General Electric Co.

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO General Electric Company and American Federation of Technical Engineers, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 1-RC-9664 October 28, 1968 DECISION AND ORDER BY MEMBERS BROWN , JENKINS, AND ZAGORIA Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Arnold M Marrow, Hearing Officer. 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, Petitioner, and Inter- venor. 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-mem- ber 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 organizations' involved claim to represent certain employees of the Employer. 3. No question affecting commerce exists con- cerning the representation of certain employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9(c)(1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons* The Employer maintains an Instrument Depart- ment at West Lynn, Massachusetts,' where it is engaged in the production of precision instruments. The Intervenor, following a Board election, was certified in 1950 as the bargaining representative of the production and maintenance employees. En- gineering assistants were excluded from the list of those eligible to vote in that election. In 1957, the title of engineering assistant was changed to I Local 201, International Union of Electrical , Radio and Machine Workers AFL-CIO, was permitted to intervene on the basis of its contractual interest 2 The Instrument Department is organized into six functional sections , namely , Finance, Marketing , Engineering , Advance Develop- ment , Manufacturing , and Employee Relations. 399 engineering technician. Since 1950, neither the en- gineering assistants nor the retitled engineering tech- nicians have been represented by the Intervenor. In fact, when an employee is promoted to the position of engineering technician it has been the Employer's policy to condition such promotion on the em- ployee's resigning from the Intervenor. As in the case of the retitling of engineering assistants to engineering technicians in 1957, laboratory assistants were re- titled laboratory technicians The latter classification of employees has been in the production and main- tenance bargaining unit since its inception in 1950. The Petitioner initially sought to represent a unit of all engineering technicians and laboratory tech- nicians at the exempt salary level of the Employer's Instrument Department. At the outset of the hearing herein the Petitioner amended its petition to define the unit as all engineering technicians and laboratory technicians of the Employer's Instrument Depart- ment, excluding laboratory technicians represented by the Intervenor. The Petitioner again amended its petition to define the unit as all engineering tech- nicians of the Employer's Instrument Department. At the close of the hearing, the Petitioner stated on the record that "the unit we seek to represent would include the employees described in a broad category of Engineering Technicians, and the majority of these employees are in Intervenor's Exhibit 1, which was a list submitted to the company of 51 names of Engineering Technicians." The Petitioner then added the following- "Our definition of the statement that we made in the broad category of Engineering Technicians would include any people who had been identified by the Company as Engineering Tech- nicians, `Specialists' "3 The Employer and the Intervenor contend that the unit is too narrow in scope and fails to include engineering specialists who perform similar or related duties within the engineering sections as presently structured. The Intervenor further contends, and the Employer contends to the contrary, that there is a contract bar. We find it unnecessary to decide herein as to whether there is a contract bar. We believe the petition must be dismissed on the grounds that the unit requested is not justified on any of the bases which the Board usually relies on in determining appropriateness of a unit. The Petitioner has included in its unit request all engineering technicians and specialists employed at the Instrument Department, amounting to 3 The Employer contends that "specialist " is not a classification, but rather, that it is a catch-all term used to describe any individual contributor for whom there is no other obvious designation . Record testimony describes a specialist as an engineering technician who has become proficient in his particular phase of work , and who is called a specialist so as to justify a higher salary than could be paid him as an engineering technician. 173 NLRB No. 64 400 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD approximately 62 in number. They are assigned as follows: 40 engineering technicians and 15 specialists to the Engineering Section; and 3 engineering tech- nicians and 4 specialists to the Advanced Develop- ment Section. But it is not enough for the Petitioner to show that it is willing to represent all of the engineering technicians and the specialists at the Instrument Department; it must also establish why they should be represented separately. On the basis of the record, it does not appear that the employees sought are craftsmen4 or that they constitute a single departmental group entitled to separate representation. Furthermore, the record shows that the engineering technicians and the spe- cialists are a segment of all the technical employees at the Instrument Department The thrust of the evi- dence Petitioner presented and the argument in its brief is that engineering technicians and specialists have greater responsibilities and more complex duties than the laboratory technicians, which classification is in the bargaining unit represented by the Intervenor. The same consideration is equally applicable, how- ever, to an undetermined number of employees at the Instrument Department, including technicals, who are classified as specialists5 and who are unrepresented. Although the Petitioner's unit request includes all specialists at the Instrument Department, it appears that such request is limited to the aforementioned specialists employed in the Engineering Section and the Advanced Development Section. The Board has held that a unit of technical employees is inap- propriate where it does not include all in that category.' Accordingly, as the employees sought do not qualify for separate representation on a craft, departmental, or residual basis, we find that the unit petitioned for is inappropriate, and we shall dismiss the petition. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition herein be, and the same hereby is, dismissed. 4 The Boeing Company , 144 NLRB 1110 6 The Bendix Corporation , Kansas City Division , 150 NLRB 718, 5 There are specialists in the manufacturing section who work in 720,721 constant contact with engineering technicians.