Texas Instruments, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 5, 1963

145 N.L.R.B. 274 (N.L.R.B. 1963)

274 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Texas Instruments , Incorporated and International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers, Local Union No. 59, and United Asso-
ciation of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and
Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada, AFL-
CIO, Local 100 , Joint Petitioners . Case No. 16-RC-3309. De-
cember 5, 1963
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Louis L.
Vasse. The Hearing Officer's rulings are free from prejudicial error
and are hereby affirmed.'
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member
panel [Chairman McCulloch and Members Leedom 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 organizations involved claim to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer?
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9(c)(1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons:
The Employer is a diversified manufacturer of equipment and
products for military and civilian use in the electronic and instru-
mentation fields. Its corporate office and major production facilities
are located in Dallas, Texas, where 12,000 out of its total complement
of 18,000 persons, are employed. None of its employees in the Dallas
area is now represented by a labor organization, and there has been
no prior history of collective bargaining.
The unit or units sought in the petition consist of maintenance
electricians and plumber-pipefitters, either separately or combined,
who are employed in the plant engineering branch of the Semi-
Conductor Components Division, one of the four major operating fa-
cilities of the Company. At the hearing, the Joint Petitioners indi-
cated their willingness to represent various additional groups of
maintenance employees of the Semi-Conductor Components Division.
The Employer and IUE agree in urging that the instant petition
'As our decision to dismiss the petition is in accord with the Intervenor 's position, we
find that no prejudice has resulted to the Intervenor from the Hearing Officer's refusal to
grant it further continuances of the hearing.
2 International Union of Electrical , Radio, and Machine Workers, AFL-CIO, referred to
here as IUE, was permitted to intervene on the basis of a showing of interest.
145 NLRB No. 30.
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, INCORPORATED 275
should be dismissed because the employees sought are, in the first
instance, not craftsmen and because, in any event, all the units re-
quested are too limited in scope. The Employer urges that the only ap-
propriate unit should include all production and maintenance em-
ployees in its Dallas operations. IUE, however, although it does not
suggest 'what unit larger than those petitioned for might be ap-
propriate, does urge that units smaller than a Dallaswide production
and maintenance unit may also be appropriate.
The Employer is administratively organized into a number of op-
erating and service divisions. The four major operating divisions are
Semi-Conductor Components, Apparatus, Central Research and
Engineering, and Materials and Controls, referred to herein as S-C,
Apparatus, CR & E, and Materials Divisions, respectively. Each op-
erating division has a separate maintenance group attached to it. The
S-C Division manufactures transistors and resistors; the Materials
Division processes the metals and other raw materials used in the manu-
facture of all the Employer's products; the Apparatus Division is en-
gaged in seismic and industrial instrumentation work, in radar and
microwave assembly, and in all of the Employer's military contracts;
and CR & E is engaged in technological research, design, and in some
pilot plant production work.
The major portion of the Employer's manufacturing operations is
located in northwest Dallas at two principal sites, about 6 miles apart,
bordering on the North Central Expressway and on Lemmon Avenue.
The Expressway site consists of 300 acres on which the Employer has
erected six major buildings with a seventh at present under construc-
tion. Lemmon Avenue is a much smaller site and consists of a number
of contiguous buildings, spreading over two or three blocks. At the
present time, the S-C Division is located in the S-C building at the
Expressway, at some outlying buildings there, and at 6120 Lemmon
Avenue. The Apparatus Division is now located in 'a number of build-
ings ranging from 6000 to 6110 Lemmon Avenue, but is expected to
move into the new building at the Expressway when it is completed.
As noted above, each operating division has its own maintenance
force. The maintenance groups do not coincide exactly with the
operating divisions but are, rather, responsible for maintenance of all
plant and equipment in a particular group of buildings. Thus, the
S-C maintenance group is also referred to as Area 1 Maintenance,
with responsibility for all interior maintenance in the S-C building
and at 6120 Lemmon Avenue, performing its work for all divisions
which have employees housed there. Areas 2, 3, and 4 correspond
approximately to the Apparatus, CR & E, and Materials Divisions,
276 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
but since each of these divisions shares quarters with others, the area
maintenance groups may service more than one division 3
The various unit requests of the Joint Petitioners can best be under-
stood in terms of the organization and functions of the S-C mainte-
nance group. It has about 210 nonsupervisory employees, of whom
55 are maintenance mechanics, 98 are repair and maintenance techni-
cians, 35 are maids, janitors, and handymen, 8 are classified as main-
tenance mechanics but are in fact powerhouse operators, and the re-
mainder are clericals and storekeepers. The primary unit requested
is referred to as a craft unit. It would include about 30 maintenance
mechanics, organized into 5 working groups containing only elec-
tricians and pipefitters. They work out of electrical and pipefitting
shops in the S-C building at the Expressway, and are engaged mainly
in new installations and in the rearrangement of existing facilities
which require electrical and pipefitting connections. They run power-
lines and pipelines from the source of supply of electric power, gases,
water, steam, and air, between the first and second floors of the S-C
building to the production equipment on the second floor. These lines
are either installed along the back of the production area , leaving wall
outlets and valves for later connection, or the lines may be connected
directly to the machinery or equipment, in which case the electricians
and pipefitters make only the first such connection. The electricians
run conduit and cable, hook up motors, set transformers, tie in power
to production machinery, and work on energized lines carrying 480
volts. The pipefitters do layout work, thread, cut, fit, solder, and
braze pipe and tubing fabricated of various materials. They may be
assigned duties outside their specialties, but these appear to be rather
infrequent.
In thealternative, the Petitioners would add to the above unit those
employees in the S-C maintenance group who are considered to exhibit
other craft skills. This would add approximately 25 maintenance
mechanics who do carpentry, sheetmetal, and welding work, and those
employees engaged mainly in preventive maintenance of the heating
and air-conditioning systems, pumps, compressors, clock systems, gas
monitoring systems, and the equipment in the powerhouse. Some of
these mechanics have electrical or pipefitting skills.
As a second alternative, the Petitioners would go to an election in
what they regard as an appropriate departmental maintenance unit,
including in addition to the so-called craft maintenance mechanics,
the janitorial staff, the powerhouse operators, the toolroom supply
8 As a further example of the extent to which area and divisional lines overlap , we note
that the responsibilities of the Area 3 group include not only maintenance of the Research
building , where CR & E is quartered , but also the cafeterias in the S-C and Materials
buildings , the entire Central Utilities building, and exterior maintenance of all buildings
and grounds at the Expressway.
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, INCORPORATED 277
clerks, and the repair and maintenance technicians who constitute
almost half the complement of the S-C maintenance group. These
technicians maintain the machines that fabricate and assemble the
transistors and resistors which are the principal products of the S-C
Division. Each of the 11 crews has both electronic and mechanical
technicians whose function it is to test and calibrate the control devices
which are integral components of the production machinery and to
repair and maintain the machinery.
Although the nature of their duties is such that each of the above-
described sections of the S-C maintenance operations works alone most
of the time, there are occasions when individuals or crews from differ-
ent sections work together as a unit. This seems to be particularly true
of the electricians, pipefitters, and other maintenance mechanics whose
work may overlap that of the repair and maintenance technicians in
installing, repairing, or overhauling pieces of major equipment.
Maintenance groups of the other divisions also employ electricians,
pipefitters, and mechanics with other craft skills, as well as technician
specialists. The two major job families of maintenance mechanic and
repair and maintenance technician used in the S-C maintenance group
are the same classifications used throughout the Employer's operations
in the Dallas area. Temporary as well as permanent transfers, both
within and between the different divisional maintenance groups, occur
not only in a particular specialty such as electricians' work but also
between the maintenance mechanic and the repair and maintenance
technician classifications.
Wages, hours, working conditions, and benefits for all employees in
the Dallas area are established and administered uniformly. Stand-
ards for recruitment and selection of personnel, job evaluation, and
other aspects of the employment relationship are also centrally estab-
lished by. interdivisional committees. Management control is cen-
tralized in the president and executive vice president, assisted by an
Operations Committee which includes all the vice presidents in charge
of the various divisions. Certain facilities such as a central ware-
house, auto repairing and leasing, printing, and data processing are
shared by all divisions.
There is also considerable integration and interdependence of func-
tions and products of the major operating divisions. Raw materials
processed by Materials are used by S-C and Apparatus; production
begun on a pilot plant basis in CR R E may be transferred to another
division and components fabricated by S-C are used in subassemblies
of another division which may in turn be a component of a larger
system produced by a third division. To balance workloads, one
division may work on components, machine parts, and special tools
for others.
278 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Whether the Petitioners' proposed craft units or the various alter-
native departmental maintenance units may be appropriate depends
on whether the S-C Division constitutes so distinctive a segment of
the Employer's Dallas operations as to warrant its separate represen-
tation. If the S-C Division is not itself separable from the other
operating and service divisions of the Company, it follows that none of
its sections or subdivisions can be entitled to separate representation.
If only a multiplant unit is appropriate, a group of craftsmen or a
maintenance department at a single plant would not be appropriate.
The determinative issue in this case is, therefore, whether the S-C
Division alone could constitute an appropriate unit, and only if that
question is answered affirmatively would it be necessary to decide
whether narrower segments of such a unit would themselves be
appropriate.
We agree with the Employer and Intervenor that the S -C employees
share -a substantial community of interest with the production and
maintenance employees of the other divisions, in view of their geo-
graphical proximity, similarity of working conditions, the centralized
management and labor relations policies, and the substantial inter-
changes both of function and personnel between the divisions. The
S-C Division is not the equivalent of a single plant of a multiplant
employer, since it is not separated, either geographically or func-
tionally from the Employer's other facilities or buildings in the Dallas
area. Furthermore, although it is a distinct administrative segment
of the Employer's operations, its employees are neither engaged in
work which is dissimilar in nature from that performed for the other
divisions nor do they work under conditions which could create sub-
stantial differences between their interests and those of employees in
other divisions.
As all the units requested by the Petitioners are limited to the S-C
Division, we shall, based on the foregoing considerations, dismiss the
petition. We do not, however, hereby decide whether a unit of all
electricians and/or pipefitters who are employed in the companywide
Dallas operations would be an appropriate unit or units, or whether
a unit of maintenance employees of all the divisions would be appro-
priate under the criteria set out in American Cyanamid Company,
131 NLRB 909. We are also not deciding in this case that only a unit
consisting of all production and maintenance employees in the Dallas
area is appropriate. We leave for later consideration, based on a
record specifically addressed to that issue whether, as IUE suggests,
some kind of interdivisional unit, smaller than a companywide unit,
may also be appropriate.
[The Board dismissed the petition.]