Children's Communities, Inc.

6 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Children's Communities, Inc.' and American Federa- tion of State, County & Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO. Case 14-RC-7465 April 9, 1974 DECISION AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS JENKINS 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 Peter J. Salm. 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, the Regional Director for Region 14 transferred this case to the National Labor Relations Board for decision. Thereafter, the Employer and Petitioner filed briefs. 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 that they are free from prejudicial error. They are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds: The Employer, organized under the Illinois Gener- al Not-For-Profit Corporation Act, is engaged in providing a 12-month home and educational facility for approximately 158 severely to educable retarded children at its Waterloo, Illinois, location. The physical facilities consist of four cottages where the children live dormitory style, and an additional building which is a combination office and school- house. There is a houseparent, described as a "mother figure," for each of the three shifts in each cottage. In addition to these 12 houseparents, there are five subhouseparents who work when the regular house- parent is not present. Additionally, there are 50 child care workers, half of whom are full time and half of whom are part time. The child care workers work in the cottages, normally at the ratio of one child care worker for four children. There are six teachers, five of whom possess degrees. Each teacher has one to five child care workers who are present in the classroom.2 Petitioner seeks to represent all of the Employer's nonsupervisory employees, with teachers, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses, as professional employees, having the right to a self-determination election under Section 9(b)(1) of the Act. The Employer contends that the petition should be dismissed because the effect on commerce is not sufficiently substantial to warrant the exercise of the Board's jurisdiction. We agree with the Employer's contention. During the 12-month period ending September 30, 1973, the Employer's gross income from all services was approximately $348,000, and the Employer's total expenditures for goods and services for the same 12-month period totaled approximately $50,583, of which only $25,600 was provided to the Employer from points outside the State of Illinois. Of its $348,000 gross income, the Employer received approximately $333,500 from various agencies and political subdivisions of the State of Illinois. As Petitioner contends, the Board assertedjurisdic- tion over childcare institutions in The Children's Village, Inc., 186 NLRB 953, and Jewish Orphan's Home of Southern California a/k/a Vista Del Mar Child Care Service, 191 NLRB 32, without adopting a specific jurisdictional standard. However, those institutions were far larger than the Employer's. The employer in Children's Village cared for approxi- mately 240 boys, had gross annual revenues of $3.5 million, and annually purchased goods from out of State valued at $300,000 to $400,000. In Jewish Orphan's Home the employer cared for approximate- ly 106 children, had gross revenues of $1.24 million, and purchased food supplies valued in excess of $110,000 from a food service company located outside the State. In asserting jurisdiction in both those cases, the Board noted that the employer's revenues and expenditures were sufficient to meet any of the Board's ordinary jurisdictional standards. Unlike either Children's Village or Jewish Orphan's Home, the revenues and expenditures of the Employ- er herein do not meet any of the Board's ordinary jurisdictional standards which conceivably might be applicable to the Employer, with the exception of the nursing home standard. Petitioner, however, con- tends that the $100,000 gross annual income stand- ard for nursing homes as applied to the home for the aged in Drexel Home, Inc., 182 NLRB 1045, would encompass the Employer. However, in Drexel Home, the Board found that the employer could have been described more precisely as a "nursing home for the aged" because, inter alia, the 132 beds in the nursing area were invariably filled to capacity and 50 percent of all the beds had 24-hour-a-day nursing service. There are no such indicative factors in the instant case; accordingly, we do not consider the Employer to be a nursing home. We believe that the Employer's operations are I The Employer's name appears as amended at the hearing. are of the opinion that the Employer is primarily a child care institution and 2 Although the Employer operates a school and employs six teachers, we not a school. 210 NLRB No. 5 CHILDREN'S COMMUNITIES, INC. 7 similar to those of the Employer in Methodist Children's Home of Missouri, 209 NLRB No. 20, where the employer's home for orphans and emo- tionally disturbed children had gross revenues in excess of $300,000 and purchased goods in excess of $14,000 from suppliers outside the State. In that case, we found that the employer's operation lacked the requisite impact upon commerce to justify assertion of jurisdiction. Although the Board may assert jurisdiction over institutions such as the Employer, we find that the effect of the operations of the Employer upon interstate commerce is not sufficient- ly substantial to warrant the exercise of our jurisdic- tion.3 Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case 14-RC-7465, filed by American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, be, and it hereby is, dismissed. 3 In the absence of any specific standards for this type of operation, we have applied existing standards , but we leave open the question of whether or not to establish a specific standard for such cases . See Children's Village and Jewish Orphan's Home, both supra.