Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Co.

BELKNAP HARDWARE AND' MANUFACTURING COMPANY 157 The Petitioner now seeks to decertify the Intervenor as the collective bargaining representative of a group df employees consisting of lubri- cators, tire men, and wash and steam rack men. The record in this proceeding indicates that the group of employees designated in the petition for decertification are under common sliper- vision with the auto mechanics who perform maintenance work. In effect, therefore, the group of employees among whom the Petitioner seeks a decertification election constitutes an arbitrary segment of the Employer's maintenance department, at the Albuquerque operations. The Board will not find such a segment of a department an appro- priate unit.3 Furthermore, there is no evidence that these employees possess any special characteristics or separate interests that could serve as a basis for distinguishing them from the other employees with whom they work and making a determination that they constitilte an appropriate unit by themselves. Nor does the record indicate that they possess any special skills acquired by long training or through apprenticeship programs which would permit a finding that they constitute a separate craft group which could be found to be an appropriate unit. - We find, therefore, that the unit proposed by the Petitioner is not appropriate and accordingly we shall dismiss the petition 4 Order IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. s See, D B Thornton Co , 94 NLRB 1188. in view of our disposition of the petition it becomes unnecessary to discuss the question of contract bar, raised by the Intervenor 's motion to dismiss the petition , or the question of the validity of the union-security clause, found in the Intervenor 's contract with the Employer, raised by the Petitioner 's contentions. BELKNAP HARDWARE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY and INTERNA- TIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE WORKERS OF AMERICA, REGION No. 4, AMERICAN' FEDERATION OF LABOR, PETITIONER . Case No. 9-RC-1168. September 13,1951 Decision and Direction of Election Upon a petition duly filed under` Section 9 (c) of the National Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Lloyd R. Fraker, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereb'y 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 Herzog and Members Reynolds and Murdock]. 96 NLRB No. 19. 158 DECISIONS OF- NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Upon the entire record iri this case, the Board finds : 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 2. The Petitioner is a labor organization claiming to represent employees of the Employer. 3. A 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. 4. The appropriate unit : The Petitioner seeks to represent some 467 employees who are em- ployed in that part of the Employer's organization known as the operating division and who are engaged in receiving, warehousing, and shipping functions. The Petitioner contends as a basis for its unit request that all the employees covered by such unit are engaged primarily in some kind of manual labor and do little or no clerical or paper work.' The Petitioner does not seek to represent those employees who are engaged primarily in paper or clerical work and whose headquarters are generally on the eleventh floor of the building known as Warehouse No. 12, and referred to as the general adminis- trative offices division, nor does the Petitioner seek to represent cer- tain plant clerical warehouse employees. The Employer contends that the only appropriate unit is a single plant-wide unit of all its employees including those in the general and administrative offices division and in the buying and sales divi- sions, and claims as a basis therefor that : (1) All operations are under the supervision of the vice president and general manager; (2) there is one personnel department for hiring purposes under one personnel director; (3) unified labor policies, such as rates of pay and various employee benefits, are applicable to all employees; and (4) the opera- tions are closely integrated through frequent contacts and interchange between departments. There is no history of collective bargaining affecting the employees herein concerned. The Employer operates a wholesale hardware establishment in Louisville, Kentucky, where it employs some 1,600 persons. The 80,000 to 100,000 items of merchandise handled by this establishment and described in the Employer's annual catalogue of some 3,550 pages are sold to retail stores throughout the country. The operations re- quired for the handling of these sales are carried on in 15 buildings covering approximately 40 acres of floor space and are.divided into 4 main divisions consisting of (1) the administrative and general of- ' Petitioner seeks to represent the following departments which are in the operating divi- sion • Receiving, stock control, platform, order and stock, department x, department 6X, department 45, department 69, packing, cutlery, shipping, maintenance and carpentry, power plant, and repair shop. BE'LKNAP HARDWARE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY 159 fices, (2) buying, (3) sales, and (4) the operating division. On the eleventh floor of the building known as Warehouse No. 12, and cov- ering some 50,000 square feet, is the main office of the organization housing the administrative and general offices,2 the buying depart- ments, and certain sales departments. All the employees on the eleventh floor work side by side with no partitions indicating sepa- rate departments to which the various employees belong. With the exception of certain other floors reserved for related activities,3 all the remaining floors in this and the other buildings comprising the Employer's establishment are devoted to warehousing the merchan- dise handled, and to the receiving, shipping, and similar functions of the Employer's extensive operations. The Employer's business has two main functions: (1) A direct sales business in which sales are made directly to customers on the premises and (2) a mail order business which is derived from mail orders sent in by traveling or outside salesmen. The direct sales business resembles that of a retail department store in that after cus- tomers select merchandise from samples on the display floor, such mer- chandise is packed and shipped out to the customers. In the case of the mail order business, extensive clerical work is required. Upon receipt of the mail order it is sent to the order processing office located on the eleventh floor. There the copy of the order is given a depart- ment marking and sent to the particular warehouse stock department in which the required merchandise is located. Simultaneously with this operation, another copy of the order is checked by the traffic de- partment to determine shipping rates and routes. The various copies of the order are then returned to the order processing office for billing and statistical entries and for the completion of the other necessary paper work. The procedure followed in the processing of a mail order, as indi- cated above, is relied on by the Employer as supporting its unit con- tention based on functional integration. Thus, the Employer contends that certain employees in the order office processing and traffic depart- ments, who do paper work in connection with sending the order to the stock departments, and who indicate routes and freight rates, are as much involved in handling an order as are the warehouse em- ployees. We do not agree. Although there appears to be more contact between these employees and the warehouse employees than 2 The general and administrative offices include traffic, accounting , auditing, bonus, billing, sales and statistical, general files, tabulating machines, transcribing , treasury, general offices, and the order processing office departments. 3 The tenth floor of Warehouse No. 12 is used for a display floor and the first floor of the building houses the City Sales and Will-Call departments. The cafeteria is located on the twelfth floor. clhe Foreign Will-Call department is located on the first floor of Warehouse No. 6. 160 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD is the case among other groups,4 the employees in the order office proc- essing and traffic departments, who work on the eleventh floor to- gether with all the other office force, are not only engaged in functions distinctly different from those of the warehouse, but are also not ordinarily interchangeable with warehouse employees.5 Moreover, although all operations are under the over-all supervision of the vice president and general manager, the employees engaged in warehouse and related activities are included within the operating division un- der the separate supervision of the warehouse superintendent. Fur- thermore, and of particular significance in our opinion, is the fact that the warehouse employees are subject to substantially different working conditions. Thus, for example, the eleventh floor employees are under a 40-hour week, arrive at a later hour for work, enjoy a longer lunch period, and in the great majority of cases punch no time clocks. The warehouse employees, on the other hand, are subject to a 44-hour week, arrive earlier to work, have a shorter lunch period, and punch time clocks four times a day.e The operating division employees sought by the Petitioner are essentially all the Employer's warehousing and stock handling em- ployees. With the possible exception of a few employees in the order office processing department, no other employees regularly perform work comparable to that done by the employees in the proposed unit. On the basis of these facts, and on the entire record in this case, in- cluding the lack of a community of interest on the part of these em- ployees and the general office employees and in the absence of a bargaining history on a broader basis, we find that the operating division employees constitute an appropriate unit.' The Employer urges, nevertheless, that the Board's decisions in the Richmond Dry Goods case 8 and the Grossman Department Store * The Employer emphasizes the fact that stock counters , who are assigned to and super- vised by the various buying departments, spend a substantial part of time in the stock- rooms, counting stock and taking inventory for the benefit of the buyers . However, these stock counters perform no warehouse functions and while making inventories are under the supervision of the buying departments . The Employer also contends that the unit con- trol clerks, who assist buyers through correspgndence and other means in the purchase of merchandise, spend some time in the stockrooms and are therefore functionally integrated with the warehouse employees. We -find no merit in the Employer's position that inte- gration exists because of the physical presence of stock counters and unit control clerks in the warehouse, where they have occasions to perform their functions. 5 Although the evidence shows considerable interchange between employees in the various warehouse departments, there is no such regular interchange between the office force and the warehouse departments . Such interchange as exists is limited to emergency situations where all employees including warehouse employees may be required to work anywhere in the plant e Bodeker Drug Co., Inc, 93 NLRB No. 84 ; Gaylord Bros., Inc., 64 NLRB 1350. "Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc., 91 NLRB 366; 85 NLRB 976; 89 NLRB 528; 50 NLRB 163; Sears, Roebuck & Co, 82 NLRB 985; Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company, 71 NLRB 699; Cohn-Hall Marx Company, 86 NLRB 101; Associated Wholesalers, 92 NLRB 542; Rockwood Pottery, Division of Sperti, Inc., 89 NLRB 1349. 8 Richmond Dry Goods Company, Inc., 93 NLRB 663. , BE'LKNAP HARDWARE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY 161 cases require a finding that only an over-all unit is appropriate. We do not agree. In the Richmond case, we found that the integration there existing together with the fact that the proposed warehouse- men's unit sought to include certain clerical employees and exclude others, precluded a separation of the nonselling from the selling em- ployees. In the present case, however, there is a clear separation of office and sales functions from those of the warehousemen and such contacts as exist do not require the inclusion of the office personnel with the warehousemen. Although in the Grossman, case the Board likewise denied a requested separate unit of sales employees, the de- cision was based on the fact that the Board found a functional into- gration and mutuality of interest between all the department store employees and also on the fact that the unit sought did not con- stitute a homogeneous group of employees performing distinct func- tions. The evidence in the present case shows that the employees engaged in essentially warehousing functions constitute a homoge- neous group such as is entitled to separate representation. Although as indicated above, the Petitioner seeks essentially an operating division unit, the Petitioner does not wish to include certain plant clericals, as it considers that only those engaged in manual or physical labor may qualify for inclusion within the unit. The Board has, however, customarily held that plant clericals working side by side with production employee's under the same supervision and working conditions have such a community of interest that they may not be separated for purposes of collective bargaining. We shall, therefore, include all plant clericals in the unit hereinafter found appropriate 10 ' We find that all employees in the operating division of the Em- ployer at its Louisville, Kentucky, plant, including the employees in the departments relating to receiving, stock control, platform, order and stock, cutlery, packing, shipping, maintenance and carpentry, power plant, repair shop, and employees in Department X, 6X, 45, and 69, but excluding the buying, sales, administrative, and general office employees, the cafeteria employees, professional employees, con- fidential employees, guards, lead men,11 stockmen' 12 and all other s Grossman Department Goods, Inc., 90 NLRB No. 745. (Unpublished.) 10 As the Petitioner's showing of interest appears to be sufficient in the broader unit we have found appropriate, we shall not dismiss the petition. Cf. Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc., 11 NLRB 366, supra.' 11 The Employer would include and the Petitioner exclude all employees classified as lead men in the various departments of the warehouse. The evidence shows that the lead men, who until recently were classified as, foremen, are and have been regarded as foremen by the production. workers in the warehouse and that they responsibly direct the work of the production employees. On this record, we shall therefore exclude the r ead men as supervisors. 11 The Employer- would include and the Petitioner exclude the stockmen'. The evidence indicates that stockmen are responsible for the work flow, and the Employer concedes that stockmen are the key men in their various departments. Because it appears that the stockmen responsibly direct employees in their respective groups, we exclude them as supervisors. 162 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD supervisors 13 as defined in the Act, constitute a unit appropriate for the purpose of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9 (b) of the Act. [Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this volume.] is The record indicates that assistant supervisors are in charge of their respective depart- ments only in the absence of the supervisors , such as in illness or during vacations, and that they also carry out the orders of the supervisors when the latter are required to go elsewhere in the plant. As the evidence fails to show that the assistant supervisors regu- larly and frequently substitute for the supervisors , they are included in the unit as employees without supervisory status. Humboldt Full Fashioned Hosiery Mills, Inc., 90 NLRB No. 99. THE ELYRIA TELEPHONE COMPANY and COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA, CIO, PETITIONER . Case No. 8-RC-1263. September 13,1951 Decision and Direction of Election Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National -Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Carroll L. Martin, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing 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 [Members Houston, Murdock, and Styles.] Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds : 1. The Employer 1 is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 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 Section 9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act. 4. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of all the employees of the Employer, including office and clerical employees, but excluding professional employees, confidential employees, guards, and super- visors as defined in the Act. The Employer contends that the office and clerical employees should be established as a separate unit or be granted a self-determination election. The parties are in further disagreement as to the unit placement of certain other categories discussed below. O fjice and clerical employees: The Employer is a telephone com- pany, with its main plant and offices at Elyria, Ohio. Its operations 1 The name of the Employer appears in the caption as stipulated at the hearing. 96 NLRB No. 21.