Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 13, 1951

96 N.L.R.B. 157 (N.L.R.B. 1951)

BELKNAP HARDWARE AND' MANUFACTURING COMPANY 157
The Petitioner now seeks to decertify the Intervenor as the collective
bargaining representative of a group df employees consisting of lubri-
cators, tire men, and wash and steam rack men.
The record in this proceeding indicates that the group of employees
designated in the petition for decertification are under common sliper-
vision with the auto mechanics who perform maintenance work. In
effect, therefore, the group of employees among whom the Petitioner
seeks a decertification election constitutes an arbitrary segment of the
Employer's maintenance department, at the Albuquerque operations.
The Board will not find such a segment of a department an appro-
priate unit.3 Furthermore, there is no evidence that these employees
possess any special characteristics or separate interests that could serve
as a basis for distinguishing them from the other employees with
whom they work and making a determination that they constitilte
an appropriate unit by themselves. Nor does the record indicate
that they possess any special skills acquired by long training or
through apprenticeship programs which would permit a finding
that they constitute a separate craft group which could be found to
be an appropriate unit. -
We find, therefore, that the unit proposed by the Petitioner is not
appropriate and accordingly we shall dismiss the petition 4
Order
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition herein be, and it hereby is,
dismissed.
s See , D B Thornton Co , 94 NLRB 1188.
in view of our disposition of the petition it becomes unnecessary to discuss the question
of contract bar, raised by the Intervenor ' s motion to dismiss the petition , or the question of
the validity of the union-security clause, found in the Intervenor 's contract with the
Employer, raised by the Petitioner 's contentions.
BELKNAP HARDWARE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY and INTERNA-
TIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE WORKERS OF AMERICA, REGION
No. 4, AMERICAN' FEDERATION OF LABOR, PETITIONER . Case No.
9-RC-1168. September 13,1951
Decision and Direction of Election
Upon a petition duly filed under` Section 9 (c) of the National
Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Lloyd R. Fraker,
hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and are hereb'y affirmed.
- Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Reynolds and
Murdock].
96 NLRB No. 19.
158 DECISIONS OF- NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Upon the entire record iri this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The Petitioner is a labor organization claiming to represent
employees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9
(c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The appropriate unit :
The Petitioner seeks to represent some 467 employees who are em-
ployed in that part of the Employer's organization known as the
operating division and who are engaged in receiving, warehousing,
and shipping functions. The Petitioner contends as a basis for its
unit request that all the employees covered by such unit are engaged
primarily in some kind of manual labor and do little or no clerical
or paper work.' The Petitioner does not seek to represent those
employees who are engaged primarily in paper or clerical work and
whose headquarters are generally on the eleventh floor of the building
known as Warehouse No. 12, and referred to as the general adminis-
trative offices division, nor does the Petitioner seek to represent cer-
tain plant clerical warehouse employees.
The Employer contends that the only appropriate unit is a single
plant-wide unit of all its employees including those in the general
and administrative offices division and in the buying and sales divi-
sions, and claims as a basis therefor that : (1) All operations are under
the supervision of the vice president and general manager; (2) there
is one personnel department for hiring purposes under one personnel
director; (3) unified labor policies, such as rates of pay and various
employee benefits, are applicable to all employees; and (4) the opera-
tions are closely integrated through frequent contacts and interchange
between departments.
There is no history of collective bargaining affecting the employees
herein concerned.
The Employer operates a wholesale hardware establishment in
Louisville, Kentucky, where it employs some 1,600 persons. The
80,000 to 100,000 items of merchandise handled by this establishment
and described in the Employer's annual catalogue of some 3,550 pages
are sold to retail stores throughout the country. The operations re-
quired for the handling of these sales are carried on in 15 buildings
covering approximately 40 acres of floor space and are.divided into
4 main divisions consisting of (1) the administrative and general of-
' Petitioner seeks to represent the following departments which are in the operating divi-
sion • Receiving, stock control, platform, order and stock, department x, department 6X,
department 45, department 69, packing, cutlery, shipping, maintenance and carpentry,
power plant , and repair shop.
BE'LKNAP HARDWARE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY 159
fices, (2) buying, (3) sales, and (4) the operating division. On the
eleventh floor of the building known as Warehouse No. 12, and cov-
ering some 50,000 square feet, is the main office of the organization
housing the administrative and general offices,2 the buying depart-
ments, and certain sales departments. All the employees on the
eleventh floor work side by side with no partitions indicating sepa-
rate departments to which the various employees belong. With the
exception of certain other floors reserved for related activities,3 all
the remaining floors in this and the other buildings comprising the
Employer's establishment are devoted to warehousing the merchan-
dise handled, and to the receiving, shipping, and similar functions
of the Employer's extensive operations.
The Employer's business has two main functions: (1) A direct
sales business in which sales are made directly to customers on the
premises and (2) a mail order business which is derived from mail
orders sent in by traveling or outside salesmen. The direct sales
business resembles that of a retail department store in that after cus-
tomers select merchandise from samples on the display floor, such mer-
chandise is packed and shipped out to the customers. In the case of
the mail order business, extensive clerical work is required. Upon
receipt of the mail order it is sent to the order processing office located
on the eleventh floor. There the copy of the order is given a depart-
ment marking and sent to the particular warehouse stock department
in which the required merchandise is located. Simultaneously with
this operation, another copy of the order is checked by the traffic de-
partment to determine shipping rates and routes. The various copies
of the order are then returned to the order processing office for billing
and statistical entries and for the completion of the other necessary
paper work.
The procedure followed in the processing of a mail order, as indi-
cated above, is relied on by the Employer as supporting its unit con-
tention based on functional integration. Thus, the Employer contends
that certain employees in the order office processing and traffic depart-
ments, who do paper work in connection with sending the order to
the stock departments, and who indicate routes and freight rates, are
as much involved in handling an order as are the warehouse em-
ployees. We do not agree. Although there appears to be more
contact between these employees and the warehouse employees than
2 The general and administrative offices include traffic, accounting , auditing , bonus,
billing, sales and statistical, general files, tabulating machines, transcribing , treasury,
general offices, and the order processing office departments.
3 The tenth floor of Warehouse No. 12 is used for a display floor and the first floor of the
building houses the City Sales and Will-Call departments. The cafeteria is located on the
twelfth floor. clhe Foreign Will-Call department is located on the first floor of Warehouse
No. 6.
160 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
is the case among other groups,4 the employees in the order office proc-
essing and traffic departments, who work on the eleventh floor to-
gether with all the other office force, are not only engaged in functions
distinctly different from those of the warehouse, but are also not
ordinarily interchangeable with warehouse employees.5 Moreover,
although all operations are under the over-all supervision of the vice
president and general manager, the employees engaged in warehouse
and related activities are included within the operating division un-
der the separate supervision of the warehouse superintendent. Fur-
thermore, and of particular significance in our opinion, is the fact
that the warehouse employees are subject to substantially different
working conditions. Thus, for example, the eleventh floor employees
are under a 40-hour week, arrive at a later hour for work, enjoy a
longer lunch period, and in the great majority of cases punch no time
clocks. The warehouse employees, on the other hand, are subject to
a 44-hour week, arrive earlier to work, have a shorter lunch period,
and punch time clocks four times a day.e
The operating division employees sought by the Petitioner are
essentially all the Employer's warehousing and stock handling em-
ployees. With the possible exception of a few employees in the order
office processing department, no other employees regularly perform
work comparable to that done by the employees in the proposed unit.
On the basis of these facts, and on the entire record in this case, in-
cluding the lack of a community of interest on the part of these em-
ployees and the general office employees and in the absence of a
bargaining history on a broader basis, we find that the operating
division employees constitute an appropriate unit.'
The Employer urges, nevertheless, that the Board's decisions in the
Richmond Dry Goods case 8 and the Grossman Department Store
* The Employer emphasizes the fact that stock counters , who are assigned to and super-
vised by the various buying departments , spend a substantial part of time in the stock-
rooms, counting stock and taking inventory for the benefit of the buyers . However, these
stock counters perform no warehouse functions and while making inventories are under the
supervision of the buying departments . The Employer also contends that the unit con-
trol clerks , who assist buyers through correspgndence and other means in the purchase of
merchandise , spend some time in the stockrooms and are therefore functionally integrated
with the warehouse employees . We -find no merit in the Employer's position that inte-
gration exists because of the physical presence of stock counters and unit control clerks
in the warehouse , where they have occasions to perform their functions.
5 Although the evidence shows considerable interchange between employees in the various
warehouse departments , there is no such regular interchange between the office force and
the warehouse departments . Such interchange as exists is limited to emergency situations
where all employees including warehouse employees may be required to work anywhere in
the plant
e Bodeker Drug Co., Inc, 93 NLRB No. 84 ; Gaylord Bros ., Inc., 64 NLRB 1350.
"Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc., 91 NLRB 366; 85 NLRB 976; 89 NLRB 528; 50 NLRB
163; Sears, Roebuck & Co, 82 NLRB 985; Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company, 71 NLRB
699; Cohn-Hall Marx Company, 86 NLRB 101; Associated Wholesalers, 92 NLRB 542;
Rockwood Pottery, Division of Sperti, Inc., 89 NLRB 1349.
8 Richmond Dry Goods Company, Inc., 93 NLRB 663. ,
BE'LKNAP HARDWARE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY 161
cases require a finding that only an over-all unit is appropriate. We
do not agree. In the Richmond case, we found that the integration
there existing together with the fact that the proposed warehouse-
men's unit sought to include certain clerical employees and exclude
others, precluded a separation of the nonselling from the selling em-
ployees. In the present case, however, there is a clear separation of
office and sales functions from those of the warehousemen and such
contacts as exist do not require the inclusion of the office personnel
with the warehousemen. Although in the Grossman, case the Board
likewise denied a requested separate unit of sales employees, the de-
cision was based on the fact that the Board found a functional into-
gration and mutuality of interest between all the department store
employees and also on the fact that the unit sought did not con-
stitute a homogeneous group of employees performing distinct func-
tions. The evidence in the present case shows that the employees
engaged in essentially warehousing functions constitute a homoge-
neous group such as is entitled to separate representation.
Although as indicated above, the Petitioner seeks essentially an
operating division unit, the Petitioner does not wish to include certain
plant clericals, as it considers that only those engaged in manual or
physical labor may qualify for inclusion within the unit. The Board
has, however, customarily held that plant clericals working side by
side with production employee's under the same supervision and
working conditions have such a community of interest that they may
not be separated for purposes of collective bargaining. We shall,
therefore, include all plant clericals in the unit hereinafter found
appropriate 10
' We find that all employees in the operating division of the Em-
ployer at its Louisville, Kentucky, plant, including the employees in
the departments relating to receiving, stock control, platform, order
and stock, cutlery, packing, shipping, maintenance and carpentry,
power plant, repair shop, and employees in Department X, 6X, 45,
and 69, but excluding the buying, sales, administrative, and general
office employees, the cafeteria employees, professional employees, con-
fidential employees, guards, lead men,11 stockmen' 12 and all other
s Grossman Department Goods, Inc., 90 NLRB No. 745. (Unpublished.)
10 As the Petitioner's showing of interest appears to be sufficient in the broader unit we
have found appropriate, we shall not dismiss the petition. Cf. Montgomery Ward & Co.,
Inc., 11 NLRB 366, supra.'
11 The Employer would include and the Petitioner exclude all employees classified as
lead men in the various departments of the warehouse. The evidence shows that the lead
men, who until recently were classified as, foremen, are and have been regarded as foremen
by the production. workers in the warehouse and that they responsibly direct the work of
the production employees. On this record, we shall therefore exclude the read men as
supervisors.
11 The Employer- would include and the Petitioner exclude the stockmen'. The evidence
indicates that stockmen are responsible for the work flow, and the Employer concedes that
stockmen are the key men in their various departments. Because it appears that the
stockmen responsibly direct employees in their respective groups, we exclude them as
supervisors.
162 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
supervisors 13 as defined in the Act, constitute a unit appropriate for
the purpose of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section
9 (b) of the Act.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
is The record indicates that assistant supervisors are in charge of their respective depart-
ments only in the absence of the supervisors , such as in illness or during vacations, and
that they also carry out the orders of the supervisors when the latter are required to go
elsewhere in the plant . As the evidence fails to show that the assistant supervisors regu-
larly and frequently substitute for the supervisors , they are included in the unit as
employees without supervisory status. Humboldt Full Fashioned Hosiery Mills, Inc.,
90 NLRB No. 99.
THE ELYRIA TELEPHONE COMPANY and COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS
OF AMERICA , CIO, PETITIONER . Case No. 8-RC-1263. September
13,1951
Decision and Direction of Election
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National
-Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Carroll L. Martin,
hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel [Members Houston, Murdock, and Styles.]
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer 1 is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The labor organization involved claims to represent certain
employees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of all the employees of
the Employer, including office and clerical employees, but excluding
professional employees, confidential employees, guards, and super-
visors as defined in the Act. The Employer contends that the office
and clerical employees should be established as a separate unit or be
granted a self-determination election. The parties are in further
disagreement as to the unit placement of certain other categories
discussed below.
O fjice and clerical employees: The Employer is a telephone com-
pany, with its main plant and offices at Elyria, Ohio. Its operations
1 The name of the Employer appears in the caption as stipulated at the hearing.
96 NLRB No. 21.