Sears, Roebuck and Co.

SEARS, ROEBUCK AND CO. 321 Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Local Union 880, Sign Display and Allied Workers, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 18-RC-8702 November 24, 1971 DECISION AND ORDER BY 'MEMBERS FANNING, JENKINS, AND KENNEDY Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Robert R. Martin- son. Following the hearing and pursuant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series 8, as amended, this case was transferred to the National Labor Relations Board for decision. Briefs were 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 authority in 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 purposes 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 certain employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9(c)(1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act The Employer is a New York corporation engaged in retail sales of merchandise and services in retail outlets throughout the United States. Employer's principal office is located in Chicago, Illinois. The instant proceeding involves the Employer's Brookdale Boulevard store located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Employer has approximately 73 full- time and 155 part-time nonselling employees and approximately 122 full-time and 272 part-time selling employees. The Petitioner seeks to represent all display depart- ment employees at the above location. There are eight employees involved; included in this number are five full-time display employees, one part-time display employee, one employee designated as a display helper, and one sign shop employee. These employees are supervised by the display sales manager located in the display shop on the second floor of the Brookdale store. The Petitioner contends that the employees sought have a sufficient community of interest to warrant their inclusion in a separate unit. More specifically, Petitioner argues that the display employees are supervised separately; that their work requires certain artistic ability; that they have no substantial contact with other employees and that they have different conditions of employment. The Employer asserts that sales employees perform functions similar to those performed by the display employees. Employer states that the unit sought is an "arbitrary segmentation of the appropriate unit because Petitioner has failed to recognize the differ- ence in the Employer's method of display merchan- dising from that of more elaborate and artistic methods used by some other retailers." The Employer further contends that the display department employ- ees are not required to have or exercise any specializ- ed training or artistic skills. Finally, Employer argues that the display employees are in constant contact with sales employees as well as department managers because of the integrated nature of Employer's operation. The record shows that in most instances the display employees use Merchandise Arrangement Guides (M. A. G. pages) or Spotlight pages to display merchan- dise. These consist of photographs and diagrams issued monthly from Employer's national advertising department in Chicago, and show how merchandise should be displayed and how departments should be arranged. Approximately 100 of the guides are received by all stores each month and they are intended to give the stores a uniform appearance throughout the country. Generally, display employees are assigned to a particular department and the method of assignment is as follows: John Cochron, display sales manager, places the M. A. G. or Spotlight pages on clipboards in the display office and the display employees concerned take that information to the manager or selling employees in the affected department to discuss how the particular spotlight should be presented. Sales employees receive a copy of the assignments and make available ahead of time the merchandise to be used in the display. Using the Spotlight or M. A. G. pages, the display man, in conjunction with sales personnel, arranges the mer- chandise on an "end cap." The "end cap" is a display located at the end of an aisle designed to attract the customer's attention. Additionally, display employees use the Spotlight pages to build props, racks, lattices, and shelves needed to display merchandise. If the display requires accessorizing (items to highlight the display) the display employee or in some cases a sales employee will select the items from other departments and sign for them. The display employee in the sign shop has facilities 194 NLRB No. 48 322 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD for making only signs that are simple to produce. However, on those infrequent occasions where the Spotlight page requires an elaborate sign it would be sent from Employer's art department in Chicago or done by an outside contractor. The display employees also hang all overhead signs, pennants, and decora- tion in areas requiring the use of a ladder. The record reveals that the display employees spend approximately 80 percent of their time in the selling departments working With 'sales employees to select, arrange, and accessorize merchandise shown in the Spotlight and M. A. G. pages. The remaining portion of the display employees time is spent in the shop located on the second floor of the store or in receiving and transporting displays. During seasonal changes the display employees set up displays at the three satellite locations of Coon Rapids (10 miles from the Brookdale store), Golden Valley (8 miles), and Anoka (15 miles). Here, the display workers spend about half a day and are paid 11 cents per mile for using their personal vehicles. The record discloses that all full-time employees receive identical fringe benefits, including hospitaliza- tion, insurance, vacations, holidays, jury duty pay, and profit sharing, and all employees use the same parking lot, timeclock coffeeshop, and restrooms. However, while nonselling employees normally work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, the selling employees work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 3 days a week, 12:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. 2 days a week and every fourth Saturday and Sunday. Finally, the records further show that during the Christmas rush some display employees are assigned to selling depart- ments. In view of the integrated functional and operational nature of the Employer's operation, the continuous contact with and interrelationship of work duties between the display employees and sales employees and the, sharing of common conditions of employ- ment, including common intermediate and ultimate supervision, we are persuaded that any separate community of interest which the display employees might enjoy has been submerged into a broader community of interest which those employees share with other sales employees. Under all these circumstances, .and as the display department employees neither constitute a traditional bargaining group nor appear to be sufficiently skilled to constitute a craft group, we find that the unit sought by the Petitioner is inappropriate. According- ly, we shall dismiss the petition. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed.