The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York I and District 65, Distributive Workers of America, Petitioner. Case 2-RC-16835 January 16, 1976 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY CHAIRMAN MURPHY AND MEMBERS FANNING AND JENKINS Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Elbert F. Tellum of the National Labor Relations Board. Fol- lowing the hearing, this case was transferred to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., for decision, pursuant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regula- tions and Statements of Procedure, Series 8, as amended. Thereafter, the Employer and the Peti- tioner'filed briefs with the Board. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na- tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its au- thority in this proceeding to a three-member panel. The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's rul- ings made at the hearing and finds that they are free from prejudicial error. They are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this case, including the briefs filed by the Employer and the Petitioner, the Board finds: 1. Columbia University is a private nonprofit in- stitution of, higher learning with offices and educa- tional facilities located at New York City and the surrounding area. During the past year, the Universi- ty derived gross revenues in excess of $1 million. During the same period, the University purchased materials valued in excess of $50,000 directly from sources located outside the State of New York. Based on the foregoing stipulated facts, we find that the Employer is engaged in commerce within the mean- ing of the Act and that it will effectuate the policies of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein. 2. The Petitioner claims to represent certain em- ployees of the Employer. 3. A question affecting commerce exists concern- ing the representation of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the Act. 4. Columbia's main campus is located in the Morningside Heights area of New York City. Colum- bia also uses property for administrative and aca- 1 The name of the Employer appears as amended at the hearing 309 demic purposes in the surrounding New York City area, some within blocks of the main campus and others more than 15 miles from the main campus. The University has 70 departments within 16 facul- ties offering courses of instruction, all of which are under the overall control of the board of trustees. The president is the chief executive officer. Columbia has a student enrollment of approximately 18,000, with a faculty of approximately 5,000 and some 10, 000 employees. The Petitioner seeks a unit of approximately 1,000 unrepresented clerical employees at Columbia's Morningside Heights campus and its environs.2 The Employer, on the other hand, claims that the only appropriate unit is one universitywide in scope, en- compassing all unrepresented clerical employees, in- cluding those at several off-campus locations, and all technical employees employed by the University. There is no collective-bargaining history for either the employees petitioned for or for the employees within the scope of the unit urged by the Employer. As the foregoing indicates, the differences between the Petitioner and the Employer over what consti- tutes the appropriate unit for purposes of collective bargaining involve certain clerical employees located at three off-campus locations, the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, the Nevis Laboratories, and the Treasurer's Office; and certain technical or tech- nical-type employees employed throughout the Uni- versity. There also is a dispute over the minimum number of hours to be used as a cutoff for determin- ing eligibility for regular part-time employees. It is not the Board's function to determine whether a unit might be the most appropriate unit. Rather, the Board's role is to determine whether the peti- tioned-for unit can be considered appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining. As we said in Cor- nell University, 183 NLRB 329, 330 (1970), in de- termining whether a particular group of employees constitutes an appropriate unit for bargaining where an employer, as here, operates a number of facilities, the Board considers such factors as prior bargaining history; centralization of management, particularly in regard to labor relations; extent of employee inter- change; degree of interdependence or autonomy of facilities; differences or similarities in skills and func- tions of the employees; and geographical location of the facilities in relation to each other. Accordingly, with these considerations in mind, we shall examine the unit requested. All of the employees of the University are hired through a centralized personnel office located on the main campus. The ultimate decision to hire a partic- 2 There are approximately 500 clerical employees at the main campus who are presently represented by another labor organization 222 NLRB No. 41 310 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD ular individual, however, is in all cases made by the department or facility with the vacancy. It is unusual for employees to transfer between departments. There is a centralized wage and salary structure; one schedule covers clerical employees, and a separate schedule known as the "R" or research schedule cov- ers technical employees. All supporting staff employ- ees of the University are governed by the same per- sonnel policies and share common benefits. Nevis Laboratories Nevis is a research facility engaged in projects in- volving basic nuclear structures, including energy re- search and the acceleration of protons using a cyclo- tron. Located at Irvington, New York, approximately 15 miles north of Columbia's main campus, the facil- ities at Nevis include a research building, a laborato- ry, and a cyclotron. Nearly all of Nevis' funds are provided by the Federal government. Two separate multimillion dol- lar projects are funded by the National Science Foundation. A third project is funded by the Atomic Energy Commission. Among the 150 employees at Nevis, there are ap- proximately 60 technicians and 12 clerical employ- ees. A sizable number of the technicians are involved in converting the cyclotron; other technicians are machining tools, installing plumbing and electrical equipment, and building computers. Approximately 25 graduate students work with the seven principal investigators at Nevis. Nevis does its own recruiting and has its own personnel officer and purchasing personnel. Although the Nevis Laboratories comply with all general universitywide policies and proce- dures, there is no showing of day-to-day direction of Nevis' operation and affairs by the faculty and ad- ministration at the Morningside Heights campus. In view of the geographical separation of the Nevis Laboratories from the rest of the University, its inde- pendent function and operation, the fact that it de- rives its funds' from nonuniversity sources, and the circumstances set forth above, we conclude that the employees of Nevis Laboratories have a separate and distinct community of interest from the employees sought herein and therefore, we shall exclude them from the unit.' Lamont-Doherty Geological Lamont is a research institute engaged in the study of the origins and structure of the earth and its rela- tion to the universe. Located in Palisades, New York, Lamont is approximately 15 miles from Columbia's main campus. Approximately 180 research projects are financed by approximately $8 million in Federal government funds, primarily from the National Science Founda- tion, and by approximately $1.5 million in private funds. A relatively small portion of Lamont's funds are provided from the University's general funds. La- mont employs 100 to 125 clerical employees. Ap- proximately two-thirds of these clerical employees are financed by funds provided by Federal govern- ment contracts. Like Nevis, there is no showing of day-to-day direction of Lamont's operation and af- fairs by the faculty and administration at the Morn- ingside Heights campus. In view of these circum- stances, we conclude that the employees at Lamont have a separate and distinct community of interest from the employees sought herein and, as with the employees of Nevis Laboratories, we shall exclude them from the unit. The Treasurer's Office The Treasurer's Office is located at 125 Maiden Lane in New York City, approximately 10 miles from Columbia's main campus. This office is responsible for all investments and cash disbursements of the University. It places all of the insurance for the Uni- versity. It also is responsible for housing faculty, em- ployees, and students, and manages approximately 150 buildings. These housing functions are conduct- ed at two offices located on the main campus. All employees of the Treasurer's Office receive the same wage scales and benefits and are governed by the same personnel policies as other employees of the University. There have been both temporary and permanent transfers between the main office located on Maiden Lane and the two housing offices located on the main campus. In its brief, Petitioner acknowl- edges that the employees of the Treasurer's Office have numerous contacts with the main campus, in- cluding some interchange and interlocking supervi- sion, and that the Treasurer's Office is geographically part of the same urban area. Based on the foregoing and the record as a whole, we conclude that the cleri- cal employees of the Treasurer's Office share a com- munity of interest with the other employees sought by the Petitioner. Accordingly, we shall include these employees in the unit. The Technical Employees At the outset, we note that the parties chose not to give a detailed description of all the job classifica- tions held by the 300 to 350 employees alleged to be technicals. Instead, the parties agreed that three groups of technical employees would be representa- TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 311 tive of all of the Employer's technical employees, and that the Board could base-its determination upon an examination of the job functions of these representa- tive employees. These groups are the technical em- ployees in the chemistry and biology departments, representing basic science research, and the technical employees in the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASK), representing the social sciences. According- ly, as the parties would have the technical employees treated as a group, we will make our determination on this basis. The record shows that the central organizational structure 'of the chemistry department includes a de- partmental office, a business office, a stockroom, and a technical support group which constructs and maintains the equipment used in research projects conducted by the department. There are also approx- imately 20 substructures operating in the chemistry department, each of which is engaged in a research project under the direction of a professor who is re- ferred to as a principal investigator. The principal investigator directs the work of research associates, graduate students, and technicians. He also generally has a secretary, but relies on the departmental office for additional clerical support. The clericals assigned to the departmental office, as well as to the individual research projects, perform typical clerical work. All clerical employees work a regular 9-to-5 shift, as do the technical employees assigned at the departmental level; but the technical employees assigned to individual research projects vary their hours to accommodate the needs of the research. According to the director of chemistry laborato- ries, the technical employees in the chemistry depart- ment perform almost the same functions as the re- search associates. The essential difference in these two groups is that the technical employees have not attained the same academic levels as the research as- sociates. They have received, however, highly spe- cialized training and experience in preparation for the jobs they perform. Among the technical employ- ees in the chemistry department who have highly spe- cialized training and experience are the following: operators of fermentators involved in biophysical re- search, chemists, electronics technicians, and instru- ment makers. There is no interchange of technical and clerical employees in the chemistry department. All clerical employees are on one pay schedule and all technical employees are on a separate pay schedule known as the "R" or research schedule. The record also shows that the biology department is organized and operated along the same lines as the chemistry department. Again, there is a departmental structure and approximately 17 research' projects being directed by principal investigators. There is a central pool of secretaries in the departmental office and, as in the chemistry department, the technical employees perform highly specialized functions. With respect to the operation of the social science departments, the record shows that the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) is also organized and operated along the same lines as the chemistry and biology departments. It has a central departmen- tal office and individual research projects. Among the disputed positions in BASK are 17 research assis- tant positions. The record shows that these research assistants have been trained in the social sciences, generally with an undergraduate degree, but in many instances they are working on advanced degrees. Moreover, they are familiar with statistical tech- niques and computer programming. We find that the qualifications of the research assistants and their functions and responsibilities clearly show that they are, at the very least, highly specialized technical em- ployees and that their job functions cannot in any way be described as clerical in nature. From the foregoing and the entire record, we find that significant differences exist between technical employees and clerical employees concerning job functions, responsibilities, use of initiative, and inde- pendent judgment. The job functions of the technical employees are of a highly specialized nature and in many cases they exercise the type of skill and judg- ment required of professional employees. Because of the nature of their duties, the technical employees work in close conjunction with professional employ- ees and the clerical employees appear to be merely supportive of this function. Although technical em- ployees and clerical employees share common bene- fits, they are governed by separate pay schedules. It is also significant that a pattern of separate represen- tation for clerical employees at the University has been previously established and that, at the present time, the Employer has a collective-bargaining rela- tionship with another labor organization which cov- ers some 500 clerical employees at the University's main campus. Accordingly, in the circumstances of this case, we find that the technical employees have interests sufficiently different to allow their exclusion from the unit of clerical employees sought by the Petitioner. A final matter for our determination is the eligibili- ty standard for part-time employees. The University's practice is to treat as regular part-time employees those unrepresented employees who work at least 20 hours per week. Such individuals are cov- ered under established wage and benefit programs in effect at the University. Petitioner urges the cutoff be 312 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD set at 10 hours. In the absence of any other clearly defined and uniform system of classifying part-time employees, we find that regular part-time employees eligible to vote in the election are those individuals who work at least 20 hours per week and are covered under the University's regular wage and benefit pro- grams.' 3 Petitioner presented evidence that the Employer has negotiated and exe- cuted one contract with "a 10-hour minimum to qualify as a regular part- time employee, and a second contract provides for a 14-hour minimum. We find the negotiated terms of these agreements to be of insufficient weight to be controlling where, as here, the University has a specific policy as to the treatment of part-time employees. We find the following employees constitute a unit appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act: All unrepresented full-time and regular part- time clerical employees working 20 hours or more per week who are employed by Columbia University at the Morningside Heights campus and at 43rd Street, 98th Street, Baker's Field, and at the Treasurer's Office; but excluding all other employees, guards, and supervisors as de- fined in the Act. [Direction of Election and Excelsior footnote omit- ted from publication.]