The National Cash Register Co.

NATIONAL CASH REGISTER CO. The National Cash Register Company and Federation of Business Machine Technicians & En- gineers Association, Petitioner. Case 20-RC-7356 June 28, 1967 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS BROWN AND JENKINS Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Patricia Kenny. I On March 30, 1967, the Regional Director for Region 20 issued an order transferring this case to the National Labor Relations Board. Thereafter, the Employer and the Petitioner filed briefs. The National Labor Relations Board2 has con- sidered the Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing and finds that no prejudicial error was com- mitted. The rulings are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this case, including the briefs filed by the parties, the Board finds: 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act and it will effectuate the pur- poses 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 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. The Petitioner seeks a unit confined to em- ployees in the Employer's Sacramento, California, office, who are employed as technical service representatives, technical service representa- tives(S), technical inspectors, and porter. The Em- ployer contends that this unit which encompasses employees at its Chico, Yuba City, and Redding, California, offices would be appropriate. The Em- ployer would also exclude technical inspectors and porters from any such unit. There is no history of bargaining at the Sacra- mento office or at any of the other offices which the Employer claims should be combined with Sacra- mento into a single unit. The Employer is engaged in the business of manufacturing, selling, and servicing cash registers, adding machines, and other business machines. Its nationwide operations are administratively or- ganized into six divisions, each headed by a division manager. Each division has a number of branch of- ' After a hearing was held on the question of the scope of the unit, the Employer announced the reorganization of its Sacramento office The hearing was then reopened for further evidence on that question in light of the reorganization. Y Pursuant to Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as 173 (ices headed by a branch manager who reports to the division manager. Some, but not all, branch of- fices have one or more suboffices each headed by a suboffice manager who reports to the branch manager. Each branch office maintains its own financial records independently of other branch of- fices. The branch manager has almost complete authority to manage operations of his branch and to hire, fire, promote, and transfer branch personnel. In those instances where the branch has suboffices attached to it, the branch offices' records include those of its suboffices. Although the branch manager acts finally on all personnel matters affect- ing suboffice personnel, he does so after consulta- tion with and upon the recommendation of the sub- office manager. The latter remains responsible for day-to-day operations and the work of employees in his suboffice. The manager of the suboffice makes all day-to-day work assignments, ad- ministers discipline when necessary, and recom- mends to the branch manager the hiring, discharge, promotion, or transfer of personnel under his super- vision. The Sacramento, California, office to which the Petitioner's request is confined is a main branch of- fice. As of the date the petition was filed, the Sacra- mento branch had no suboffices. However, as a result of a subsequent reorganization of certain of- fices, the Employer has now established the Chico, Redding, and Yuba City, California, offices as sub- offices of the Sacramento branch office. Before such reorganization, the Chico, California, office was a main branch office to which the Redding and Yuba City offices and certain other offices were at- tached as suboffices.3 Each of these suboffices as well as the main Sacramento office has a comple- ment of technical service representatives, and technical service representatives(S). In Sacramento there is, in addition, a technical inspector and a porter. As noted above, the Employer claims that the only unit which can be appropriate in the cir- cumstances of this case is one encompassing the technical service representative and technical ser- vice representative(S) at the four offices which now comprise its entire "Sacramento branch office." The requested Sacramento unit has approximate- ly 40 employees. There are about five employees at the Chico office, seven at Redding, and three at Yuba City. The Sacramento office is approximately 50 miles from Yuba City, 100 miles from Chico, and 200 miles from Redding. Each office services a designated territory. There is no interchange of per- sonnel among these offices except in emergencies amended, the National Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member panel 3 The Medford, Oregon, office, formerly within the Chico branch, was transferred to the Eugene, Oregon, branch because Eugene was closer to Medford than Sacramento. 166 NLRB No. 27 174 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD such as the unavailability at a given office of a ser- viceman experienced on the Employer's more com- plex equipment. There is nothing in the Act which requires that the unit for bargaining be the only appropriate unit, or even the most appropriate one. The Act requires simply that the unit be "appropriate" to insure to employees in each case the fullest freedom in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by the Act. The fact that a unit extending in scope to the four offices for which the Sacramento branch manager is ad- ministratively responsible maybe appropriate does not foreclose a finding that a unit limited to Sacra- mento is also appropriate, if such a finding is sup- ported by the circumstances of this case-and on the record herein made we are satisfied that it is. We believe it evident from the geographic separa- tion of the particular office from that of the subof- fices, from its separate supervision, from the fact that it does not regularly interchange with em- ployees in the suboffices, and from the fact that it services customers in an assigned territory not nor- mally serviced by employees of the suboffices, that the Sacramento employees here involved constitute a homogeneous grouping of employees who share a community of interests, which in substantial respects are distinct from those of the similarly clas- sified employees who are located at the suboffices. For these reasons, and bearing in mind also the absence of any conflicting bargaining history in- volving them and that no labor organization is seek- ing to represent them on a broader basis, we con- clude and find in the circumstances of this case that the requested unit confined in scope to employees assigned to the Sacramento, California, office loca- tion is an appropriate unit for the purposes of col- lective bargaining.4 There remains in issue the unit placement of technical inspectors and the porter. The technical inspectors' primary function is to make routine maintenance inspections and minor repairs of the Employer-manufactured equipment at customer sites. The work tasks they perform were formerly performed by technical service representatives and technical service representatives(S). Indeed, the technical inspector classification was created to re- lieve service representatives of these routine in- spections and minor repair responsiblilities. The 4 Cf Sav-On Drugs , 138 NLRB 1032 , Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 156 N LRB 1408, Western and Southern Life Insurance Co., Inc , 163 NLRB 138. 5 An election eligibility list, containing the names and addresses of all the eligible voters, must be filed by the Employer with the Regional Director for Region 20 within 7 days after the date of this Decision and technical inspector and the technical service representative(S) work the same hours, in the same work area, and receive the same wages and benefits. Both must qualify for their respective posi- tions by passing the same examination, with those making the higher scores receiving the technical service representative(S) classification. The latter classification qualifies its occupant for automatic upgrading to the technical service representative classification after about 2 years, whereas em- ployees rated as technical inspectors must take a new examination and undergo a certain additional period of training in order to qualify for the higher rated position. The Employer grounds its request for exclusion of the technical inspector on the fact that the technical inspector, unlike the technical service representative(S), cannot automatically progress to the top-rated service position. How- ever, we do not consider this difference sufficiently substantial to negate the community of interests which technical inspectors share with the other ser- vice employees. We shall therefore include techni- cal inspectors within the appropriate unit. The porter's main duties are to clean and main- tain the area of the office where the clerical staff works. He is under the same immediate supervisor as the office clerical employees whom all parties agree to exclude from the unit, and his work tasks are dissimilar from those of unit personnel. His sole contact with the latter occurs when, on occasion, he is asked to deliver packages to the service area. As his work interests appear to be clearly unrelated to those of the other employees herein involved, we shall exclude him from the unit found appropriate. We find, therefore, that the following employees of the Employer constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act: All technical service representatives, technical service representatives(S), and technical inspectors employed in the Employer's Sacramento office, but excluding all such service personnel located in any suboffice, the porter, supervisors, and guards as defined in the Act, and all office clerical employees. [Direction of Election 5 omitted from publica- tion.] 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 of setting aside the election whenever proper objections are filed. Excelsior Underwear Inc., and Saluda Knitting Inc., 156 NLRB 1236