Operating Engineers, Local 34

DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 34, AFL-CIO and Minnesota Employees of City and County Agencies (MECCA) and Douglas County Hospital. Case AO-242 March 1, 1983 ADVISORY OPINION On November 22, 1982, International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 34, AFL-CIO, herein called the Petitioner, filed a petition for an Advisory Opinion, in conformity with Sections 102.98 and 102.99 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations, Series 8, as amended, seeking to determine whether the Board would assert jurisdiction over Douglas County Hospital, herein called the Employer. Minnesota Employees of City and County Agencies, herein called MECCA, filed a response. In pertinent part, the petition and the response allege as follows: There is pending before the Bureau of Mediation Services of the State of Minnesota, herein called the State Bureau, a challenge by MECCA to the Petitioner's representation of certain employees of the Employer, Docket Nos. 83-R-133 and 83-R- 134. By its petition, the Petitioner asserts that the Employer is not subject to the jurisdiction of the State Bureau because the Employer is not a public employer under the Public Employees Act of the State of Minnesota, and it generates gross revenues in excess of $1 million per year, providing health care services to county, state, and out-of-state residents. By its response, MECCA asserts that the Employer is county controlled by the Douglas County Commissioners, who must approve all labor agreements; that the Employer's employees are public employees covered under the Public Employees Retirement Act; and that the Employer has always been a county hospital and publicly operated. The Board has duly considered the petition and the response. The Board's Advisory Opinion proceedings are designed primarily to determine questions of jurisdiction by application of the Board's discretionary standards to the "commerce" operations of an employer.¹ The submissions by the parties herein raise the basic issue whether the Employer is an "employer" within the meaning of Section 2(2) of the Act, or is exempt from the Board's jurisdiction as a "political subdivision" (of Douglas County), or as an organization whose labor relations are extensively controlled by the county. As this issue does not fall within the intendment of the Board's Advisory Opinion rules, we shall dismiss the petition.² Accordingly, it is ordered that, for the reasons set forth above, the petition for an Advisory Opinion be, and it hereby is, dismissed. 1 Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board (George Junior Republic), 215 NLRB 323 (1974). 2 Ibid. 266 NLRB No. 53