Collins Radio Co.

COLLINS RADIO CO. 3 Collins Radio Company and Chauffeurs, Teamsters & Helpers Local Union No. 238, affiliated with International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauf- feurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. Case 18-RC-9780 April 9, 1974 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS FANNING AND PENELLO Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Frank E. Kapsch, Jr. Following the close of the hearing, the Regional Director for Region 18 transferred this case to the Board for decision. Thereafter the Employer, Collins Radio Company, and Petitioner, Chauffeurs, Teamsters & Helpers Local Union No. 238, filed briefs with the Board. 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 proceeding to a three-member panel. The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing and finds they are free from prejudicial error. They are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this proceeding, 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. A question affecting commerce exists concern- ing the representation of certain employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9(cXl) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act.' 4. The Petitioner seeks an election to determine 1 The Employer filed a motion to dismiss the instant petition on the basis that the authorization cards , having been submitted by Petitioner in connection with the pnor case, were no longer current . The Regional Director dented the Employer's motion to dismiss, citing Philip Carey Manufacturing Company, 69 NLRB 214, and General Dynamics Corporation, Convair Division, 175 NLRB 1035 We find that the Regional Director followed applicable Board precedent in correctly denying the Employer's motion. I Collins Radio Company, 206 NLRB No. 12, wherein the Board dismissed another petition of the Petitioner that primarily sought a unit of keypunch operators employed in Computer Services Division A on grounds that such unit was inappropriate as an arbitrary segment of the Employer's office clerical employees. Petitioner in that case also requested an alternative unit of all hourly paid employees in the Employers Computer Services Division employed at Cedar Rapids (i.e. Division A). A majority of the Board in the prior proceeding found the record inadequate to enable them "to determine whether the unit currently represented by the Petitioner is an appropriate one or whether all division employees possess a sufficiently distinct community of interest apart from office clerical whether all nonsupervisory, nonprofessional employ- ees in the Employer's Computer Services Division A who are not currently represented, excluding employ- ees in all other divisions of the Company, profession- al employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act, wish to be represented and included in a divisionwide unit with the employees in the Comput- er Services Division A who are currently represented by the Petitioner. Computer Services Division A is located at the Employer's Cedar Rapids, Iowa, facility and is part of the larger Computer Services Division which, in addition to Division A, has sections in facilities located at Newport Beach, California, and Dallas, Texas. The Employer contends that the unit requested by Petitioner constitutes an inappropriate and artificial grouping of employees as it consists of only a segment of unrepresented office clerical employees at the Employer's Cedar Rapids facility, and that, further, the issues presented by the petition were previously disposed of by the Board in a prior proceeding involving the same parties.2 The Employ- er also contends that the unrepresented office clerical employees in the Computer Services Division do not have a distinct community of interest apart from the office clerical employees outside of the division to warrant a separate bargaining unit. The Employer further submits that the employees in the requested unit do not have a community of interest with the employees now represented by the Petitioner in Computer Services Division A. The Employer is engaged in the manufacture and sale of electronic unit systems and components for communications control, navigation, and computa- tion in avionics and telecommunications applications and has a variety of industrial customers. Only the Employer's Cedar Rapids, Iowa, facility is involved in this proceeding. The Employer's Cedar Rapids facility is divided into five divisions: Avionics, Telecommunications Equipment, Service, Industrial Products, and Com- employees outside the division to qualify as an appropriate departmental unit." Member Fanning, however, would have directed an election in the alternative unit as requested in that case. We find that the Employer's rerjudicera contention concerning the issue of the appropriateness of the broader unit requested in this and the earlier case is without merit. The Board majority refused to find whether the alternative divisionwide unit was appropriate only because the record was incomplete for purposes of determination of that question . Whatever inadequacy may have existed in the prior case, has, in our view, been corrected by the introduction of additional evidence in the hearing held in the instant proceeding. Thus, whereas the record in the past case centered almost exclusively on the duties and functions of the keypunch operators, the current record fully treats all the employees employed in Division A, their respective duties and functions, their interrelationships, and their lack of integration with clerical employees of the Employer employed in different divisions in the Cedar Rapids facility. Accordingly, we find that the state of the record no longer poses an impediment to determining the issues raised by the Petitioner's petition in this case. 210 NLRB No. 3 4 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD puter Services. The Computer Services Division is under completely separate management control from the four operating divisions at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Unlike the other divisions, Computer Services comes under the financial branch which is headed by Vice President R. J. Ruggles and seconded by Mr. Dean Allen, the head of Computer Services. Mr. Kratzer, who reports to Mr. Allen, is head of Computer Services Division A (hereinafter sometimes referred to as Division A). The Petitioner seeks to join all employees in the Company's Computer Services Division A who come under the control and supervision of Mr. Kratzer. The Employer's Computer Services Division A at Cedar Rapids consists of the following sections: data conversion, which has approximately 68 keypunch operators; computer operations, which has 39 comput- er operators; tabulating, with 2 employees; the order desk, which has 2 employees; document program library, with 2 employees; and production control, which has 1 employee. The Petitioner currently represents a separate unit of employees in the computer operations and tabulating sections who are classified as leadmen, computer operators, tabulating machine operators, monitor control distribution clerks, electrical switch- ing systems teletype operators, tape pushers, tape librarians, and data auditors. The record indicates that this was an agreed unit in which the Petitioner was certified by the Board after an election in 1964. At that time the other computer service employees were located in a building separate and remote from computer operations. In 1967, all the computer service employees were consolidated within buildings 120 and 121, which in effect constitute one building since they are attached. As a result, the unrepresent- ed and represented employees in Division A are in close proximity to each other. And, although the represented employees have slightly different pay classifications and fringe benefits from the unrepre- sented computer service employees in Division A, this appears to be due to the results of collective- bargaining negotiations between Petitioner and Employer since 1964. The keypunch work consists of transcribing data from source documents to punch cards so that they can be read by computers and tabulators. The keypunch operators use a data-coding machine with a keyboard similar to the standard typewriter. Many of the data cards are for recurring reports which the operators learn to do routinely. The Employer recruits and hires employees specifi- cally for keypunch operator positions . Unlike other clericals, keypunch operators are required to pass a prehire qualification test, are hired as trainees, and remain in that status for 6 months. During this time they receive on-the-job training, which includes classes and lesson exercises, as well as individual instruction from their supervisors. In addition to the 43 keypunch machines operated by the employees of the proposed unit, there are 19 keypunch machines distributed throughout the four operating divisions and located in other buildings in the Employer's Cedar Rapids operation. These are operated for brief periods by various categories of employees not classified as keypunch operators, usually to redo damaged cards as an incident to their other duties, without sending such cards back to the keypunch pool. Unlike the keypunch operators, they are not required to take a qualifications test on the keypunch machine. Furthermore, there is no occa- sion for these employees to have contact with the employees in the keypunch pool. There is no substantial or routine interchange between Division A employees and other clericals .3 All the employees presently represented by Petitioner and those being sought for representation are housed separately from the rest of the Employer's Cedar Rapids facilities and are under separate overall supervision . Unlike other clerical employees engaged elsewhere in the Cedar Rapids operations who work only one shift, the keypunch employees, like the computer operators, work on multiple shifts. As noted above, the employees in Division A all work in connecting buildings 120 and 121. They use the same entrances and the same timeclocks, and share a common lunchroom. They frequently inter- change with each other within the division, and promotion occurs essentially, if not exclusively, within the division itself. The five clerical employees in particular have considerable contact with the employees in the computer operations room. They work closely with these employees, servicing their needs and those of the supervisors in Computer Services, and are the only clerical employees at the Cedar Rapids facility that work with or for the personnel assigned to Division A. The facts show, therefore, that Division A is an integral and separately identifiable group . It has a distinctive function of converting data from the Employer's operating divisions into a form useful to management in overseeing operations , and its em- 3 Since January 1967, of current employees of the Employer in Division at Dallas, Texas. We also note the uncontradicted testimony of an employee A, two employees transferred from another division into the keypunch that she was told by the Employer's personnel department that transfers operations of Division A, two employees transferred out of the division into from Computer Services to another division could only be obtained by the jobs in other sections, and three keypunch operators in Division A prospective transferee's first terminating her employment and then applying transferred to the same type jobs in the Computer Services Division located for rehire in the different division. COLLINS RADIO CO. ployees have functionally distinct work characteris- tics, use skills which require special training and aptitude, and are separately supervised . Its opera- tions are highly integrated and there is frequent contact among the various computer service employ- ees, but not with employees outside the division who are geographically separated from them. Considering that there is no other union currently seeking to represent the five clerical employees or the keypunch operators in Division A, that the division is separately supervised in a building apart from the other clerical employees, and that the Petitioner already represents part of the division,4 we find that a divisionwide unit of Division A employees may be appropriate.5 Accordingly, we find that the following employees 5 constitute an appropriate voting group : all nonsuper- visory, nonprofessional employees in the Employer's Computer Services Division A who are not currently represented, excluding employees in all other divi- sions of the Company, professional employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the National Labor Relations Act. We shall direct that an election be conducted among the appropriate voting group . If a majority of this voting group selects the Petitioner as their bargaining representative, they shall be included in a divisionwide unit with employees presently repre- sented by Petitioner ; otherwise they shall remain unrepresented. [Direction of Election and Excelsior footnote omitted from publication.] 4 Safeway Stores, Incorporate4 174 NLRB 1274. 5 Computer Systems, Inc., 204 NLRB No. 34.