Kelly Business Furniture, Inc.

474 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Kelly Business Furniture, Inc. and Santa Clara Valley District Council of Carpenters, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO. Case 32-CA-8437 April 14, 1988 DECISION AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN STEPHENS AND MEMBERS JOHANSEN AND CRACRAFT On September 2, 1987, Administrative Law Judge Timothy D. Nelson issued the attached deci- sion. The General Counsel and the Charging Party filed exceptions and supporting briefs, and the Re- spondent filed an answering brief in support of the judge's decision. The National Labor Relations Board has delegat- ed its authority in this proceeding to a three- member panel. The Board has considered the decision and the record in light of the exceptions and briefs and has decided to affirm the judge's rulings, findings, and conclusions and to adopt the recommended Order. ORDER The recommended Order of the administrative law judge is adopted and the complaint is dis- missed. Raoul Thorbourne, Esq., for the General Counsel. Robert G. Hulteng and Bruce J. Sarchet, Esqs. (Littler, Mendelson, Fastiff & Tichy), of San Francisco, Califor- nia, for the Respondent. Paul Supton, Esq. (Van Bourg Weinberg, Roger & Rosen- feld), of San Francisco, California, for the Charging Party Union. DECISION STATEMENT OF THE CASE; THE ISSUES TIMOTHY D. NELSON, Administrative Law Judge. I heard this 8(a)(5) case in trial in Oakland, California, on 13 and 14 May 1987. It arose on 8 October 1986 when Santa Clara Valley District Council of Carpenters (Union) filed charges against Kelly Business Furniture, Inc. (Respondent). On 23 January 1987, after investigat- ing, the Regional Director for Region 32 dismissed cer- tain aspects of the charges, but issued a complaint con- cerning one of them. The complaint alleges that, on and after 24 October 1986, Respondent unlawfully refused to recognize and bargain with the Union as the exclusive representative of a certain unit, called "the Unit" in paragraph 6 of the complaint, described materially in that paragraph as, "All . . . systems installers and systems warehousemen, employed by Respondent at its. . . Hayward, California facility; excluding all other employees. . . ." Paragraph 7 of the complaint alleges as fact that on 12 May 1986 the Board had certified the Union "as the exclusive collec- tive bargaining representative of the employees in the Unit." Respondent's answer denies paragraphs 6 and 7 of the complaint. Respondent admits that the Union was certi- fied in a unit, but not the one pleaded in the complaint; it admits that it no longer recognizes the Union as the rep- resentative for that certified unit, but avers that this is because that unit no longer "exists." More specifically, Respondent avers that "changed circumstances"—a relo- cation and consolidation of operations—have resulted in a merger under one roof of employees from the certified unit with a larger number of their unrepresented counter- parts, thereby destroying the appropriateness of the originally certified unit and privileging Respondent's re- fusal to recognize the Union in the unit in which the General Counsel would now require it to bargain. The real issue, the one that was needlessly obscured by the peculiar fiction employed in the complaint allega- tions pertaining to the unit,' is whether the certified unit, practically encompassing Respondent's "systems" install- ers and warehouse employees working out of one of Re- spondent's former Sunnyvale facilities, retained its appro- priateness for collective-bargaining purposes when Re- spondent transferred all of its operations (including both "systems" and "conventional" furniture warehousing and delivery) to Hayward and consolidated them under a single roof. I conclude that it did not. On the whole record, 2 on my observations of the wit- nesses as they testified, and on my assessments of the in- herent probabilities, I make these FINDINGS OF FACT I. RESPONDENT'S PRESENT AND FORMER OPERATIONS IN OVERVIEW Respondent, a California corporation, sells office fur- nishings on, a retail and nonretail basis. 3 These include "conventional" office furniture (desks, chairs, bookcases), delivered essentially intact from warehouse to customer, as well as a line of panel "systems" used to divide office work spaces, which must be finish-assembled and in- stalled on site from warehoused components. Respondent now operates from a single building in Hayward, California. That Hayward facility includes a showroom and business offices within one interior-walled section; the balance of the building is an open-space warehouse where both conventional furniture and panel systems are now received, stored, worked on, and staged for delivery to customers. Respondent had formerly operated from a variety of separate buildings in Sunnyvale, some 35 freeway miles The complaint confuses fact with theory by averring that the unit as described in the complaint is the unit that the Board certified. The Gen- eral Counsel now acknowledges (Br. 3 at fn. 2) that the "wording of the certified unit was changed in the complamt to more accurately reflect the actual work performed by the employees and the fact the bargaining unit work is now performed. . . in Hayward." 2 The General Counsel and Respondent filed posttrial briefs which I have fully considered. 3 In the year preceding the complamt Respondent realized gross busi- ness volumes exceeding $500,000, and purchased directly from outside California more than $50,000 goods and services. 288 NLRB No. 54 KELLY BUSINESS FURNITURE 475 from Hayward. Since 1983, it had maintained two ware- houses in Sunnyvale—one at Weddell Court, used for the panel systems; the other at Caribbean Street, about 4 miles away, used for conventional furniture. The Weddell Court systems warehouse employed a group of roughly 15 regular nonsupervisory employees, of which about 3 did inside warehousing (involving ship- ping and receiving, inventory control, stocking, and par- tial preassembly or rehabilitation work on panel systems) and about 12 other "installers" handled the delivery, final assembly, and on-site installation of the panel sys- tems, using company-owned vans to make their deliv- eries. The Weddell Court operation was then sometimes called the "Technical Services Division," and the Wed- dell Court employees (both warehousemen and installers)- were sometimes called the "Tech Team." The Caribbean Street warehouse for conventional fur- niture employed roughly 35 warehousing, shipping and receiving, repair, delivery, and "field service" employees (the latter doing minor repairs at the delivery site). A. The Move to Hayward By late 1984 Respondent had decided, for business rea- sons, to consolidate everything, including its convention- al and systems warehousing operations, under a single roof.4 By October 1985 Respondent had selected the new site at Hayward and had secured terms for occupan- cy of that facility at the future points when its existing leases in Sunnyvale would expire. The Caribbean Street operation was closed down in March 1986 (all dates below are in 1986, unless I specify otherwise), when Respondent's existing lease expired there; its stock of conventional furniture was then moved to Hayward, along with those roughly 35 former Carib- bean Street employees who elected to keep their jobs. The Weddell Court operation continued for 6 more months, until October, when the lease for those premises expired; its inventory and supplies were then similarly re- moved to Hayward and approximately 11 former Wed- dell Court employees (of which 9 or 10 were installers and 1 or 2 were warehousepersons) opted to continue working under the new arrangement. B. The Union's Intervening Certification at Weddell Court; Interim Labor Relationship; Respondent's Refusal to Continue Recognition After the Relocation hi the meantime, in May, when Weddell Court was the only remaining Sunnyvale facility, the Union won an 4 In summary, Respondent had decided—well before the Union had come mto the picture at Weddell Court--to relocate and consolidate be- cause of a desire for more space as business increased in both convention- al and systems furnishings and because i t believed that it could improve customer service and still operate more efficiently and profitably by con- solidating in a single building The General Counsel has disclaimed any contention that the consolidation decision was influenced by umon-tacti- cal considerations. I note also that the Regional Director, in dismissing discrete aspects of the instant charges relating to Respondent's refusal to bargain over the relocation decision, found, inter aha, that "Respondent was not obligated to bargain about such decision because it was not based on labor costs. . . " (My emphasis; see R. Exh. 2 at 1, third sentence; but compare the penultimate sentence on that page, which, due to the apparently inadvertent omission of the word "not," makes a contradicto- ry and contextually senseless statement, which I ignore.) election conducted under the Board's auspices among the "production and maintenance" employees (in reality, sys- tems warehousepersons and installers) working at, or out of, that facility.5 Respondent and the Union subsequently entered into collective bargaining regarding the Weddell Court unit;6 they had not reached a contract by late September, the point at which Respondent notified the Union of the planned relocation of the systems work to the Hayward facility and offered to bargain about the effects of such a move on the Weddell Court employees. On 24 October the current controversy ripened when Respondent's attorney wrote to the Union's attorney ad- vising, in substance, that while Respondent was still pre- pared to bargain with the Union over the "effects" of the move on former Weddell Court employees, 7 its current "position" was that the certified unit had "ceased to exist, and was accreted into the larger Hayward bargain- ing unit." "Accordingly," Respondent's attorney contin- ued, "the Company no longer recognizes the existence of a separate bargaining unit of those employees formerly working out of the Sunnyvale i.e., Weddell Court ware- house." These statements implied what Respondent's answer to the complaint now makes explicit—that Re- spondent now refuses to recognize or bargain with the Union as the representative of any portion of its current employee complement at Hayward, but will only fulfill whatever lingering obligation it may have to bargain with the Union over the effects on former Weddell Court unit employees of its decision to move to Hay- ward. C. Principal Differences Between the Current Operations in Hayward and the Former Operations in Sunnyvale Most of the litigation involved an exploration into the details surrounding Respondent's present and former op- erations. Much of this exploration amounted, in my view, 5 In Case 32-RC-2279 the Regional Director, on behalf of the Board, certified the Union as the exclusive collective-bargaining representative of Respondent's employees in this unit. All full-time and regular part-time production and maintenance employees, including leadmen, employed by [Respondent] at its facil- ity located at 922 Weddell Court, Sunnyvale, California; excluding all other employees. . The description of the certified unit—and the Regional Director's find- mg that it was an appropriate one—derived from the parties' stipulations at a preelection hearmg. The record does not reveal whether the Region- al Director or the Union then had any inkling of Respondent's plans for relocating the Weddell Court work to the Hayward facility. 6 The record suggests that Respondent had first refused to bargain with the Union in the certified unit, but then settled a Board case (docket number not of record) by agreeing, in an informal settlement agreement under Board auspices, to commence bargaining with the Union. I infer this from Respondent's letter to the Union dated 11 July, which refers to such a settlement, and in which Respondent formally recognized the Union as the representative of the employees m the certified unit, prom- ised not to make unilateral changes affecting that unit, and invited the Union to contact Respondent to schedule collective-bargaining meetings. 7 The Regional Director also dismissed another portion of the instant charges, alleging that Respondent had not bargained in good faith,over the "effects" of the relocation of Weddell Court work and employees to Hayward. That disposition was grounded in a finding that, to date, it was, the Union's inability to meet with Respondent, rather than Respondent's unwillingness to bargain, that had prevented any "effects" bargaining. 476 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD to an exposition of the obvious, or at least the unremar- kable. As I see it, the relocation and consolidation under one roof of formerly separate warehousing and delivery operations is the centrally dispositive fact, the crucial way in which "circumstances" have "changed" since the Board issued its Weddell Court certification; the kind of change, in short, which will predictably yield the kinds of operational details that are now presented at Hayward and which, I shall find, justifies Respondent's current re- fusal to bargain with the Union. The General Counsel, conceding the obvious—that the operations have been relocated under a single roof— would have me conclude nevertheless that the systems employees still maintain enough distinctness in the present operation to constitute an appropriate unit. I agree that this is the ultimate question; whether the Board could now find that their involvement with panel systems is enough to treat those employees as an appro- priate unit for collective bargaining. For those decisional purposes, I deem it sufficient to set forth below only those details about which there is no current dispute. The physical arrangement: Although the warehouse portion of the Hayward facility is not physically subdi- vided by interior walls, different areas of the warehouse are reserved for the two different product lines (the panel systems components are all stored and worked on in an area to the right side of an imaginary line dividing the open warehouse space; the conventional furniture is mostly stored and worked on in an area to the left of that imaginery line, but there is a substantial spillover of those products into reserved areas to the right of that "line"; overall, conventional furniture takes up about two-thirds of the warehousing space). There is a common receiving dock and distribution area at a mid- point on an outside wall, where both conventional and systems products are received from manufacturers, in- voices and associated paperwork are processed, and from which both types of products are distributed within the warehouse. On the outside wall at the left end of the building is a loading dock and staging area through which both types of products pass for delivery to cus- tomers. 8 There is a common lunchroom in the ware- house. There is a common timeclock for all employees. Functional integration: At present (and apparently for sometime preceding the move), roughly 90 percent of Respondent's customer orders have included both con- ventional furniture and panel systems. Accordingly, even before the move, the Caribbean and Weddell Court workers were "integrated" from a functional standpoint into Respondent's overall business of providing office furnishings to customers. Now that the two are under one roof, their functional integration is simply more ob- vious; plainly, too, Respondent's practical ability to co- Derek Williams, a systems Installer, and Mark Ambler, a systems (or "grey goods") warehouseman, both suggest m their testimony that the in- stallers sometimes load their panel systems into vans through a door at the right end of the building, which is nearer to where those products are stored than to the delivery/staging area at the opposite end of the build- ing The record does not allow a finding as to how often the systems in- stallers load through this door rather than from the delivery/staging dock. ordinate those functions has been enhanced by the con- solidation. The current administrative arrangements; management, department structure, pay classifications: Before the move, Dave Martinez, headquartered at Caribbean Street, was titled "warehouse manager"; he was adminis- tratively in charge of the operations at both Caribbean Street and at Weddell Court. In fact, however, each of those warehouses was practically autonomous in terms of recordkeeping associated with receiving, shipping, and delivery, and in terms of practical day-to-day scheduling and supervision of work. Indeed, Weddell Court had its own manager, Anthony Moreno. Presently, Dave Martinez has been given full oper- ational authority over all aspects of the warehousing, de- livery, and installation of both panel systems and conven- tional furniture. He must personally interview and ap- prove any applicants for jobs within that overall oper- ation; he alone issues written warnings and disciplinary suspensions; he must approve all recommendations for discharging employees. Dave Martinez now oversees six recognized depart- ments, each with its own designated "department head"; 8 these are: receiving-distribution, staging, deliv- ery, service, "Grey Goods" inventory control, and in- stallation. Many of the specific functions performed by the former Weddell Court systems warehousepersons And in- stallers are seemingly still recognized, for "departmental" purposes, as distinct from those functions performed in other departments. Thus, the departmental term "Grey Goods" refers to the components used for panel systems before they are fmally assembled. Once those products have been received and processed through the common receiving department, the grey goods employees' work is the same as that formerly done postreceiving, by the inside warehousepersons at Weddell Court. The differ- ence, of course, is that the inside workers at Weddell Court did their own receiving as well as the storage, preassembly, and rehabilitation work on those panel sys- tems, which they continue to do in the grey goods de- partment at Hayward. To the same extent, this has al- tered the duties of Anthony Moreno, the current grey goods department head who, in his former position as manager of the Weddell Court warehouse, had oversight responsibilities for receiving; these responsibilities now vested instead in the head of the common receiving de- partment. Similarly, the work done in the installation de- partment is the same kind of work, with the same vans and tools, done by the former Weddell Court installers. The difference, of course, is that installers now receive their panel systems from a building housing both types of furnishings, and they often—if not customarily—pick up those products from a staging area serviced by employ- ees from the staging department, rather than by the cur- rent grey goods department employees. There are two basic pay classifications in the Hayward operation; they are linked to different skill and work ex- 9 Whether the department heads are statutory supervisors or merely leadpersons was not litigated. KELLY BUSINESS FURNITURE 477 perience factors and they have very little to do with whether an employee does work associated with sys- tems—as opposed to conventional—furnishings. Thus, persons doing typical inside warehousing on either sys- tems or conventional furnishings (including workers in the staging, receiving, and grey goods departments) re- ceive $7 an hour as a starting rate, whereas persons per- forming mostly outside work start at $8 an hour (these include workers in the service, 10 delivery, and installa- tion departments). Employee interaction and interchange: At Weddell Court, inside warehousepersons maintained their own shipping and receiving records and their interaction with other employees was limited to their contacts with the systems delivery/installers, who normally spent at least 90 percent of their time in the field. Presently, physical handling at dockside and the recordkeeping associated with receiving of inbound products and staging of out bound products of both types is done, respectively, in the receiving and staging departments. As a conse- quence, employees from receiving regularly bring panel systems parts and components into the current grey goods area. In addition, grey goods employees are regu- larly required to go to receiving to help unload not just panel systems components, but also conventional furni- ture (according to grey goods employee Mark Ambler, he has been assigned, roughly twice a week since Octo- ber 1986, to assist in unloading conventional furniture products in the receiving area). The outside systems installers (within the present in- stallation department) continue to spend at least 90 per- cent of their time in the field. Although the testimony is somewhat impressionistic, it appears that they are more likely now than before the move to encounter Respond- ent's furniture delivery or field service employees at their jobsites. This is due, apparently, to an improved co- ordination of systems and conventional deliveries, result- ing in systems installers overlapping with employees from the delivery and (field) service departments. As a natural consequence, systems installers may assist furni- ture delivery crews in moving conventional furniture at the jobsite, or those workers may otherwise interact in order to coordinate the sequential tasks of furniture de- livery and panel installation. As a phenomenon distinct from the (seemingly inevita- ble) increase in interactions beteen the systems ware- housepersons and installers on the one hand, and the em- ployees associated with the conventional furniture de- partments on the other, all employees at Hayward are now subject to a cross-training program within the ware- house calculated to enable greater true interchange among employees in all the present departments." Thus, installer Derek Williams was assigned for 4 days to per- form tasks associated with conventional furniture (stag- ing conventional deliveries, making delivery rounds with 1(1 The service department actually mcludes persons who are normally assigned either to "inside" furniture repair, or to "field" service repairs on furniture. The inside repairers are the only persons regularly working In the warehouse who are paid at the $8 rate. " This cross-trammg program was not formally implemented until January 1987, so far, however, cross-training has not resulted m any per- manent reassignments of employees from one department to another the conventional furniture delivery employees); and grey goods employee Mark Ambler acknowledged that em- ployees from staging had been assigned for cross-training purposes to do the same tasks that grey goods workers perform day to day. Warehouse Manager Martinez also described several other examples. Miscellany: All employees in the Hayward operation (inside workers and field employees alike) wear a stand- ard "uniform," a shirt with a small patch over the breast pocket bearing the "Kelly Business Furniture" logo. Car- ibbean Street-based employees always wore that uniform; until the relocation to Hayward, however, Weddell Court-based employees had worn a shirt with a large patch on the back containing the legend, "Kelly Techni- cal Services." II. ANALYSIS; CONCLUSIONS OF LAW Everyone agrees that, normally, when the Board certi- fies a union in a particular unit, the employer must honor that certification by recognizing and bargaining in good faith with the certified union for at least 12 months fol- lowing certification. Brooks v. NLRB, 348 U.S. 96 (1954). The parties also agree that Brooks countenances an ex- ception for any "changed" or "unusual" circumstances occurring within the certification year that materially alter the basis on which the Board issued the certifica- tion.12 Respondent admittedly stopped recognizing, and bar- gaining with the Union only about 5 months after the Union's certification as the representative of the Weddell Court unit; it relies ultimately on its transfer to and con- solidation at Hayward as constituting "changed" or "un- usual" circumstances warranting its current refusal to bargain. The General Counsel, focusing primarily on the fact that most of the work done by former Weddell Court warehousepersons and installers is still being done by distinct groups of employees at Hayward in distinct departments (respectively, grey goods and installation), finds no compelling "changed circumstances." Although neither party has cited to my attention any cases that are wholly apposite from a factual standpoint, I am persuad- ed that Respondent's litigation position is more defensible than the General Counsel's. It is true enough, as the General Counsel argues, that the "mere" relocation of a certified unit from the facility described in the certification to a new one is not an "un- usual" circumstance within the meaning of Brooks. E.g., General Electric Co., 186 NLRB 289, 293 (1970); see also Drukker Communications, 258 NLRB 734, 747 (1981); Paper Mfg. Co., 274 NLRB 491, 496 et seq. (1985); Hahn Motors, 283 NLRB 901 (1987). But this conventional maxim does not aid much in the present analysis, for we are plainly dealing not "merely" with the relocation of a portion of a certified or established unit in which the transferred segment remained intact and undisturbed in terms of its relationship to the certified unit as a whole, 12 Brooks v NLRB, 348 U.S. at 98, listmg such situations as the mter- vening "defunct"-ness of the certified union, or "schism"-induced eaffi- hations of employees from the certified union to "a new local or interna- tional," or a "radical fiuctua[tion]" m the size of the bargaining unit "withm a short time." 478 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD as in General Electric, Drukker Communications, and Hahn Motors, supra; for those cases did not involve the additional factor of a consolidation under one roof of employees from a certified unit with a larger grouping of unrepresented employees. Neither are we presented with the unique situation posed in Paper Mfg., supra, in which certified medical packaging unit employees represented by a graphic arts local were relocated, the complement of medical packaging unit employees at the new location was enlarged, new machinery was introduced at the new location, and the relocated employees in the certified unit now found themselves housed under the same roof that already sheltered employees of a separate produc- tion division who were themselves separately represented by a local of the Teamsters Union." It is nevertheless true, as the General Counsel stresses, that the Board need only fmd that "the Unit," ("sys- tems" warehousemen and installers at Hayward, exclud- ing everyone else at Hayward, as hypothetically de- scribed in the complaint), is at least an appropriate one for collective-bargaining purposes; for, if so, it is "irrele- vant" that an overall unit at Hayward might also be found appropriate." It is implicit in the General Coun- sel's position, however (indeed, I regard it as axiomatic) that the complaint must be dismissed if "the Unit" pro- posed in the complaint cannot be found to be independ- ently appropriate by the application of any traditional tests. And it is at this stage of the analysis that the Gen- eral Counsel's case loses steam and begins to founder. Thus, although the General Counsel has paid lip service to the fundamental requirement that his proposed unit be one that is independently appropriate, he has not called to my attention a single case in which the Board has carved up a single-facility warehousing and delivery op- eration such as this one so as to create a unit in which only some of the inside warehousing personnel are in- cluded and only some of the outside delivery/installation personnel are included. In the circumstances, I take this as an implicit concession by the General Counsel that his 13 Despite some superficial similarities with this case, the General Counsel does not assert that Paper Mfg. is materially apposite, indeed, he refrains from discussing its details I find that case distinguishable based on its unique facts, particularly the following. The relocation in Paper Mfg. involved no real consolidation or realignment of previously distinct functions performed, respectively, by the recently certified -unit of "medi- cal packaging" employees represented by the graphic arts local, and the Teamsters-represented employees who continued to perform more basic production and manufacturing tasks associated with "identification and packaging" (Here, there was a genuine consolidation and attendant de- partmental realignment at Hayward of the receiving and staging func- tions that formerly had been duphcated at Caribbean Street and Weddell Court ) Moreover, the continuing distinctness of the two divisions in Paper Mfg. was dramatic, influenced by the unique conditions required for medical packaging—the medical packaging work area in the new lo- cation was physically segregated by newly constructed interior walls, done to "ensure sanitary conditions . in conformance with medical in- dustry standards" (sd. at 492), medical packaging employees were re- quired to wear special smocks, Jackets, and head coverings to ensure ster- ile conditions—garb that was not required of Teamsters-represented em- ployees in the identification and packaging division Id. at 493. Finally, even after the relocation in Paper Mfg., separate seniority lists were main- tained for the two divisions, employees in each division worked under unique pay classification schemes, and "interaction" between the produc- tion line employees in each division was "nonexistent." Ibid. 14 Hahn Motors, supra at fn. 2, e.g , otherwise distinguishable for rea- sons noted earlier. proposed unit is so irregular as to be inappropriate by any standard definition, and that his litigation position really implies, at bottom, that the Board should bend the rules for determining appropriate units so as not to "de- prive" the systems employees of collective representation only 5 months after they had voted in the Union." I can fmd no precedent for such an approach. And it simply begs the question to maintain, as the General Counsel seems to do, that employees in a unit previously certified as appropriate continue to comprise a separate, appropriate unit when their job tasks continue to be roughly the same in a consolidated operation as they were when the unit was originally certified at a separate .location. See, in this regard, Renaissance Center Partner- ship, 239 NLRB 1247 (1979), in which the Board had first certified a unit of security officers and guards em- ployed by the employer throughout the Renaissance Center complex. Less than a year later, however, the Board found that the "certified unit is no longer appro- priate [ibid]" where the employer had recently consoli- dated formerly distinct security operations by directly employing and using interchangeably with existing unit employees an even greater number of previously unrep- resented security officers and guards who had formerly worked only at a single hotel in the complex. The Board found that the "consolidation of the two groups has pre- cipitously increased the. . . security force and has com- pletely obscured the separate identity of the certified bar- gaining unit which existed prior to the consolidation. It is the kind of unusual circumstance which justifies an ex- ception to the certification-year rule." Id. at 1248.16 15 I cannot treat as mere oversight the General Counsel's failure to dis- close on brief the results of any research he may have conducted into the discrete question whether the Board has found the type of unit proposed in the complaint to be appropriate. At the trial's conclusion, I asked the parties specifically to address that question (winch I expressed in two dif- ferent ways: . . if there had been no certification history at a different location . . would the Board have found the . . . unit pleaded in the complaint to be an appropriate umt?"; alternatively," . tell me wheth- er or not the Board has ever granted a umt of the type pleaded in the complaint where the petition was filed when [a] larger warehouse group- ing already was intact and in existence." Respondent squarely addressed those questions on brief, locating no case exactly on point, but persua- sively arguing by analogy to the criteria employed by the Board in reaching unit-appropriateness determinations in other settings, that the unit proposed by the General Counsel could not pass muster. The Gener- al Counsel has engaged in no comparable attempt to match up the estab- lished criteria by which the Board reaches unit determinations with the facts of Respondent's current operation at Hayward; he has avoided the questions I posed at the end of the trial and has simply asserted into the void the very premise he started with—that because identifiable group- ings of persons at Hayward continue in the main to do work with sys- tems panels, this is enough to find that they constitute a discrete, appro- priate unit. It thus seema that the General Counsel's litigation position ul- timately relies more on the fact of the original certification of the systems workers than on any genuine belief that those workers now comprise an independently appropriate unit. 16 Of course Renaissance Center is not on all fours with this case— there, after the consolidation, i,t was not in any sense possible to distin- guish the duties and functions of guards from the certified unit from those of the larger group of additional guards who were brought in and used "interchangeably" with guards from the certified unit; here, the em- ployees in the certified "systems" unit are still more distinguishable for some purposes from the other employees at Hayward than are the guards at the Renaissance Center. But one point implicit in Renaissance Center— equally applicable—is that it is not enough now to treat the systems em- Continued ° KELLY BUSINESS FURNITURE 479 Ramada Beverly Hills, 278 NLRB 691 (1986), cited by Respondent, is also instructive, and its holdings -even fur- ther undermine the General Counsel's contention that the systems warehousepersons and installers may be ap- propriately treated as a "unit" distinct from other em- ployee classifications at Hayward. In Ramada, at a cer- tain stage in the evolution of the employer's hotel and restaurant operation in 1981, elections had been conduct- ed in three separate units found appropriate by the Re- gional Director, one comprised of "hotel service" work- ers (maids, laundry workers, housemen, janitors, and maintenance employees), another comprised of "food and beverage" workers (restaurant-associated employees), and a third comprised of "front desk" personnel. In 1984, new elections were sought in separate units of hotel serv- ice and food and beverage workers. The employer then contended that its current operational refinements man- dated that only a single, overall unit of hotel and restau- rant employees was appropriate. The Regional Director found that the circumstances prevailing at the time of the 1981 unit determinations had not "changed" sufficiently to render the separate hotel service and food and bever- age units inappropriate. On review, the Board disagreed with the Regional Director, finding that changed circum- stances indeed had created a setting where only a hotel- wide unit was now appropriate. In so finding, the Board deemed it comparatively insignificant that employees in the former units continued to work as they had tradition- ally, under separate departmental supervision, with pri- mary responsibilities for only distinct types of services. Instead, the Board stressed that the hotel operation had become "substantially more centralized" from an admin- istrative standpoint (including by the introduction of a general manager with overall responsibility for adminis- tration, and final authority to approve all hirings and fir- ings). The Board also stressed that, "like most hotel op- erations," the employer "runs a functionally integrated enterprise whose purpose is to provide lodging, dining, and related services to its guests and patrons," and that "while employees perform a variety of duties, their common objective is to provide a highly integrated group of services, directly or indirectly, for the hotel's guests." In addition, the Board emphasized the "repeated daily contact" among employees in the various depart- ments, many of whom, regardless of departmental classi- fication, nevertheless moved throughout the facility. These factors caused the Board to determine ultimately that "it is simply inappropriate to carve out individual units without regard to the extensive functional integra- tion and confluence of employee concerns that is present here." I think the analogies and parallels between this case and Ramada Beverly Hills are too obvious to warrant fur- ployees as a separate, appropriate unit simply because their work tasks are roughly similar to those they performed at Weddell Court. To hold otherwise would be to suppose, contrary to reason, that the original certi- fication at Weddell Court had more to do with the "uniqueness" of the work performed there than the fact that the Weddell Court workers were characterized, by stipulation of the parties, as a wall-to-wall unit of "production and maintenance" employees at a single facility—a classical- ly appropriate unit description that requires no analysis of the uniqueness of the jobs bemg done in that facility. ther extended discussion. At Hayward, formerly distinct classifications now work at or from a common facility, under the centralized administrative control of a single manager, who exercises final authority over hirings, fir- ings, and other disciplinary action. Employees doing for- merly distinct tasks from geographically separate loca- tions now interact in ways that they never did before; they now perform tasks that they never did before and they are subject to a program of cross-training that virtu- ally guarantees that their interactions and interchanges will continue to expand. Especially in the absence of any citation by the General Counsel to any case suggesting to the contrary, I regard it as inconceivable that the Board, if asked to direct an election in the unit proposed by the General Counsel would, in the present circum- stances, determine that the grey goods and installation department employees share a community of interest among themselves that is greater than the community of interest shared between, say, the grey goods employees and the other "inside" employees in the receiving depart- ment or the staging department. What those inside em- ployees have in common, regardless of what types of warehoused products they may handle (in fact, all of them now regularly "handle" both conventional furni- ture and panel systems components, even though grey goods employees tend to spend most of their time on panel systems components) are their common pay rates, their common location in an undivided warehouse area, and their inevitable and necessary daily interactions while receiving inbound products and while staging those products for outbound delivery. Just as plainly, the only feature which grey goods employees now have in common with the panel systems installers is that they each have something to do with the panel systems Simi- lar observations could be made about the plain common- ality of interests among the higher-paid "outside" em- ployees (installation, (field) service, delivery) as contrast- ed with the comparatively trivial relationship currently existing between installation and grey goods employees. The type of products worked on by certain employees has never been treated by the Board as a dispositive factor in defining an appropriate unit that excludes other employees working at the same location--especially when many of the other employees also do work associ- ated with the same products.17 In sum, I conclude that the General Counsel's litiga- tion position does not square with the cases; it gives undue weight to the original unit determination and cer- tification, which themselves plainly derived from the parties' stipulations entered into in a materially different historical context; and it gives short shrift to the Board's historic recognition (e.g., Renaissance Center, supra) that "changed circumstances" may, indeed, defeat the collec- tive-bargaining expectations of employees even if they have only recently selected a bargaining agent. The unit in which the General Counsel would now require Re- spondent to bargain with the Union is an arbitrary con- struct and it is not an "appropriate" one as that term is 17 Compare Paper Mfg., supra, involving dispositive factors beyond the mere difference in product lines. 480 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD \ used throughout Section 9 of the Act. Accordingly, Re- On these findings of fact and conclusions of law and spondent operates under no legal' obligation to recognize on the entire record, I issue the following recommend- or bargain collectively with the Union in the unit pro- ed19 posed in the complaint.19 ORDER The complaint is dismissed. " It is not before me to judge whether Respondent may still have an obligation to bargain with the Union over the effects on Weddell Court` employees of the move to Hayward, accordingly, this decision does not purport to dispose of that question. 19 If no exceptions are filed as provided by Sec 102 46 of the Board's Rules and Regulations, the findings, conclusions, and recommended Order shall, as provided in Sec 102 48 of the Rules, be adopted by the Board and all objections to them shall be deemed waived for all pur- poses.