San Juan Medical Center

117 307 NLRB No. 15 SAN JUAN MEDICAL CENTER 1 We are not suggesting that the maintenance and repair of X-ray electronic equipment is not highly skilled. Indeed, the radiology technician who performs this work for the Employer is also included in the skilled maintenance unit. San Juan Regional Medical Center and Inter- national Union of Operating Engineers, Local No. 953, AFL–CIO, Petitioner. Case 28–RC– 5009 April 16, 1992 DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN STEPHENS AND MEMBERS OVIATT AND RAUDABAUGH The Employer’s request for review of the Regional Director’s Decision and Direction of Election is grant- ed with respect to the placement of biomedical techni- cians in a skilled maintenance unit. The Board, by a three-member panel, having carefully examined the record, has decided that the Regional Director correctly included these employees in the petitioned-for skilled maintenance unit. The record establishes, and the Employer agrees, that its biomedical technicians are highly skilled em- ployees who maintain, repair, and calibrate sophisti- cated hospital equipment such as infusion pumps, IV pumps, incubators, operating room tables, lasers, EEG, EKG, audiology, anesthesiology, and non x-ray elec- tronic equipment.1 Moreover, the biomedical techni- cians are in the same department as the maintenance mechanics, who perform traditional skilled mainte- nance work, and are under the same department man- ager; neither the biomedical technicians nor the main- tenance mechanics presently have firstline supervision, and the biomedical technicians have similar hours and lower wages than the radiology technician, a radiology department employee, who was included in the unit. The fact that the biomedical technicians may have more education, a higher wage range, and different hours than the maintenance mechanics, as well as little interaction and no interchange with other plant oper- ations department employees, does not preclude their inclusion in the skilled maintenance unit. The fact that these employees maintain and repair equipment used in direct patient care also does not pre- clude their placement in the skilled maintenance unit. See Jewish Hospital, 305 NLRB 955 (1991). There, the Board excluded the occupational therapy craftsman from a skilled maintenance unit but not because he constructed equipment used in direct patient care; in- stead, he was excluded because his primary job duties included direct patient care—assigning patients in the selection and execution of appropriate projects. As the biomedical technicians here do not engage in any di- rect patient care, but only maintain and repair hospital equipment (by happenstance, equipment used in the di- agnosis and treatment of patients), the Regional Direc- tor properly included them in a skilled maintenance unit. We reject the Employer’s contention that the bio- medical technicians’ high skill level compels a finding that they are technical employees. In the past, in unit placement cases, the Board has taken varying positions on whether biomedical technicians’ skill levels com- port with those of employees performing more tradi- tional skilled maintenance work. Faulkner Hospital, 242 NLRB 47 (1979) (biomedical technicians included in a skilled maintenance unit); Long Island College Hospital, 239 NLRB 1135 (1978) (biomedical techni- cians excluded from a skilled maintenance unit); Gar- den City Hospital, 244 NLRB 778 (1979) (electronics technician included regardless of whether technical or nontechnical). However, the Board’s Rulemaking pro- ceeding shows that the Board contemplated varying degrees of skill among classifications to be included in skilled maintenance units. 284 NLRB 1561–1562, 53 Fed.Reg. 33923–33924. Although the Board did not make a unit placement decision in the Healthcare Rule regarding biomedical technicians, it did indicate that from the evidence it had received, it appeared the bio- medical technicians had skills similar to those of the more traditional skilled maintenance classifications. 284 NLRB 1559, 53 Fed.Reg. 33922. In addition, the record here shows that the Employer’s other employ- ees it denominates as technical are primarily involved in diagnostic work, not maintenance and repair of equipment. Accordingly, the Regional Director prop- erly declined to place the biomedical technicians in a technical unit. MEMBER OVIATT, dissenting. Based on the record evidence recited above, I would find these biomedical technicians to be technical em- ployees and would exclude them from the skilled maintenance unit.