St. Joseph's Infirmary

356 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Extendicare of Kentucky, Inc., d/b/a St. Joseph's Infirmary and Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, Local 557, Petitioner. Case 9-RC-8958 November 29, 1971 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS 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 Edward C. Verst of the National Labor Relations Board. 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, by direction of the Regional Director for Region 9, the case was transferred to the Board for decision. Briefs have been filed by the Employer and the 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 Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error, and are, hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds: 1. The Employer is a Delaware corporation engaged in the operation of a large proprietary hospital at Louisville, Kentucky. The parties have stipulated, and we find, that the Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act, and we further find that 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. A 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. 4. Petitioner seeks to represent a unit described as all employees in the Employer's dietary (food), maintenance (engineering), laundry, and housekeep- ing departments, and also surgery aides, excluding all clerical, technical, and professional employees,2 supervisors within the meaning of the Act, and all employees charged with patient care. Specifically agreed to be excluded from the unit sought by Petitioner were any employees falling within the classifications of orderlies, surgical technicians, labo- ratory helpers, licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and nurses aides. The Employer contends that only an overall unit of all its hospital employees, whether or not their principal function is dealing directly with patients, is appropriate. In this regard the Employer contends particularly that Petitioner has not produced ade- quate evidence to demonstrate that employees in the proposed unit constitute a functionally distinct group of employees who have a sufficient community of interest to be established as a separate unit for collective-bargaining purposes. The Employer also argues that even if this contention is rejected, fragmentation of the overall unit into any smaller units should be denied because the likelihood of strikes which would imperil life in hospitals would be increased thereby. Petitioner replies that employees in the requested unit constitute a distinct and homogeneous service and maintenance unit which provides basic suppor- tive services to the employees who essentially provide the hospital's principal service, patient care and thus comprise an appropriate unit. The record shows that the Employer employs about 100 employees in its dietary department. They work in the main kitchen, cafeteria, coffee shop, and washete- ria areas. They are responsible for preparing food for patients, hospital personnel, and others. Dietary department employees deliver all food prepared for patients on heated thermal trucks to nursing stations on the hospital floors. From such locations it is delivered to the patients by Nursing Service Depart- ment personnel. After patients have eaten, their trays are picked up by nursing service personnel and returned to the thermal trucks, which are returned to the dietary department by dietary employees. About 35 maintenance employees in such classifica- tions as plumber, electrician, gardener, yardman, and air-conditioning mechanic are employed in the Employer's engineering department. They work throughout the hospital maintaining its equipment' and grounds. Much of their time is spent in shops located in the basement of the main building or in a separate building which houses the laundry, where they repair and maintain equipment. In the laundry department the Employer employs about 50 employees sorting, washing, drying, and ironing the goods and linens which are used through- out the hospital, and delivering them to storage areas. There are about 65 employees in the Employer's housekeeping department, who clean patients' rooms, ' The Employer declined to stipulate that Petitioner was a labor 2 The parties have stipulated that all registered nurses, registered organization within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act, but the record pharmacists, and registered radiologists in the X-ray department are clearly shows that Petitioner meets the necessary statutory criteria. professional employees within the meaning of Section 2(12) of the Act. 194 NLRB No. 51 ST. JOSEPH'S INFIRMARY 357 as well as surgery, delivery, and recovery rooms, and who move beds and clean carpets and wax and buff floors and major hallways. Housekeeping employees are directed by supervisors of their own department, and not by nursing personnel. In addition to the above-named departments which Petitioner would include within its service and maintenance unit, it requests the inclusion of "surgery aides." However, at the hearing Petitioner agreed that "nurses aides" were to be excluded from the proposed unit, and the record shows that "surgery aides" are merely nurses aides with some additional training, who tend to patients prior to surgery. There are also eight employees in the dispatch service department who operate the mailroom and distribution center, and make regular messenger runs throughout the hospital delivering papers, supplies, and samples, as well as such documents as patients' charts and laboratory reports. Petitioner is willing either to include these employees in the requested unit as service employees or to exclude them therefrom on the ground that their duties are more like those of excluded office clerical employees. The Employer would include, in the overall unit it contends is appropriate, either all other nonprofes- sional and nonclerical employees in the hospital; or in the alternative it would also include a considerable number of employees who perform clerical services in a variety of departments or units performing mostly administrative functions.3 The Employer contends that the unit sought is not appropriate because it has not been demonstrated by Petitioner that the employees who would comprise it are functionally distinct from employees in the overall unit, or have substantially more of a community of interest with each other than with employees in the overall unit. The Employer also contends that employees in all departments constitute an integral unit supplying a continuous flow of emergency, diagnostic, medical, surgical, and other services to patients, and should not be fragmented by establish- ing a smaller unit such as is here requested, because of the danger that work stoppages would be more likely to occur, thus increasing danger to the welfare or life of patients requiring continuity of care and properly functioning equipment. In contending that the requested unit is not appropriate because the grouping of employees requested to be included therein is not functionally distinct, the Employer points out that housekeeping employees sometimes work with nursing service department employees in cleaning up a mess created in a patient's room, that dietary employees bring to nursing units the exact foods ordered by physicians, that maintenance and laundry employees work throughout the hospital repairing equipment in, or delivering laundry to, a variety of departments. The Employer also notes that many departments in the hospital, some of which would be included in and some excluded from the unit requested by Petitioner, combine unskilled employees with employees possess- ing varying degrees of skill, so that the requested unit should not in the Employer's view be found appropri- ate on the basis of any difference in employee skills. Accordingly, the Employer contends that in the present case, as in a prior proceeding4 where the union requested an overall unit, only an overall unit should be found appropriate. We find no merit in this position. The record shows generally that the employees who comprise the unit sought by Petitioner have a sufficient community of interest, distinct and apart from the other employees that the Employer would include in an overall unit, so that they constitute an appropriate separate bargaining unit of service and maintenance employees. In this regard the record shows that the employees in the unit requested provide support type services to other employees in such hospital departments (or units) as emergency service, nursing service, intensive care, and physical therapy, and in the surgery suite and central sterile supply. These latter employees we find, on the basis of the particular facts disclosed by the present record, have particular duties which in their details are more closely related to or concerned with the many facets of proper patient care as provided in a major medical center, than are the duties of the dietary, housekeep- ing, laundry, and maintenance employees Petitioner seeks to represent in a service and maintenance unit. We find, however, that such a service and mainte- nance unit should also include the dispatch service department employees, about eight in number, who operate the mailroom and distribution center, and who make regularly scheduled trips throughout the hospital delivering paper, supplies and samples, and documents such as patients' charts and laboratory reports. Further, we find no basis for including in a service and maintenance unit the surgical aides requested by Petitioner. At the hearing Petitioner conceded that nurses aides should be excluded from the unit it sought. The record shows that surgical aides are essentially nurses aides who work in surgery, 3 The more limited overall unit sought by the Employer would include care, in accounting, admitting, business services, data preparation , medical employees charged with patient care in central sterile supply emergency , records, personnel, public relations, reservations, and social services. intensive care , laboratory, nursing services, pharmacy, physical therapy, 4 Butte Medical Properties, d/b/a Medical Center Hospital, 168 NLRB radio therapy and x-ray; whereas the broader alternative overall unit 266. would include also all employees, in addition to those charged with patient 358 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD attending patients prior to their operations. Accord- ingly, we shall exclude surgical aides from the service and maintenance unit which, as modified above, we hereby find to be appropriate. The Employer and Petitioner disagree about the supervisory status of a number of employees, namely Shreck, chief electrician in the maintenance depart- ment; Perry, who each day works several hours in place of Chief Cook Green; Carr, Payton, Sinchorn, and Wise, who work in the dietary department; Washburn, Gilhouse, and two others were not named, who work in the housekeeping department directing crews engaged in cleaning and disinfecting patients' rooms as they are vacated; Hester and Thorton, who direct crews which clean rooms on a regular daily basis; and Perkins, who is in charge of two employees and has the responsibility of seeing to it that drapes are cleaned and broken furniture is promptly re- moved from patients' rooms. We do not deem the present record to be sufficiently clear to enable us to determine whether the aforementioned individuals are supervisors as Petitioner contends or employees as the Employer argues. Under such circumstances we shall permit all 13 aforementioned individuals to vote subject to challenge in the election directed herein. The Employer and Petitioner also disagree about whether Betty Henry, in the dietary department, is a supervisor. Henry, an administrative dietitian, works directly under the director of the dietary department. She has the authority to responsibly direct kitchen personnel and to determine their particular work assignments, as well as to discipline such personnel when necessary. We find that Henry is a supervisor within the meaning of Section 2(11) of the Act, as Petitioner contends. Accordingly, we find that the following employees of the Employer constitute a unit appropriate for the 5 In order to assure that all eligible voters may have the opportunity to be informed of the issues in the exercise of their statutory right to vote, all parties to the election should have access to a list of voters and their addresses which may be used to communicate with them. Excelsior Underwear Inc, 156 NLRB 1236; N.L.R.B v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U.S. 759. Accordingly, it is hereby directed that an election eligibility list, containing the names and addresses of all the eligible voters, must be filed purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act: All employees employed by the Employer at its Louisville, Kentucky, location in the dietary, housekeeping, laundry, maintenance (engineering), and dispatch service departments, including cooks, tray girls, maids, laundry and maintenance employees, janitors, storekeepers and groundskeepers, but excluding surgical aides, nurses aides, orderlies, surgical technicians, surgi- cal licensed vocational nurses, licensed vocational nurses, laboratory helpers, registered nurses, li- censed practical nurses, and all other employees not employed in the dietary, housekeeping, laun- dry, maintenance, and dispatch service depart- ments, office clerical employees, guards, profes- sional employees, and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Direction of Elections omitted from publication.] MEMBER KENNEDY, dissenting: Contrary to my colleagues, it is my view that the unit in which the election is directed is inappropriate. I view the unit found appropriate here as essentially a heterogeneous grouping of departments. It does not appear to correspond to any recognized organization- al structure or line of supervision of the Employer. I cannot see any separate and distinct community of interest, including skills, that such employees as the dietary and housekeeping personnel may have with such employees as the plumbers, electricians, etc., of the maintenance department, which is lacking in the cases of nurses aides, orderlies, etc. It is the employees of the nursing service, not the mechanics, plumbers, and plasterers, with which the housekeeping and dietary personnel work in close contact and must collaborate with in the care of the immediate needs of patients. I would adhere to the Board's Decision in the Butte Medical Properties case. by the Employer with the Regional Director for Region 9 within 7 days of the date of this Decision and 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 for setting aside the election whenever proper objections are filed.