Cabco Engineering Co.

CABCO ENGINEERING CO. Cabco Engineering Company and Local Union No. 476 of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada, Peti- tioner. Case I-RC-17480 20 December 1983 DECISION AND CERTIFICATION OF REPRESENTATIVE BY CHAIRMAN DOTSON AND' MEMBERS ZIMMERMAN AND HUNTER Pursuant to authority granted it by the National Labor Relations Board under Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, a three-member panel has considered objections and determinative challenges in an election held December 16, 1981,1 and the Regional Director's report recommending disposition of same. The Board has reviewed the record in light of the exceptions and briefs, and hereby adopts the Regional Director's findings and recommendations. 2 'The election was conducted pursuant to a Stipulation for Certifica- tion Upon Consent Election. The tally was II for, and 9 against, the Peti- tioner; there were 2 challenged ballots. 2 With the Regional Director's approval, the Employer's objections were withdrawn, as were part of the Petitioner's Objection I and its Ob- jection 2. In the absence of exceptions thereto, we adopt, pro forma, the Regional Director's recommendation as to the remainder of the Petition- er's objections. Relying on Buckley Southland Oil, 210 NLRB 1060 (1974), the Em- ployer contends that the Regional Director was obliged to vacate the election and order a rerun once he found that there was no meeting of the minds by the parties about whether two challenged voters were to be included in, or excluded from, the stipulated unit. This contention misap- prehends the Board's holding in Buckley and is otherwise without merit. CERTIFICATION OF REPRESENTATIVE It is hereby certified that a majority of the valid ballots have been cast for Local Union No. 476 of the United Association of Journeymen and Ap- prentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada, and that, pursuant to Section 9(a) of the Act, the said labor organiza- tion is the exclusive representative of all the em- ployees in the following appropriate unit for the purposes of collective bargaining with respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, and other terms and conditions of employment: All journeymen pipefitters, refrigeration fitters, and helpers employed by the Employer at its 372 Central Avenue, Pawtucket, Rhode Island location, but excluding all other employees, office clerical employees, professional employ- ees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act. In Buckley, the dispute between the parties concerned a significant cate- gory of employees, with 8 of the 28 employees who voted belonging to a group about whose unit placement there had been no meeting of the minds when the parties executed their stipulation. Since, in a real sense, the dispute in Buckley revealed that there had been no meeting of the minds concerning the basic parameters of the bargaining unit, the Board there held that the proper course was to hold a rerun election after the unit's basic parameters were fixed either by a new stipulation or by a unit hearing. Here, by contrast, the dispute between the parties concerns not the basic parameters of the unit, but only the placement of 2 employees in a unit of approximately 22 employees. In such circumstances, it re- mains our stated policy not to become mired in questions of contractual intent, but to resolve the eligibility issue which the challenged ballots pose by applying traditional unit criteria. This is what the Regional Di- rector did here, correctly in our view. 268 NLRB No. 59 393