The Abs Corp.

516 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD The ABS Corporation and Graphic Communications Union, District Council #2, AFL-CIO. Case 36-RC-5134 August 22, 1990 DECISION AND DIRECTION BY CHAIRMAN STEPHENS AND MEMBERS CRACRAFT AND DEVANEY The National Labor Relations Board, by a three- member panel, has considered determinative chal- lenges in an election held May 11 and 12, 1989, and the hearing officer's report recommending disposi- tion of them The election was conducted pursuant to a Stipulated Election Agreement The tally of ballots shows 13 for and 15 against the Petitioner, with 3 challenged ballots, a number sufficient to affect the results The Board has reviewed the record in light of the exceptions and brief and has adopted the hear- ing officer's findings and recommendations' DIRECTION IT IS DIRECTED that the officer in charge for Su- bregion 36 shall, within 10 days of this Decision and Direction, open and count the ballots of Louise Fuller, Melissa Mosteller, and Tracy Willis, and thereafter prepare and cause to be served on the parties a revised tally of ballots, on the basis of which he shall issue an appropriate certification IT IS FURTHER DIRECTED that this matter be re- manded to the officer in charge for Subregion 36 for further processing consistent with this decision MEMBER CRACRAFT, dissenting in part Contrary to my colleagues, I find that order entry clerk Melissa Mosteller does not share a suffi- cient community of interest with the employees in the stipulated appropriate unit to justify her mclu- sion 1 I would sustain the challenge to Mosteller's ballot and direct the issuance of a Certification of Results of Election 2 1 We agree with the heanng officer's recommendation, for the reasons set forth in the attached report, that the challenges to the ballots of Me- lissa Mosteller, Tracy Willis, and Louise Fuller be overruled and that their ballots be opened and counted In overruling the challenge to the ballot of Mosteller, we rely particularly on her common supervision with the key entry employees, who were stipulated to be in the unit, and with the monotype operator (Willis) and the quality control employee (Fuller), whose jobs we also find to be unit positions, her assistance to the mono- type operator, and her role in beginning the production process 1 The stipulated appropnate unit is all full-time and regular part-time production and maintenance employees at the Employer's Portland, Oregon facility, excluding office clencal employees, guards, and supervi- sors as defined in the Act 2 The tally in the election was 13 for and 15 against the Union, with 3 determinative challenged ballots order entry clerk Mosteller, monotype operator Tracy Willis, and quality control employee Louise Fuller The parties stipulated that data entry clerks (not to be confused with the order entry clerk, Mosteller) were eligible to vote in the election The Employer argues that Mosteller is an office clerical employee and is thus expressly excluded from the stipulated production and maintenance unit The Union asserted at the hearing that the order entry clerical position is within the produc- tion and maintenance unit The hearing officer found, and my colleagues have agreed, that Mos- teller is a plant clerical, and was thus eligible to vote in the election The Employer pnnts checks and deposit slips for banks and other financial institutions Its Portland facility operates on three shifts 7 30 a m to 4 p m, 3 30 pm to 12 am, and 11 30 pm to 8 am There are approximately 35 total employees Like the unit employees, Mosteller is hourly paid, on a timecard However, she works a unique 5 a m to 1 30 p m shift Her supervisor, Julie An- derson, also supervises the data entry clerks (who the parties stipulated as eligible to vote in the elec- tion) and monotype operator Willis (who my col- leagues, in agreement with the hearing officer, have found to be a plant clerical, eligible to vote in the election) The Portland facility is divided by full height walls into a production area and an office area The office area includes, inter alia, Mosteller's order entry desk, the data entry office (also re- ferred to as the key entry office), the monotype room, and the customer service area Mosteller works at a desk behind an approxi- mately 10 feet high "L"-shaped partition which separates her from the rest of the office area She is also separated from the production area, by a full height wall The four data entry clerks and the monotype operator work in two separate enclosed offices, both of which open onto the office area The customer service employees work in an unen- closed part of the office area All customer orders received in the mail at the Portland facility come first to Mosteller She pi- geonholes the orders into batches of 15 according to style, color, and quantity ordered Periodically, a work expediter comes to Mosteller's desk and re- moves the batches to the data entry clerks, who enter the data from the orders into a computer Mosteller succinctly described her duties as fol- lows "I open up envelopes, and then I sort down, and then I batch out the work" Also, the hearing officer found, and my colleagues agree, that monotype operator Willis and quality control employee Fuller were plant clencals, and thus eligible to vote in the election As noted above, I find that the challenge to order entry clerk Mos- teller's ballot should be sustained In light of this finding, Willis' and Fuller's ballots are nondetermmative, and It is thus unnecessary for me to decide whether they are properly Included in the unit 299 NLRB No 67 ABS CORP 517 Mosteller is physically separated from and has no contact with the unit employees in the production and maintenance and data entry departments 3 Mosteller does, however, interact once or twice a day with the customer service department supervi- sor (the customer service employees are not in the stipulated unit) in seeking clarification of question- able customer orders or in responding to rush and pnonty orders received by the customer service department Also, Production Manager John Stan- ley testified that "very, very rarely," when Mos- teller has a light workday and help is needed in the monotype office, Mosteller will be asked if she wants to assist monotype operator Willis 4 The heanng officer found, and my colleagues have agreed, that Mosteller is a plant clerical, eligi- ble to vote in the election, on the following grounds (1) She has the same supervisor as monotype operator Willis, quality control employee Fuller, and the data entry clerks, all of whom have been found or stipulated to be in the unit (2) She has a different supervisor than the customer service employees, the plant recep- tiomst and the administrative secretary, all of whom are outside the unit (3) She did not come into contact with cus- tomer service (i e, nonumt) employees during the workday (4) She has "some limited contact" with data entry employees 5 (5) Her opening of the mail and sorting and batchmg of orders "is where the production process actually begins" Although the hearing officer did not rely on it, one could add to the factors noted above Mos- teller's assistance to the monotype operator But taking all of this evidence together, I still find that it is decidedly inadequate to support a finding that Mosteller shares a sufficient community of interest s The record does not show whether the work expediter who removes batches of orders from Mosteller's desk and delivers them to the data entry office is a member of the data entry section Even if he or she is, the record shows only that this work expediter from time to time simply removes batches of orders from Mosteller's desk There is no showing that Mosteller and the expediter coordinate their activities, Interact, or even speak to each other 4 Mosteller's testimony on this subject differed from Stanley's Accord- ing to Mosteller, about three times a week she completes her normal opening and sorting duties in 6 hours, and then "sometimes" assists monotype operator Willis Assuming arguendo that Mosteller's testimony is more accurate than Stanley's, I nevertheless find below that Mosteller does not share a suffi- cient community of Interest with the employees in the unit—Including Willis—to justify her inclusion ' The record establishes that Mosteller's only contact with the data entry office is indirect and remote, when her batches of sorted orders are periodically removed and delivered to data entry by the work expediter (The record does not reflect whether the work expediter is a data entry employee) with the unit employees to justify her inclusion in the unit Primarily, and most importantly, Mosteller has almost no interchange with unit employees She has none at all with the production and mainte- nance employees, who comprise the bulk of the unit, and perhaps none at all with the data entry employees (unless the work expediter is m fact a data entry employee—a question on which the record is silent) Even if the work expediter is a data entry employee, that just means that Mos- teller's batches of sorted orders are taken away by a unit employee—hardly a fundamental community of interest building block So the "limited contact" that the hearing officer found that Mosteller had with the data entry employees is at most very limit- ed and as far as the record shows it may not even exist And, even assuming that Mosteller does assist Willis periodically (see fn 4), her only measurable work contact with a unit employee is the 6 hours each week—maximum—that she "helps out" mono- type operator Tracy Willis This is not, m my view and in light of the other evidence in this case, a sufficiently significant amount of mterchange with unit employees to justify Mosteller's inclusion in the bargaining unit Although Mosteller has the same supervisor as five plant clerical unit employees and she does not come into contact with the customer service repre- sentatives, I find these factors, even when consid- ered in conjunction with the fact that Mosteller may on occasion assist with the monotype tasks, to be an inadequate basis to justify Mosteller's inclu- sion in the instant production and maintenance bar- gaining unit In light of all the above considerations, I would sustain the challenge to Mosteller's ballot and issue a Certification of Results of Election 6 \ ■ 6 See Avecor, 296 NLRB 727, 746 (McWaters) (1989), Jake! Motors, 288 NLRB 730, 742 (Mama) (1988), Cincinnati Bronze, 286 NLRB 39, 44 (Frakes) (1987), Continuous Curve Contact Lenses, 236 NLRB 1330 (1978) While none of these cases is precisely "on all fours" factually with the Instant case, they each share with the Instant case certain fundamental considerations pertinent to the question of whether order entry clerk Mosteller shares a sufficient community of Interest with the employees in the Instant unit to justify her inclusion APPENDIX FINDINGS OF FACTS The Employer is in the busmess of printing bank checks and deposit slips for banks and financial mstitu- tions The Employer's Portland, Oregon facility but one of over 30 such facilities m the country In Portland, the Employer has approximately 35 employees working on three shifts The physical layout of the Portland facility 518 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD is basically divided in two, a production area and offices where the administrative and clerical employees are lo- cated The production area includes the press, bindery and supply functions The "office" area encompasses the camera room, computer room, key entry office, customer service and reception areas, managerial offices, confer- ence and lunchrooms A small sales office is off to one side of the office area Employees who were stnpulated as eligible to vote have their work areas in both the pro- duction area of the facility as well as the "office" area Employees stnpulated as eligible to vote include em- ployees who operate printing, binding, press and cutting and packing machines as well as employees who inspect the printed work product These employees are located in the production area of the facility Employees in the "office" area that were stipulated as eligible to vote are the four key entry clerks who sit at a computer keyboard and type in information related to orders for checks This information includes such things as the name and address of the individual, check numbers, etc MELISSA MOS TELLER Mosteller is employed as the order entry clerk, a pos- tion not to be confused with key entry The order entry clerk opens the mail from customers ordering checks and sorts and batches the orders by style and color Once a batch of 15 orders is ready, the key entry department re- ceives them and the information is entered into the com- puter Mosteller's work area is within the customer serv- ice area but is separated from the customer service repre- sentatives by a work station partition Mosteller has almost no occasion to have contact with press and bind- ery employees and her contacts with key entry are limit- ed to the key entry expeditor retrieving batches to be de- livered to key entry for processing Mosteller's contacts with customer service representatives is negligible since her questions about orders are supposed to go through her supervisor Mosteller works a 5 00 a m to 1 30 p m shift which does not coincide with any other employee Her supervisor is Julie Anderson who also supervises key entry and the monotype operation performed by Tracy Willis, another challenged voter When Mosteller has completed her order entry duties, she will assist in monotype or very mfrequenty in bindery TRACY WILLIS Willis is the Employer's monotype operator She is su- pervised by Julie Anderson and performs her work in the computer and camera rooms Willis receives informa- tion from key enrty and enters batch numbers into a computer The inputted information is relayed to another machine which produces a film Willis cuts the film, feeds it into a processor which produces a plate and then she cuts holes in the plate for the press Willis then sets the plates down on a table in the press area so the pro- duction process can continue Willis usually has contact several times a day with the employees in key entry and no contact with the customer service employees Willis works a 7 30 a m to 400 p m shift which is the Employ- er's regular designated first shift Willis is the only em- ployee on the first shift to work the monotype although on third shift, another employee performs similar work This employee, Jim Mahaffey, was stipulated by the par- ties as eligible to vote LOUISE FULLER Fuller is employed on the second shift primarily as a quality control employee Fuller's primary work station is located in the production area Her quality control func- tion involves physically taking ink readings from the presses and talking with the press employees about those readings, if necessary At her work area she records the number of errors accumulated during the day and sepa- rates rejected orders from the orders ready for shipping Because the Employer does not run a complete produc- tion process on second shift, she does not perform all of the quality control functions that take place on day shift Part of her shift is spent in the key entry area utilizing the computer, entering the batch numbers to be shipped and billed Additionally, she spends time at the order entry desk sorting orders by style and color On second shift there are no regular key entry or customer service clerks working During this shift, there are also no super- visors present The leadperson stipulated as eligible to vote, watches over the employees present, production employees and Fuller Julie Anderson is Fuller's supervi- sor for billing and order entry functions CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS This issue herein is whether the challenged voters share a community of interest with production employ- ees or whether they should be considered office clericals, excluded from the bargaining unit by stipulation of the parties This case presents a difficult situation inasmuch as these challenged voters spend much or all of their work time in the "office" area of the Employer's facility While plant clencals are usually found within the pro- duction area, the absence of their physical proximity to the production area is not particularly dispositive of the matter in light of other factors Thus, the challenged voters are supervised differently than the office clencals employed in the classifications of customer service repre- sentatives and receptionist and secretary All three are supervised by Julie Anderson who also supervises Key entry employees who were eligible voters Additionally Louise Fuller is also "supervised" on second shift, by a production leadmen who is an eligible voter None of the three challenged voters come into contact with the cus- tomer service representatives during their work day yet Fuller and Willis have frequent contact with press em- ployees and Willis has frequent contact with key entry employees Mosteller has some limited contact with key entry employees While the customer service representa- tives, the receptionist and the one secretary have no role to play in the actual production process of printing checks, all three challenged voters do Mosteller as the order entry clerk is where the production process actual- ly begins Mosteller receives the customer orders, batches them by type and turns the batches over to key entry employees Willis, as the monotype operator, re- ceives information from key entry and begins the physi- cal process which results in the production of a printing ABS CORP 519 plate which is then given to the press employees Willis Fuller spends two thirds of her shift performing shipping and billing tasks m key entry as well as order entry func- tions Her other responsibilities take her to the produc- tion area where she performs ink readings on the print- ing presses Thus, all three job classifications perform work which is the integral part of the production proc- ess Unlike customer service or the receptionist, the chal- lenged voters have no contact with customers and they do not substitute for them in their absence In view of the common supervision between the eligi- ble key entry employees and the challenged voters, the regular contact between voters and those challenged as well as the challenged voters in the flow of production, I find them to be plant clencal employees eligible to vote in the election Avon Products, Inc , 250 NLRB 1479 (1980), Sears, Roebuck & Go, 227 NLRB 1403 (1977) Based on the the foregomg, I recommend the chal- lenges to the ballots of Louise Fuller, Melissa Mosteller, and Terry Willis be overruled and further recommend their ballots be opened and counted and a new tally of ballots be issued