H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc.

404 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. and Milk Wagon Drivers & Creamery Workers Union Local 380, Affiliated With International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, I Petitioner. Case I-RC-10353 December 21, 1970 DECISION AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS FANNING AND JENKINS Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before John R. Coleman, Hearing Officer, on December 24, 1968, and January 16, 1969. Pursuant to a notice issued by the Regional Director for Region 1, a further hearing was held on May 26, 19702 Thereafter, pursuant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regula- tions and Statements of Procedure , Series 8, as amended, and by direction of the Regional Director for Region 1, this case was transferred to the National Labor Relations Board for decision. Briefs have been timely filed by the Employer and Petitioner. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers in connection 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 affirmed. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds: 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act and it will effectuate the policies 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 concern- ing the representation of employees within the meaning of Section 9(c)(l) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons. Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of employees employed by the Employer at a single location in Region 1, a distribution center at Lowell, i As amended at the hearing 2 The further hearing was held after one of the locations sought by the Petitioner was closed 3 The petition , filed in September 1968, requested a unit of employees at two locations , Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts Petitioner , conceding that thereafter the Employer closed its Lawrence facility , now requests a unit limited to Lowell , where many Lawrence employees were transferred 4 In 1955 ( 114 NLRB 978) the Board dismissed a petition which sought a unit of wholesale drivers limited to the Employer's processing plant at a single location in Region I (Charlestown , Massachusetts), in view of the fact that the Employer's distribution operations throughout Region I were functionally integrated, and the requested Charlestown wholesale drivers had the same interests and working conditions as such drivers at other Region I locations 187 NLRB No. 59 Massachusetts.3 The Employer contends that any appropriate unit should include all Region I loca- tions. The Employer contends further that the inappropriateness of the unit sought is clearly demonstrated by two prior Board decisions which the Petitioner has agreed not to contest in the instant proceeding.4 Petitioner responds that in more recently published Decisions the Board has been following a policy of finding single-location units appropriate in cases involving a number of different industries,5 and that pursuant to such policy the Board should find appropriate the requested single-location unit at Lowell. Petitioner contends that in the Employer's operations6 the Lowell employees constitute a homo- geneous, identifiable, and distinct group that is physically separated from the Employer's personnel at its other Region 1 locations. It further contends that, although such employees perform work func- tions like those performed at the other Region I locations, the Lowell employees nevertheless perform them under separate immediate supervision and at a distinct location. Petitioner asserts that it is clear from such considerations that the employees at Lowell have problems and grievances which are peculiarly their own and not necessarily shared by employees at other Region I locations. For such reasons Petitioner contends that a single-location unit comprised of Lowell employees now constitutes an appropriate unit for the purposes of collective bargaining. In this regard Petitioner notes that prior to March 1969, when the Employer's Dairy Foods Division Consoli- dation Program was placed in effect at the Lowell facility, that facility was a part of Region 3. Petitioner contends, therefore, that our 1955 and 1965 decisions pertaining to Region 1 employees do not now require or support dismissal of the present petition. We cannot agree with Petitioner's contentions herein and shall dismiss the petition seeking a unit limited to Lowell, for the reasons set forth below. In the Haag Drug Company case,7 upon which Petitioner places considerable reliance in seeking a unit limited to the Employer's Lowell employees, we found a single-location restaurant in a retail chain In the other case (an unpublished decision issued December 30, 1965, Case I-RC-8251) the Board dismissed a petition for a unit confined to the wholesale drivers in Region I (or at Charlestown ), finding neither unit to be an appropriate one for collective bargaining in view of the functional integration of the Employer's operations throughout Region 1 , and the community of interest which it found existed among the employees of Region I 5 Sav-On Drugs, Inc , 138 NLRB 1032, Dixie Belle Mills, 139 NLRB 629, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 156 NLRB 1408, Haag Drug Co, 169 NLRB No I I I 6 The nature and scope of such operations are generally set forth in our prior decisions cited in fn 4 herein 7 Haag Drug Company, Incorporated, supra H. P. HOOD & SONS, INC. operation to be an appropriate unit for collective bargaining, on the ground that the factual situation showed that the employer's operations were not so functionally integrated with respect to the employees' day-to-day work as to preclude the establishment of such a unit. That case, however, expressly recognized that functional integration of an employer's business operations can reach a degree sufficient to obliterate any meaningful identity of a single location as a self- contained economic unit.s In this case we think it clear that Petitioner has not proved in the present brief record that the Employer's operations at its numerous facilities in Region 1 no longer possess a high degree of functional integration, or that the Lowell employees now have a sufficient 8 Op cit, p 6 See also N L R B v Purity Food Stores, Inc, 376 F.2d 497 (C A 1), cert denied, 389 U S 959, compare Primrose Supermarket of Salem, Inc, 148 NLRB 610, enf without opinion (C.A I), cert denied, 382 U.S. 830, Banco Credito v N L R B, 390 F 2d 110, (C A I) cert denied, 405 community of interest separate and apart from that of other employees to justify a conclusion that, inde- pendently, the Lowell employees may comprise a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining.9 Since we do not find in the evidence adduced at the hearings in this proceeding a sufficient record upon which to predicate a finding that the requested single- location unit, limited to employees of the Employer at Lowell, is an appropriate one for collective bargain- ing, we shall dismiss the petition. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. 393 U.S.832. s As previously noted herein , Petitioner has agreed not to cont¢st the correctness of the Board 's earlier decisions that a single location within Region I was not an appropriate unit.