways. Housekeeping employees
are directed by supervisors of their own department,
and not by nursing personnel.
In addition to the above-named departments which
Petitioner would include within its service and
maintenance unit, it requests the inclusion of "surgery
aides." However, at the hearing Petitioner agreed that
"nurses aides" were to be excluded from the proposed
unit, and the record shows that "surgery aides" are
merely nurses aides with some additional training,
who tend to patients prior to surgery. There are also
eight employees in the dispatch service department
who operate the mailroom and distribution center,
and make regular messenger runs throughout the
hospital delivering papers, supplies, and samples, as
well as such documents as patients' charts and
laboratory reports. Petitioner is willing either to
include these employees in the requested unit as
service employees or to exclude them therefrom on
the ground that their duties are more like those of
excluded office clerical employees.
The Employer would include, in the overall unit it
contends is appropriate, either all other nonprofes-
sional and nonclerical employees in the hospital; or in
the alternative it would also include a considerable
number of employees who perform clerical services in
a variety of departments or units performing mostly
administrative functions.3
The Employer contends that the unit sought is not
appropriate because it has not been demonstrated by
Petitioner that the employees who would comprise it
are functionally distinct from employees in the overall
unit, or have substantially more of a community of
interest with each other than with employees in the
overall unit. The Employer also contends that
employees in all departments constitute an integral
unit supplying a continuous flow of emergency,
diagnostic, medical, surgical, and other services to
patients, and should not be fragmented by establish-
ing a smaller unit such as is here requested, because of
the danger that work stoppages would be more likely
to occur, thus increasing danger to the welfare or life
of patients requiring continuity of care and properly
functioning equipment.
In contending that the requested unit is not
appropriate because the grouping of employees
requested to be included therein is not functionally
distinct, the Employer points out that housekeeping
employees sometimes work with nursing service
department employees in cleaning up a mess created
in a patient's room, that dietary employees bring to
nursing units the exact foods ordered by physicians,
that maintenance and laundry employees work
throughout the hospital repairing equipment in, or
delivering laundry to, a variety of departments. The
Employer also notes that many departments in the
hospital, some of which would be included in and
some excluded from the unit requested by Petitioner,
combine unskilled employees with employees possess-
ing varying degrees of skill, so that the requested unit
should not in the Employer's view be found appropri-
ate on the basis of any difference in employee skills.
Accordingly, the Employer contends that in the
present case, as in a prior proceeding4 where the
union requested an overall unit, only an overall unit
should be found appropriate. We find no merit in this
position.
The record shows generally that the employees who
comprise the unit sought by Petitioner have a
sufficient community of interest, distinct and apart
from the other employees that the Employer would
include in an overall unit, so that they constitute an
appropriate separate bargaining unit of service and
maintenance employees. In this regard the record
shows that the employees in the unit requested
provide support type services to other employees in
such hospital departments (or units) as emergency
service, nursing service, intensive care, and physical
therapy, and in the surgery suite and central sterile
supply. These latter employees we find, on the basis of
the particular facts disclosed by the present record,
have particular duties which in their details are more
closely related to or concerned with the many facets
of proper patient care as provided in a major medical
center, than are the duties of the dietary, housekeep-
ing, laundry, and maintenance employees Petitioner
seeks to represent in a service and maintenance unit.
We find, however, that such a service and mainte-
nance unit should also include the dispatch service
department employees, about eight in number, who
operate the mailroom and distribution center, and
who make regularly scheduled trips throughout the
hospital delivering paper, supplies and samples, and
documents such as patients' charts and laboratory
reports. Further, we find no basis for including in a
service and maintenance unit the surgical aides
requested by Petitioner. At the hearing Petitioner
conceded that nurses aides should be excluded from
the unit it sought. The record shows that surgical aides
are essentially nurses aides who work in surgery,
3 The more limited overall unit sought by the Employer would include care, in accounting, admitting , business services, data preparation , medical
employees charged with patient care in central sterile supply emergency , records, personnel , public relations, reservations , and social services.
intensive care , laboratory , nursing services, pharmacy, physical therapy, 4 Butte Medical Properties, d/b/a Medical Center Hospital, 168 NLRB
radio therapy and x-ray; whereas the broader alternative overall unit 266.
would include also all employees, in addition to those charged with patient
358 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
attending patients prior to their operations. Accord-
ingly, we shall exclude surgical aides from the service
and maintenance unit which, as modified above, we
hereby find to be appropriate.
The Employer and Petitioner disagree about the
supervisory status of a number of employees, namely
Shreck, chief electrician in the maintenance depart-
ment; Perry, who each day works several hours in
place of Chief Cook Green; Carr, Payton, Sinchorn,
and Wise, who work in the dietary department;
Washburn, Gilhouse, and two others were not named,
who work in the housekeeping department directing
crews engaged in cleaning and disinfecting patients'
rooms as they are vacated; Hester and Thorton, who
direct crews which clean rooms on a regular daily
basis; and Perkins, who is in charge of two employees
and has the responsibility of seeing to it that drapes
are cleaned and broken furniture is promptly re-
moved from patients' rooms. We do not deem the
present record to be sufficiently clear to enable us to
determine whether the aforementioned individuals
are supervisors as Petitioner contends or employees as
the Employer argues. Under such circumstances we
shall permit all 13 aforementioned individuals to vote
subject to challenge in the election directed herein.
The Employer and Petitioner also disagree about
whether Betty Henry, in the dietary department, is a
supervisor. Henry, an administrative dietitian, works
directly under the director of the dietary department.
She has the authority to responsibly direct kitchen
personnel and to determine their particular work
assignments, as well as to discipline such personnel
when necessary. We find that Henry is a supervisor
within the meaning of Section 2(11) of the Act, as
Petitioner contends.
Accordingly, we find that the following employees
of the Employer constitute a unit appropriate for the
5 In order to assure that all eligible voters may have the opportunity to
be informed of the issues in the exercise of their statutory right to vote, all
parties to the election should have access to a list of voters and their
addresses which may be used to communicate with them. Excelsior
Underwear Inc, 156 NLRB 1236; N.L.R.B v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U.S.
759. Accordingly, it is hereby directed that an election eligibility list,
containing the names and addresses of all the eligible voters, must be filed
purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning
of Section 9(b) of the Act:
All employees employed by the Employer at its
Louisville, Kentucky, location in the dietary,
housekeeping, laundry, maintenance
(engineering), and dispatch service departments,
including cooks, tray girls, maids, laundry and
maintenance employees, janitors, storekeepers
and groundskeepers, but excluding surgical aides,
nurses aides, orderlies, surgical technicians, surgi-
cal licensed vocational nurses, licensed vocational
nurses, laboratory helpers, registered nurses, li-
censed practical nurses, and all other employees
not employed in the dietary, housekeeping, laun-
dry, maintenance, and dispatch service depart-
ments, office clerical employees, guards, profes-
sional employees, and supervisors as defined in the
Act.
[Direction of Elections omitted from publication.]
MEMBER KENNEDY, dissenting:
Contrary to my colleagues, it is my view that the
unit in which the election is directed is inappropriate.
I view the unit found appropriate here as essentially a
heterogeneous grouping of departments. It does not
appear to correspond to any recognized organization-
al structure or line of supervision of the Employer. I
cannot see any separate and distinct community of
interest, including skills, that such employees as the
dietary and housekeeping personnel may have with
such employees as the plumbers, electricians, etc., of
the maintenance department, which is lacking in the
cases of nurses aides, orderlies, etc. It is the employees
of the nursing service, not the mechanics, plumbers,
and plasterers, with which the housekeeping and
dietary personnel work in close contact and must
collaborate with in the care of the immediate needs of
patients. I would adhere to the Board's Decision in the
Butte Medical Properties case.
by the Employer with the Regional Director for Region 9 within 7 days of
the date of this Decision and Direction of Election. The Regional Director
shall make the list available to all parties to the election . No extension of
time to file this list shall be granted by the Regional Director except in
extraordinary circumstances. Failure to comply with this requirement shall
be grounds for setting aside the election whenever proper objections are
filed.