Arizona Public Service Company

400 ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY Arizona Public Service Company, Employer-Peti- tioner and International Brotherhood of Electri- cal Workers, AFL-CIO, Local 387 Arizona Public Service Company and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, Local 387, Petitioner. Cases 28-RM-394 and 28-UC- 11 June 5, 1981 DECISION AND ORDER Upon petitions duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer Bruce R. Kettler. 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 Di- rector for Region 28 transferred this case to the Board for decision. Thereafter, the parties filed briefs. 1 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 af- firmed. On 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. 2. The labor organization involved claims to rep- resent certain employees of the Employer. 3. No question affecting commerce exists con- cerning the representation of certain employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9(c)(1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act. On December 15, 1980, the Employer filed the instant RM petition, requesting an election among the production and maintenance employees em- ployed at its Palo Verde nuclear unit. On the same day, the Union filed the instant UC petition, seek- ing accretion of the Palo Verde employees into a systemwide production and maintenance bargaining unit. For the reasons stated below, we find that the group of employees in question are an accretion to the bargaining unit currently in existence, and we accordingly dismiss the Employer's petition for an election among these employees. The Employer is a public utility engaged in the supplying of electric power throughout the State of Arizona. It currently owns and operates several nonnuclear generating units, and is in the process of building (as part owner) at Palo Verde, Arizona, the nuclear power plant involved herein. The Employer's request for oral argument is hereby denied, since the record and the briefs adequately present the position of the parties 256 NLRB No. 65 The Employer's corporate headquarters are in Phoenix, Arizona. Its nonnuclear plants are located in Arizona and New Mexico. Relative to the other units in the system, Palo Verde (55 miles from Phoenix) is one of the closest to the company's headquarters. Administration of the Employer's electric power generation production is centralized in the office of vice president of electrical operations whose offices are located in Phoenix. The plant managers at the nonnuclear units report to this official of the com- pany. The power produced by each of the nonnu- clear units is mingled with the power transmitted by the other units and thereafter dispatched throughout the State of Arizona. The Palo Verde plant manager, like his equals at the other generating units, reports to the vice presi- dent of electrical operations. The Palo Verde plant will not service a distinct geographical area once it commences operation. Rather, the electric power generated by the nuclear unit will feed into the same control system as the power transmitted by the nonnuclear units and will be dispatched in the same manner as the nonnuclear-generated power. The Employer's labor relations policies appear to be carefully determined and administered. All pro- duction and maintenance employees employed at the nonnuclear power generating plants are repre- sented by the Union in a single systemwide bar- gaining unit. Since at least 1947, the Employer and the Union have had a bargaining relationship, during which time the Employer has by acquisition or construction added several generating units to its system. The practice of the parties in these cases has been to incorporate the production and mainte- nance employees at the newly acquired or con- structed facilities into the contractual systemwide bargaining unit.2 The Employer's unrepresented employees are classified "performance review" employees. The performance review employees thoughout the system are subject to salary guidelines and per- formance review policies established by central management. The rules described in the company handbook of rules for performance review employ- ees are applied uniformly throughout the system. Transfers and job bidding for posted performance review vacancies are available to all performance review employees on the same basis. Many benefits provided by the company are common to both represented and unrepresented employees. Thus, the performance review employ- ees, as well as bargaining unit employees, enjoyed the same vacation policy, holidays, pension, and dental and medical benefits. 2 The current contract, dated April I, 1980, expires on April 1, 1982. ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY 401 The day-to-day supervision of Palo Verde pro- duction and maintenance employees appears to be vested in plant management. The Palo Verde plant manager retains significant authority in the imple- mentation of the Company's uniform policies and in the direction of employees. The Employer began hiring employees for the Palo Verde nuclear unit in 1977, for use in the pro- duction and maintenance areas. 3 The nuclear unit presently employs approximately 62 production and maintenance employees, 12 or 13 of whom transferred from other units within the Employer's operations. These employees are now classified as performance review employees and are accorded benefits as described above. Largely due to regulations imposed by the Nu- clear Regulatory Commission, some special training is required for the Palo Verde employees. None- theless, the record evidences that many of the pro- duction and maintenance classifications at Palo Verde are common to all the Employer's plants, and further that the functions of the Palo Verde employees are comparable to those performed by their counterparts elsewhere in the Employer's system. And, as noted above, approximately 20 percent of the production and maintenance em- ployees at Palo Verde transferred there from bar- gaining unit positions. The Employer urges that Board precedent re- quires a systemwide unit as the only appropriate unit for its employees, but that substantial differ- ences in skills, functions, and technological knowl- edge between the Palo Verde employees and bar- gaining unit employees and the local autonomy of the Palo Verde management compel refusal of the Union's contention that the Palo Verde employees constitute an accretion to the existing systemwide bargaining unit. Therefore, argues the Employer, the Palo Verde employees must be allowed the op- portunity to decide for themselves whether to be incorporated into the bargaining unit or to remain unrepresented. The Union opposes the Employer's petition, urging instead that the Palo Verde employees are merely an accretion to the existing production and maintenance unit. Should the Board decline to apply the accretion doctrine, the Union contends that no question concerning representation exists because the Union has made no claim to represent a majority of the employees in question, and that therefore the Employer's petition should be dis- missed. In the alternative, the Union argues that, if the Board determines an election is appropriate, the 3 The parties stipulated and we find that, although the number of em- ployees will continue to expand, the present complement is representa- live. employees be given a choice between representa- tion in a separate unit or the existing systemwide unit. 4 Conclusion We are persuaded by a number of factors, in- cluding the integrated nature of the Employer's op- erations, the community of interest that the em- ployees in question share in common with their counterparts elsewhere in the Employer's system, and the bargaining history between the parties, that the Palo Verde employees are an accretion to the systemwide production and maintenance bargaining unit. We have long held that in the public utility in- dustry, operation of which is characterized by a high degree of integration, the optimum unit is a systemwide one. Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., 206 NLRB 199, 201 (1973). We deviate from this policy where the boundaries of the requested unit conform to a well-defined administrative segment of the utility's operation, where the requested unit serves a distinct geographical area, and where a separate unit can be established without involving disturbance of the employer's ability to perform its necessary function. United Gas, Inc., 190 NLRB 618, 618-619 (1971); Monongahela Power Company, 176 NLRB 915, 917 (1969). Here, the electric power that will be generated by the nuclear plant will feed into the same control system into which the other generating units' power flows and will be disbursed throughout the area which the Employer services. This integration of operations is reflected in the Employer's central- ized administration of operations-illustrated by the fact that each plant manager reports to the vice president of electrical operations whose offices are located in Phoenix. Thus, the requested unit does not represent a unique administrative segment of the Employer's operations, nor will the Palo Verde generating plant service a distinct geographical area. 5 Further, we believe that the Palo Verde employ- ees share a community of interest with bargaining unit employees. It is clear that the labor relations policies for unrepresented employees are centrally determined and uniformly applied throughout the system. It is also clear that the Palo Verde produc- tion and maintenace employees, although presently classified performance review employees, occupy ' In the evenl the Board dirccts an election, the Union also argues that certain technical employees should he included in the olting unit 5 Although the record suggests that, because of computerization, the Emplo)er's ability to perform its functions would not necessarily be cur- tailed by a cessation of work at Palo Verde, we find that this factor does not outweigh the abose-recited factors indicating a high degree of cen- tralizallon in the Employer's operations and administration 402 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD many of the same classifications and perform the same functions as bargaining unit employees. In ad- dition, we note that a not insignificant number of former bargaining unit employees now work in production and maintenance positions at Palo Verde. Finally, the record indicates that the Palo Verde employees enjoy many of the same terms and conditions of employment accorded bargaining unit employees. Accordingly, based on the Em- ployer's centralized labor relations policies, the similarity of classifications, functions, and terms and conditions of employment of Palo Verde em- ployees and bargaining unit employees, and the transfers from unit positions to Palo Verde produc- tion and maintenance positions, we find that the Palo Verde employees share a community of inter- est with the Employer's represented production and maintenance employees. We also find significant that bargaining between the parties has historically been on a systemwide basis. The Employer in the past has extended rec- ognition to the Union as representative of employ- ees at facilities added to the utility system.6 We are reluctant to grant a less than systemwide unit where to do so would be contrary to extensive bar- gaininig history on a systemwide basis. Baltimore Gas, supra at 201. 3 Since we utilize this fact merely as evidence that the parties have historically favored systemwide bargaining, we do not believe its rel- evance is nullified because the parties disagree as to the exact circum- stances surrounding the Litlployer's extension of recognition. Therefore, based on the above factors, we find that the Palo Verde production and maintenance employees are accretions to,7 and should be includ- ed in,8 the systemwide production and maintenace unit represented by the Union. In view of the foregoing, we find that no ques- tion concerning representation of the Palo Verde production and maintenance employees exists, and we shall dismiss the petition in Case 28-RM-394.9 ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case 28-RM-394 be, and it hereby is, dismissed in its entirety. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the existing system- wide bargaining unit for the Employer's produc- tion and maintenance employees, currently repre- sented by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 387, AFL-CIO, be, and it hereby is, clarified to include those production and mainte- nance employees located at the Employer's Palo Verde, Arizona, facility. I It is well established that employees accreted to an existing unit are not accorded a self-determination election. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (Apple Grove, Wesr Virginia Plant), 147 NLRB 1233, 1234, fn. 6 (1974), and case cited therein. 8 The apparent local autonomy of Palo Verde management is a factor that favors nonaccretion. However, in considering an accretion issue, we examine a number of factors. We find in this case that local autonomy alone is insufficient to overcome the many factors supporting a system- wide unit 9 Because of our disposition of this case, we need not address the other contentions urged by the parties