The Boeing Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Feb 16, 1968

169 N.L.R.B. 916 (N.L.R.B. 1968)

916 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The Boeing Company and District Lodge No . 70, In-
ternational Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case
17-RC-5422
February 16, 1968
DECISION AND ORDER
By MEMBERS BROWN ,J ENKINS , AND ZAGORIA
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of
the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Hearing Officer Patrick E.
Rooney of the National Labor Relations Board.
Thereafter, the Employer and the Petitioner filed
briefs.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
Act, the Board has delegated its powers in connec-
tion 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. They are hereby af-
firmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, including the
briefs of the parties, 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. No question affecting commerce exists con-
cerning the representation of employees of the Em-
ployer within the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and
2(6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons:
The Petitioner requests that the Board direct a
single election for employees classified as tool lia-
sion employees and tool investigators at the Em-
ployer's Witchita, Kansas, division, to determine
their desires as to inclusion in a production and
maintenance unit which the Petitioner has
represented since 1940. Alternatively, the Peti-
tioner seeks a technical unit of these employees.
The Employer contends that the petition con-
travenes fundamental Board unit principles because
it seeks only a small segment of a much larger group
of unrepresented technical and clerical employees
who perform essentially the same type of work and
with whom the requested employees share a close
community of interest.
The Employer is engaged in the design, manufac-
ture, and modification of aircraft, aerospace, and
helicopter parts and assemblies at its Witchita Divi-
sion . At this site it currently employes some 20,000
employees, of whom 11,800 comprise the Peti-
tioner's production and maintenance unit, 340 un-
represented employees are classified as profes-
' The other employees , not involved in this proceeding , include 93 em-
ployees represented by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
100 guards represented by International Union of United Plant and
General Workers of America, 1,150 employees represented by Witchita
sional employees, and 4,400 unrepresented em-
ployees are classified as general salary technical
and office clerical emplovees.t The two iob categor-
ies of tool liaison employees and tool status in-
vestigators herein sought fall within the Employer's
general salary technical and office clerical em-
ployee classification and total approximately 150
employees.
The Employer's development and design opera-
tions commence with the Engineering Department,
which prepares drawings and specifications for the
products to be manufactured. These drawings and
specifications are then released to the tool and
production planning group within the manufactur-
ing department, where the technical planning for
both tools and production is carried out. The next
step is the development of the tools required to
build the product, which is performed by the tool
design shop within the tooling section. Each of
these phases involves general salary technical and
office clerical employees under the guidance and
direction of so-called professional technical em-
ployees. Following the completion of the tool
design, the plans and specifications are released to
a tool fabrication shop, manned by employees in the
production and maintenance unit, which is respon-
sible for producing tools that meet the plans and
specifications provided for them.
The function of the tool liasion employees herein
sought is to diagnose defectively planned, designed,
built, or operated tools and to prescribe a method
for their correction. In so doing, they are under the
direction of the tool liaison engineers, classified by
the Employer as professional technical employees.
Tool liaison employees' jobs commence upon their
receipt of an "Action Request" or a "Production
Tool Request" from the production supervisor, to
whom the tool liaison employees report in order to
initiate corrective action. Tool liaison employees
work up corrective drawings and designs, using
only pencil and paper. They perform no tool
production work and do not handle tools. While
they may spend up to 50 percent of their time in
contact with production and maintenance em-
ployees, such contacts concern the ascertainment
of tool defects, not the production or repair of tools.
On the other hand, tool liaison employees work in
close coordination and consultation with other
general salary technical and office clerical em-
ployees in the engineering, tool and production
planning, and tool design departments. Uncon-
troverted record evidence indicates that they per-
form substantially the same function for the tool
design shop that other general salary technical and
office clerical employees known as tool and produc-
tion planners and engineering liaison men perform
for the tool and production planning department
Engineering Association, 30 employees represented by International
Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs , Warehousemen and Helpers of
America, Local 795, and 2,100 unrepresented administrative -executive
employees.
169 NLRB No. 133
THE BOEING COMPANY 917
and the engineering department, respectively. It
further indicates that there are numerous other
general salary technical and office clerical em-
ployee categories performing functions analagous
to the tool liaison employees.2
The tool status investigators handle the paper-
work involved in keeping track of tools, including
the reporting of uncorrected delays in meeting tool
deadlines, arranging for the transportation of heavy
tools, reporting completed tool action, and perform-
ing special investigations. Like the tool liaison em-
ployees, the tool status investigators' jobs are com-
parable to those of several other categories of the
general salary technical and office clerical em-
ployees classification.3
Tool liaison employees require no formal techni-
cal training and are hired directly from production
areas or from the outside. After training by the Em-
ployer, they are required to make decisions of a
technical nature involving changes in design and
function not required of production and main-
tenance employees. Like the other members of the
general salary technical and office clerical classifi-
cation and unlike the production and maintenance
employees, they are salaried, have in-grade merit
pay scales, and pay part of their insurance program
premiums. The separately supervised plant depart-
ment where they work is almost entirely composed
of employees in the general salary technical and of-
fice classification.4
In these circumstances it is clear that the tool
liaison employees and the tool status investigators,
by reason of their similar functions, work interests,
and conditions of employment, have a close com-
munity of interest with the employees in the general
salary technical and office clerical classification,
with whom they perform work of a technical and
clerical nature substantially different in nature from
that of the production and maintenance employees.5
Whether, in view of their contacts with the produc-
tion and maintenance employees, they might also be
considered as having a sufficient community of in-
terests to warrant their inclusion in that unit, or
whether they might constitute a separate ap-
propriate unit, as alternatively requested, we need
not determine, as in either case they comprise but
a small segment of the Employer's total technical
and clerical work forces engaged in similar work.
Accordingly, we find inappropriate both the voting
group and the unit herein alternatively requested,
and we shall therefore dismiss the instant petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition herein
be, and the same hereby is, dismissed in its entirety.
2 These categories include tool engineers, tool analysts, tooling change
analysts, tooling layout checkers, tooling layout men, TMLO draftsmen,
TMLO loftsmen, tooling layout men, tool master layout men, draftsmen,
and tooling coordinators
3 These include assembly status men, shop status clerks, shop status
coordinators , equipment controller field and hanger men, electrical as-
sembly records clerks, manufacturing analysts assembly men, supplies
coordinators , and operation clerks
4 The tool liaison unit shop where they are assigned includes 15 tool ex-
pediters , in the production and maintenance unit , and 183 general salary
technical and office clerical or professional technical employees.
' See Sperry Piedmont Company, Division of Sperry Rand Corpora-
tion, 162 NLRB 857.
6 Bendix Corporation, Kansas City Division , 150 NLRB 718.