National Telecommunications, Inc.

184 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD National Telecommunications , Inc. and Communica- tions Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 3-RC-5855 November 29, 1974 DECISION AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS FANNING, 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 Bruce D. Rosenstein of the National Labor Relations Board. Following the close of the hearing the Regional Director for Region 3 transferred this case to the Board for decision. Thereafter, the Employer filed a brief. The Board has reviewed the rulings of the Hearing Officer made at the hearing and find that they are free from prejudicial error. The rulings are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this case, 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. The parties stipulated that the Employer is a Connecticut corpora- tion and is a wholly owned subsidiary of National Tele- phone Company. The record discloses that the Em- ployer is engaged in the business of leasing, installing, and maintaining commercial telephone equipment from facilities located in Buffalo, New York, and other locations and the parties stipulated that during the past year the Employer derived gross revenue in excess of $50,000 in the course and conduct of its business, and purchased and received goods valued in excess of $50,- 000 directly from points located outside the State of New York. 2. The parties further stipulated that the Petitioner, which claims to represent certain employees of the Em- ployer, is a labor organization as defined in the Act. 3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representation of certain employees of the Em- ployer within the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the Act. 4. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of all employees including installation and service employees at the Employer's Buffalo, New York, branch, but ex- cluding all office clerical employees, salesmen, profes- sional employees, guards, watchmen, and supervisors as defined in the Act. The Employer disagrees with the scope and the com- position of the requested unit. The Employer contends that the smallest appropriate unit must include all the branches in its eastern division and that such a unit should not include servicemen. The Employer further contends that the installation and service managers and the installation and service foremen should be excluded from the unit, while the Petitioner takes no position regarding these categories of employees. As noted above, the Employer is a wholy owned subsidiary of National Telephone Company. It is also engaged in the same business as National Telephone Company, and in fact functions as a single company with the same administrative organization. The record reveals that the only reason for the existence of a sepa- rate corporate name for Employer was the unavailabil- ity of the name National Telephone Company in New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey at the time of Employer's incorporation. We therefore find that the factual considerations with regard to the appropriateness of the unit in Na- tional Telephone Company, Inc., 215 NLRB No. 17, issued today, are equally applicable here. Thus, in agreement with the Employer, we find, for the reasons set forth in the National Telephone Company decision, that any unit less than divisionwide in scope would be inappropriate. In so concluding, we predicate our determination in this case and in the related National Telephone Company, Inc., case on the particular facts in these cases. We make no determination generally as to what would constitute an appropriate unit of another employer's employees in what is described as the inter- connect industry. In view of our unit determination, we do not reach the unit composition question concerning the inclusion or exclusion of servicemen. Nor do we find it necessary to decide whether any of the categories of employees mentioned above are supervisors within the meaning of the Act. Accordingly, we find the unit requested herein inap- propriate. As the Petitioner has not indicated a desire to proceed to an election in a broader unit, we shall dismiss its petition. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. MEMBER FANNING, dissenting: In view of the facts in this case, it is not difficult to discern why the majority wrote its opinion in the com- panion case, National Telephone Compnay, Inc., 215 NLRB No. 17, issued today, in which it found only a divisionwide unit appropriate and then cited that case to dismiss the petition herein. In my dissent in the companion case, I pointed out that the majority's opin- ion therein will deprive the employees in Hartford of any opportunity to exercise the rights guaranteed under Section 7 of the Act. Here the result reached by the majority is even more absurd. 215 NLRB No. 18 NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS, INC. Thus, as in the companion case, the branch manager has local autonomy or control over the employees and their day-to-day problems. In addition, however, here, unlike in the companion case where there is some evi- dence of interchange, although minimal, there is no evidence whatsoever of temporary transfers to or from the Buffalo branch. Moreover, the geographical separa- tion of the other branches from Buffalo is even greater than in the companion case for Buffalo is 149 miles from Syracuse, the nearest branch; 391 miles from Hartford, the division headquarters; 356 miles from Philadelphia; 356 miles from Camden; 396 miles from Bridgeport; 434 miles from Manchester, New Hamp- shire; and 441 miles from Providence, Rhode Island. These distances can hardly be considered the type of geographical proximity which would be a bar to finding a single-branch unit inappropriate. As in the compan- ion case, there is no history of collective bargaining and no union seeks a broader unit. In conclusion , all the factors , including local au- 185 tonomy vested in the branch manager, lack of inter- change, and geographical separation that usually make a single-location unit appropriate are present. Given these factors, I fail to see how it can be said that the Buffalo employees have any community of interest, as normally defined by the Board, with the employees of the other branches unless that community of interest is determined solely by the fact that they work for the same company. If the Buffalo unit sought herein does not constitute an appropriate single-location unit of a multilocation enterprise, I frankly do not see how the majority will ever again find a single-location unit ap- propriate. In my opinion, the majority's opinion not only deprives the Buffalo employees of any opportunity to exercise their Section 7 rights, but makes a mockery of Board precedent and the statute's direction to frame units to "assure to employees the fullest freedom in exercising the rights guaranteed by the Act." I would find the Buffalo unit appropriate.