The Baptist Memorial Hospital

THE BAPTIST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL 201 The Baptist Memorial Hospital and Local 150T, Ser- vice Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 26-RC-4969 May 27, 1976 DECISION AND ORDER By MEMBERS JENKINS, PENELLO, AND WALTHER Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer A Wayne Barksdale of the National Labor Relations Board Following the close of the hearing, the Regional Di- rector for Region 26 transferred this case to the Board for decision Thereafter, briefs were filed by the Employer and the Intervenor I 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 proceeding,' the Board finds 1 The parties stipulated that the Employer,' which operates a nonprofit hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and employs 4,000 people, has a gross an- nual income in excess of $50 million, and during the past year purchased supplies valued in excess of $50,000 directly from outside the State of Tennessee We find that the Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act, and that it will effec- tuate the purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein 2 The labor organizations involved claim to rep- resent certain employees of the Employer 3 No 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 for the following reasons The Employer's hospital facilities are housed in numerous buildings in Memphis, most of which are located in a central complex or campus situated be- tween Madison and Union Avenues 4 The offices of the Hospital's administrator are located there How- i American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees AFL-CIO, was permitted to intervene 2 The Employer requested oral argument This request is hereby denied as the record and the briefs adequately present the issues and the positions of the parties 3 Hereafter also referred to as the Hospital 4 Hereinafter the hospital buildings located in this complex will be re- ferred to as the Main Unit ever, one of the Hospital's buildings, known as the Lamar Unit, is located about 1 mile from the Main Unit Approximately 150 of the Hospital's 4,000 em- ployees are regularly assigned to work there The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of approxi- mately 119 service employees I regularly assigned to the Lamar Unit The Employer and the Intervenor oppose the petition, maintaining, inter aha, that only a unit encompassing employees at all the Hospital's facilities would be appropriate 6 They contend that the Lamar Unit has no more separate operational or functional identity than that of a separate floor or wing at the Main Unit We agree When the Employer commenced operations at the Lamar Unit in 1962, it was utilized primarily as a facility for long-term care for the aged In the years since then, many programs and facilities have been moved in and out of Lamar and it has now evolved into a rehabilitative facility, having a spinal cord in- jury unit, a stroke rehabilitation unit, a general reha- bilitation unit, and a chronic hemodialysis unit As a result of this rehabilitative function, 50 percent of Lamar's patients are initially admitted to hospital fa- cilities at the Main Unit (when their condition is acute) and later transferred to Lamar when they are in need of rehabilitation Upon such transfer, no ad- ditional admittance procedure is required for the pa- tient Patient care is further integrated by centraliza- tion at the Main Unit of all recordkeeping, billing, and insurance matters Lamar currently has no operating room or other facilities for the care of acutely ill patients, although it has had them at times in the past Over the years, as the operating requirements of the Hospital were affected by changing demands for services or the availability of additional space in newly constructed buildings, various specialty units and functions have been transferred into, or out of, Lamar When this has happened, the affected employees often have been transferred en masse along with their work to the building to which the function was moved Operationally, Lamar functions much as the Hospital's other buildings, utilizing common pur- chasing, engineering and power control, laundry, and garage facilities with the hospital buildings at the Main Unit Labor relations policy and administration are common to all hospital employees, including those at Lamar The Main Unit personnel office interviews 5 The Petitioners requested unit is for all dietary, housekeeping nursing service nursing assistant, floor secretarial and attending employees but excluding all surgeons, RN s, LPN's, guards, professional employees and supervisors as defined in the Act The Employer also opposed the requested unit on the ground that it is too narrow in terms of the employee classifications included therein How- ever in view of the result reached herein, we need not, and do not consider the Employer's other unit contentions 224 NLRB No 52 202 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD all prospective employees and all new employees re- ceive their orientation at the Main Unit Further, all employment and payroll records are centrally main- tained and administered All employees, regardless of the building to which they are assigned, receive the same holidays and other fringe benefits, work the same hours, and are paid on the basis of the same wage scale Where seniority is a factor, employees are credited with employment in all hospital areas, in- cluding Lamar Many of the Lamar employees share common overall supervision with employees who are in the same department but are assigned to facilities in the Main Unit The degree of employee transfers between Lamar and the Main Unit, both permanent and temporary, appears to be massive Forty-seven percent of the employees regularly assigned to work at Lamar pre- viously worked at Main Unit facilities In the 5-year period ending 1974, 121 employees transferred from the Main Unit to Lamar, and 57 transferred in the other direction Temporary transfers, on a daily ba- sis, are also frequent For example, in the 11-month period ending January 1975, the Main Unit nursing service department provided relief employees to La- mar on 109 occasions In view of the above factors which clearly establish functional and operational integration between the Lamar Unit and the Main Unit, we find that a sepa- rate bargaining unit limited to Lamar employees is inappropriate' Accordingly, and as the Petitioner has indicated that it does not wish to participate in a unit broader than the one petitioned for, we shall dismiss the peti- tion herein ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed 7 See Mercy Hospitals of Sacramento, Inc 217 NLRB 765 (1975)