Goddard College

GODDARD COLLEGE 457 Goddard College and American Federation of Teach- disputed faculty groups. The Employer, on the other ers, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 1-RC-13261 hand, contends that the employees in each of the February 4, 1975 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY MEMBERS JENKINS, KENNEDY, 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 G. Rosalyn Johnson of the National Labor Relations Board. Following the close of the hearing, the Regional Director for Region 1 transferred this case to the Board for decision. Thereafter, the Employer and the 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 proceeding, the Board finds: 1. Goddard College is a private, nonprofit institu- tion of higher learning operating under a charter from the State of Vermont with its main offices and educational facilities at Plainfield, Vermont. Its gross annual revenue exceeds $1 million. The Employer concedes that it is subject to the jurisdiction of the Board and we find that it is an employer engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act and that it will effectuate the purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction in this proceeding. 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 Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the Act. 4. The Petitioner petitions to represent a unit of all full-time and part-time faculty members, profes- sional librarians and counselors, with certain exclu- sions,' but seeks, in the alternative, to represent separate units of full-time and part-time faculty members if the Board excludes the latter from the unit because of their part-time status. In addition, the Petitioner urges the inclusion of certain other disputed faculty groups should be excluded from the unit of full-time faculty members on the basis of a lack of community of interest. For the reasons hereinafter expressed, we find that the employees in all but one of the disputed faculty groups lack a sufficient community of interest with the other faculty members to be included in the unit. The Petitioner seeks to include the core faculty members in the Goddard masters program. The masters program is a nationwide program and core faculty members are located in Plainfield, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Core faculty members pass on admissions to the program and develop course projects for each admitted student. Projects are implemented through field faculty, excluded from the bargaining unit by agreement of the parties, who work directly with the students under the supervision of a core faculty member. The record establishes that core faculty members effec- tively recommend the hiring of field faculty and have authority to fire them for unsatisfactory work. Core faculty members do not engage in direct teaching duties other than arranging and participating in program seminars and colloquia. The record further indicates that core faculty members work a longer academic year than other faculty members and receive higher compensation therefor. In addition, except for the two core faculty members residing in Plainfield, core faculty in the masters program receive urban cost of living allow- ances as well as office allowances for rent, secretarial help, and general office expenses. They do not participate in any college committees. When the entire core faculty meets at Plainfield five or six times a year, the discussion is confined to admission and degree requirements in the masters program. Core faculty have little, if any, contact with regular faculty members, except for some undergraduate faculty members who are students in the masters program, and there is no course or faculty inter- change with other college departments. In these circumstances, particularly the administra- tive, nonteaching nature of the work performed by the core faculty members, their geographic separa- tion from the Plainfield campus, their unique working conditions, and the absence of interchange or interaction with other faculty members, we conclude that the core faculty in the Goddard i The petitioned-for unit consists of "All full-time and regular part- Affairs, technical director of the theater, the director of the Extramural time faculty members , professional librarians and counselors, excluding Studies Office, the director of the health center, all medical doctors in the all other employees, library assistants, teaching fellows, graduate interns , health center, directors of the Community Health Clinic Project , guards, field faculty in the Graduate Program, the co-directors in the Learning and supervisors, as defined in the Act." Aid Center, the deans, associate deans, director of the Office of Cultural 216 NLRB No. 81 458 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD masters program do not share a substantial commu- nity of interest with unit faculty members and we shall therefore exclude them from the bargaining unit. The Petitioner also seeks to include in the unit the core and project faculty in the Goddard-Cambridge graduate program in social change, while the Employer urges their exclusion based on their geographic separation from the Plainfield campus and the semiautonomous nature of the program. The record shows that the program is conducted solely in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is approximately 200 miles from Plainfield. Until September 1974, all salaries and course content were established by a people's council consisting of students and faculty, without aid, financial or otherwise, from Plainfield. Since September 1974, the people's council has been replaced by a graduate council, the activities of which were not disclosed in the record, and salaries are paid from Plainfield. The record shows that the Cambridge-based faculty work solely in Cambridge, and have little, if any, direct contact with Plainfield- based faculty, have no interchange with faculty members in other departments, and do not partici- pate in any college committees other than those affecting the Cambridge program. Based on the above evidence, particularly the semiautonomous nature of the program, which only recently has become a part of the Employer's graduate depart- ment, and its geographic separation from Plainfield, we find that there is little community of interest between the faculty at Cambridge and the faculty at Plainfield. Therefore, we shall exclude the core and project faculty at the Cambridge-Goddard graduate program in social change from the bargaining unit. Likewise, the Petitioner seeks to include in the unit all visiting faculty in the undergraduate residency program. The record establishes that all visiting faculty are hired for a definite term of 1 semester or 1 year. Only occasionally have visiting faculty contin- ued their employment beyond 1 year and the record shows that only 5 to 10 percent of the visiting faculty have been offered permanent faculty positions. Although visiting faculty are paid according to the undergraduate pay and benefits scale and participate in curriculum and faculty meetings with full voting privileges, we find that their work is nevertheless of a temporary nature, and that they have no reasonable expectancy of reappointment. We shall, therefore, exclude all visiting faculty from the bargaining unit.2 The Petitioner contends that the faculty in the Goddard experimental program in further education should be included in the faculty bargaining unit. The Employer left it to the Board to determine whether these faculty members shared a sufficient community of interest with unit faculty members. The faculty members in this program work solely on weekends, teaching special classes reserved for low- income persons. Their work is confined to this particular program and there is no course or faculty interchange with other departments, nor do these faculty members participate in any college commit- tees. In addition, the record shows that these faculty members are hired for 1 semester only, receive abbreviated fringe benefits, and are paid less than unit faculty members. In these circumstances, we find that the faculty in the Goddard experimental program in further education do not share a sufficient community of interest with the other faculty members to be included in the bargaining unit, and shall exclude them therefrom. The Petitioner also contends that the cycle faculty in the adult degree program should be included in the unit. The record establishes that, unlike the regular faculty members, the cycle faculty members are hired on a 1-semester basis and work on campus only 2 weeks per semester, teaching one-third to two- thirds fewer students than the unit faculty. In contrast, unit faculty members have campus office space and work with students there throughout the semester. The record further establishes that the cycle faculty members receive a lower salary and lower fringe benefits than unit faculty and generally have full-time employment elsewhere. In addition, they are not required to serve on faculty committees and have little, if any, contact with regular faculty members. We find in these circumstances, particular- ly the short time spent teaching on campus and the absence of regular contact with unit faculty mem- bers, that the cycle faculty do not share a sufficient community of interest with unit faculty to warrant their inclusion in the unit. Therefore, we shall exclude the cycle faculty in the adult degree program from the bargaining unit. As stated above, the exclusions of the faculty in the Goddard-Cambridge graduate program in social change, the visiting faculty, the faculty in the Goddard experimental program in further education, and the cycle faculty in the adult degree program from the appropriate bargaining unit are based solely on the absence of sufficient community of interest between each of these faculty groups and faculty members who are included in the unit. Some of these excluded employees are full-time, some are part-time. As for the Petitioner's alternative request to represent part-time employees in these excluded faculty groups in a separate bargaining unit of part-time employees, we find that the facts contained in the record before 2 See, e.g, General American Transportation Corp., 187 NLRB 120 (1970). GODDARD COLLEGE 459 us are insufficient to establish a community of interest between these excluded groups of employees, and one another. To the contrary, the record establishes that these employees are different hetero- geneous groups of people whose only common identification is their part-time work for the Employ- er. In our view, such an identification, in light of their different wages, hours, responsibilities, loca- tions, and conditions of employment, does not establish a community of interest sufficient to warrant their being grouped together in a single bargaining unit. There remains for our consideration the unit placement of two additional employee groups. The Petitioner seeks to include in the faculty unit the nurses in the campus health care center. The Employer took no position and left to the Board the determination as to whether the nurses shared the requisite community of interest with faculty mem- bers to be included. The record shows that the nurses are hired through the personnel office and work under professional staff contracts which provide for different working hours, wages, and benefits than are contained in faculty teaching contracts . In addition, the nurses' work is confined to the health center which provides health care services for students and faculty. On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that the nurses do not perform any academic function3 and we shall therefore exclude them from the faculty bargaining unit.4 We shall also exclude the counselors in the psychological services office who provide emotional counseling to students through crisis intervention 3 In the past, one nurse , Williams, assisted in teaching an undergraduate class in health and acted as an academic counselor to students . We find that these activities, which took a little more than 12 percent of her time, are insufficient to establish a community of interest between Williams and the members of the faculty unit. Nurse Williams'job is primarily nonacademic in nature and, in any event, the Board has not included academic counselors in faculty bargaining units . C. W. Post Center of Long Island University, 189 NLRB 904, 908 ( 1971). Likewise, the fact that all three nurses have assisted the health care physician in the paramedical program taught at the health and short-term therapy. Like the nurses, the counse- lors are hired through the personnel office and have professional staff contracts. In addition, like the nurses, the psychological counselors' work is con- fined to the psychological services office and is unrelated to the academic function performed by faculty members.5 Therefore, we shall exclude psychological counselors from the faculty bargaining unit. Accordingly, for the reasons stated above, we find that the following unit is appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act: All full-time faculty members, professional librar- ians and counselors, excluding the core faculty in the Goddard Masters Program, the faculty in the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate Program in Social Change, the visiting faculty, the faculty in the Goddard Experimental Program in Further Edu- cation, the cycle faculty in the Adult Degree Program, library assistants, teaching fellows, graduate interns, field faculty in the Graduate Program, the co-directors in the Learning Aid Center, the deans , associate deans, director of the Extramural Studies Office, the director of the health center, the nurses in the health center, all medical doctors in the health center, directors of the Community Health Clinic Project, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Direction of Election and Excelsior footnote omitted from publication.] care center does not negate their essentially nonacademic work function and does not give the nurses a community of interest with regular faculty. 4 University of Miami, 213 NLRB No. 64 (1974). S One counselor, Goldin, has supervised student independent study projects and served on senior study committees and as an academic counselor to several students. However, as in the case of nurse Williams, In 4, supra, we find that these activities, which took only 10 to 15 percent of Goldin's time, are insufficient to establish a community of interest between Goldin and the members of the faculty unit.