North American Aviation, Inc.

NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION, INC. 399 North American Aviation, Inc. and International Union of Oper- ating Engineers, Local 501, AFL-CIO,' Petitioner North American Aviation, Inc. and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO,2 Petitioner. Cases Nos. 21- RC-6543 and 21-RC-6545. May 2, 1961 DECISION AND ORDER Upon petitions duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, a consolidated hearing was held before Louis S. Eber- hardt, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hear- ing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in these cases, 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 repre- sentation of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Sec- tion 9(c) (1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons: The Employer is engaged in the research, development, and manu- facture of airframes, missiles, rocket engines, nuclear reactors, and components parts at its various plants and facilities throughout the United States. Its operations in the Los Angeles area are divided into five operating divisions : Los Angeles, Missile, Autonetics, Rock- etdyne, and Atomics International. IBEW seeks a unit composed of all research and development em- ployees at the Employer's Atomics International division. IUOE seeks a unit of all unrepresented production and maintenance em- ployees at the Employer's Santa Susana facility.' Both UAW and the Employer contend that the requested units are inappropriate and that both petitions should be dismissed. With respect to the IBEW petition, there are 362 employees in the unit requested. These employees are engaged mainly in the machining and fabrication of nuclear reactors and related laboratory apparatus. All of these employees work for the Atomics Interna- ' Herein called IUOE. 8 Herein called IBEW. 8 International Union, United Automobile , Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America , AFL-CIO (herein called UAW), intervened on the basis of a showing of interest. A During the course of the hearing, the petition of the International Welders Union, requesting a unit of all welders at Santa Susana , which had been consolidated with the other petitions, was severed upon the signing of an agreement for consent election be- tween the Employer and the Welders. Thereupon , IUOE and IBEW amended their peti- tions to exclude welders. 131 NLRB No. 52. 400 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD tional division, 187 of them at Santa Susana, and the rest at Canoga Park, which is about 8 miles from Santa Susana. The Santa Susana employees do not work together, but work in a large number of geographically separate locations at the 1,600-acre facility. IBEW contends that each of the Employer's divisions is a self- contained industrial unit and that the work of the Atomics Interna- tional division is so different from the work of the Employer's other Los Angeles divisions that there is no community of interest be- tween the research and development employees of Atomics Interna- tional and the other employees of the Employer. However, the Em- ployer adduced considerable evidence to show the high degree of centralization and integration of its Los Angeles operations both at the executive office and plant level. The Employer's general office has sole responsibility for the Employer's legal and accounting affairs, labor negotiations and personnel administration, wage and salary con- trols, and numerous other matters all-of which are uniform through- out the Los Angeles area. Each division manager is a vice president of the Employer and reports to the executive vice president of the Employer who is responsible for the coordination of various divi- sional activities. Furthermore, the Employer's various divisions do not operate as self-contained industrial units. The specific research and develop- ment areas that the Employer works in are centrally determined and then are assigned to the one or more divisions of the Employer that are best staffed and equipped for the work. There is also a substan- tial amount of interdivisional work authorizations in the Los Angeles area. In fiscal 1958, these authorizations totaled nearly $98,000,000 and in fiscal 1959 they rose to nearly $132,000,000. Not only is the same type of work performed at several divisions, but a number of specific types of work are performed by one division for all the others. Although IBEW contended that the work performed by Atomics International employees on radioactive materials placed them in a special category deserving of separate representation, there was evi- dence that employees of all the Los Angeles area divisions work in the field of nuclear energy and work on or with radioactive materials. Furthermore, the safety and health regulations that must be com- plied with by the Atomics International research and development employees are not unique but rather are the same as regulations gov- erning all employees who deal with radioactive materials. The Em- ployer has Atomic Energy Commission licenses for all its divisions permitting each division to obtain, use, and dispose of radioactive materials. The Employer also has a radiological safety officer in each division. The majority of the employees sought by IBEW are located at the Santa Susana facility which the Board has found to be an integral NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION, INC. 401 -part of the Employer's Los Angeles area operations 6 Since that Board determination in 1958, Santa Susana has become an even more integrated part of the Employer's operations. Employees at Santa Susana work in the same departments and under the same supervision as employees at the Employer's facilities in Canoga Park. In fact, there are no department heads at Santa Susana; all are located at Canoga Park. The record shows that there are 174 employees in the proposed IBEW unit who hold job classifications that are not in existence in any other plant or facility of the Employer. On the other hand, there are 1,401 unrepresented employees in 45 departments in the Employ- er's various Los Angeles divisions who hold the same job classifica- tions as a number of the employees in -the proposed IBEW unit. Furthermore, there are 1,980 represented employees in 111 depart- ments in the Employer's various Los Angeles divisions who hold the same job classifications as a number of the employees in the proposed IBEW unit. All employees holding the same job classification have similar skills and work with the same tools regardless of the plant, facility, or division in which they work. Employees are freely transferred between facilities and divisions in the Los Angeles area so as to permit the most efficient utilization of manpower. Between July 1, 1959, and June 29, 1960, there have been 79 movements of employees to the proposed IBEW unit and 39 move- ments of employees from the proposed unit. A total of 101 of the 362 employees sought by IBEW have a work record in at least one other division of the Employer. Much of the work performed by employees in the proposed IBEW unit does not differ in any significant degree from work performed by other represented and unrepresented employees of the Employer. Of the 25 job titles covering the employees in the IBEW petition, 11 are the same as job titles recognized by the Employer in its current collective-bargaining agreement with UAW. As the Employer's re- search and development work reaches the production stage, the Em- ployer frequently transfers research and development employees to production and maintenance units. Within the unit sought by IBEW are 40 employees of department 704 of Atomics International who work at Canoga Park and whom the Employer had decided to trans- fer to the UAW bargaining unit before the petitions in the present case were filed. All of the employees sought by IBEW are employed in the en- gineering departments of the Employer. The only engineering de- 5 North American Aviation, Inc, 120 NLRB 1155, 1158. As the Palmdale operations have never been included in the Los Angeles area bargaining unit, the existence of a separate unit at Palmdale affords no support for IBEW's argument that a unit limited to the research and development employees of Atomics International , which has always been a part of the Los Angeles area bargaining unit, is appropriate. 599198-62-vol. 131-27 402 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD partment employees currently represented by any other labor organ- ization are the welders. The employees sought by IBEW "therefore represent only 362 of the approximately 2,700 nontechnical employees of the Employer's engineering departments in the Los Angeles area. With respect to the IUOE petition, the group sought comprises a residual unit of all unrepresented production and maintenance em- ployees at the Employer's Santa Susana facility. IUOE contends that in 1958 the Board indicated that such a unit might be appropri- ate, 6 and that the unit still exists in substantially the same form. Both UAW and the Employer contend that the requested unit is not really a residual unit because there are a large number of nontech- nical employees at Santa Susana outside the requested unit perform- ing similar work, and that, in any event, the integration of Santa Susana with the Employer's other facilities requires the employees in the requested unit to be represented as part of the established multi- plant bargaining unit. At the present time, only a small number of the employees at Santa Susana are represented by a labor organization. These represented employees are the maintenance electricians, the welders, and one sta- tionary engineer, all of whom are represented together with all other similarly situated employees as part of their respective multiplant Los Angeles area bargaining units. There is a total of 976 ° unrepre- sented nontechnical employees at Santa Susana. Of these 976 unrepre- sented employees, 209 are covered by the IUOE petition and 187 are employees of Atomics International who are covered by the IBEW petition. The remaining 580 employees work in departments 596 and 591 which bear the title "engineering departments" on the Employer's organization chart. This last group of employees is not covered by either petition. The 209 employees sought by IUOE hold 42 different classifications and are scattered among 10 different departments. Thirty-four of these employees are employed by the Atomics International division and the remainder by the Rocketdyne division. All employees covered by the IUOE petition are in the same departments as employees hold- ing the same classifications at the Employer's DeSoto facility, and there is a regular transfer of employees between Canoga Park and Santa Susana. The employees requested by IUOE are, in many in- stances, subject to the same supervision as similarly situated em- ployees at Canoga Park. They are also subject to the same uniform company policies dealing with employment matters and working con- ditions as the employees sought by IBEW. There is a considerable amount of testimony in the record dealing with the work of employees in the engineering departments 591 and 9 North Amrtican Aviation, Inc., 120 NLRB 1155, 1158. 7 Excluded from this number are office clerical employees , professional employees, guards, and supervisors. NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION , INC. 403 596 and the alleged similarity of much of this work to the work of employees sought to be represented by IUOE. UAW contended that because of this similarity of work performed , any unit that omitted the employees of departments 591 and 596 would be inappropriate. When UAW was first certified as collective-bargaining representa- tive of the Employer's production and maintenance employees in 1941, employees of the engineering department were specifically excluded from the unit found appropriate .$ Engineering department em- ployees, except for welders , have remained unrepresented down to the present time. In 1958 when the Board found that the production and maintenance employees at Santa Susana might constitute an appro- priate residual unit, it did so on the ground that these employees were the only "unrepresented employees " in the Employer's operations. What the Board meant, of course, was that the production and main- tenance employees at Santa Susana were the only unrepresented pro- duction and maintenance employees of the Employer. For there were, and are, nearly 3,000 nontechnical employees of the Employer 's engi- neering department in the Los Angeles area who have never been represented. It does not appear that the Board has ever examined closely the actual work of these engineering department employees in the many Board decisions involving this Employer. The Board decision in 1958 that the unrepresented production and maintenance workers at Santa Susana might constitute an appropriate residual unit does not preclude the Board from reexamining its position in the light of what the present record reveals to be the relationship between the production and maintenance employees and the nontechnical em- ployees of the engineering department.9 On this record, it is clear that there is a great deal of work per- formed by employees assigned to the engineering department which is similar both in nature and in the skills required, to work performed by production and maintenance employees . In addition to this simi- larity of work performed and skills utilized , the production and main- tenance employees at Santa Susana have numerous common interests in terms of benefits and working conditions with the nontechnical employees of the engineering departments at Santa Susana and vir- tually no dissimilar interests that would justify their separate repre- sentation. Indeed, the record reveals instances where the employees of departments covered by the IUOE petition had greater work con- tacts with employees of departments 591 and 596 than with employees working in other departments covered by the IUOE petition. It would be unrealistic for the Board to find that the production and maintenance employees at Santa Susana constitute an appropriate residual unit when the result of such a finding would be to leave un- 8 North American Aviation, Inc., 29 NLRB 148. 9 The Baltimore Transit Company, et at., 92 NLRB 688, 694. 404 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD represented over 750 employees at Santa Susana who have numerous common interests with the employees sought by IUOE. In view of the foregoing and the record as a whole, we find that the groups of employees requested by both IBEW and IUOE comprise only small segments of a large group of unrepresented employees who perform similar work, hold similar classifications, and with whom the employees sought to be represented have many common interests. In light of these facts and the further facts that the Employer's opera- tions are highly integrated and that collective bargaining for all the Employer's represented employees in the Los Angeles area bargaining unit has always been on a multiplant basis, we find that the units re- quested by IBEW and IUOE are inappropriate for purposes of col- lective bargaining. Furthermore, as the Santa Susana facility is an integral part of the Employer's other Los Angeles operations and as collective bargaining for the represented employees of the Employer has always been multiplant in scope, any appropriate residual unit should be coextensive with the multiplant unit and not merely coex- tensive with one of the Employer's facilities.'° [The Board dismissed the petitions.] CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH and MEMBER BROWN took no part in the consideration of the above Decision and Order. 10 The Loa Angeles Statier Hilton Hotel, 129 NLRB 1349. FWD Corporation I and Office and Professional Workers Local 15, affiliated with Associated Unions of America, Petitioner. Case No. 12-R-451. May 2, 1961 SUPPLEMENTAL DECISION AND ORDER On March 31, 1942, following a consent election, the Board certified the Petitioner as the collective-bargaining representative of the fol- lowing employees : "All office, local sales, technical and other salaried employees of the Employer, excluding executives, supervisory em- ployees, department heads, confidential employees, field sales and servicemen, employees in branch offices, and deputized guards under supervision of federal agencies." On July 29, 1960, the Petitioner requested the Board to clarify its certification by finding that certain employees, classified as "staff or confidential" are included within the certified unit. On October 20, 1960, the Board remanded the matter to the Regional Director for the Twelfth Region for the purpose of receiving evidence on the issues 1 The names of the Employer and Petitioner appear as amended at the hearing. 131 NLRB No. 55.