Famous-Barr Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Nov 24, 1967

168 N.L.R.B. 393 (N.L.R.B. 1967)

FAMOUS- BARR COMPANY 393
Famous-Barr Company and Warehouse& Distribu-
tion Workers Union , Local 688 , affiliated with the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauf-
feurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America,
Petitioner . Case 14-RC-5661
November 24, 1967
DECISION AND ORDER
By MEMBERS FANNING,JENKINS , AND ZAGORIA
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of
the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Herbert S. Dawidoff,
Hearing Officer. Following the hearing and pur-
suant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Rela-
tions Board Rules and Regulations and Statements
of Procedure, Series 8, as amended, and by
direction of the Regional Director for Region 14,
this case was transferred to the National Labor
Relations Board for decision. Both the Employer
and the Petitioner have filed briefs.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its
powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds that they are
free from prejudicial error. They are hereby af-
firmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, including the
briefs filed herein, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act and it will effectuate the pol-
icies of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein.
2. The labor organizations involved, claim to
represent certain employees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce, exists con-
cerning the representation of certain employees of
the Employer within the meaning of Sections
9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The Employer operates six major retail stores
and maintains a separate warehouse or service
building for hard goods (the Spring Avenue facility),
all in St. Louis, Missouri. The Petitioner seeks to
represent a unit limited to the carpet workroom em-
ployees at this warehouse and service center, in-
cluding carpet cutters and helpers, wrappers and
packers, pad cutters, clericals, checkers, stockmen,
binders and helpers, and measuremen, excluding all
office clerical and professional employees, guards,
supervisors as defined in the Act, and all other em-
ployees. The Intervenor agrees to the appropriate-
ness of the unit sought by the Petitioner, and desires
participation in any election directed in such unit,
but argues an alternative unit to be even more ap-
propriate, namely that composed of the carpet
workroom employees sought by Petitioner plus
the Employer's carpet installers. The Employer's
carpet installers are members of and represented
by the Intervenor and have been for several years.
They are currently covered by an existing 3-year
contract which expires April 30, 1969, between the
Intervenor and the Associated Retailers of St.
Louis, a multiemployer bargaining association, of
which the Employer is a member.
The Employer and the Petitioner indicated that
the existing current contract covering the Em-
ployer's carpet installers precludes or bars the alter-
native unit sought by the Intervenor. However,
Petitioner desires to participate in any election
directed. The Employer maintains that both the unit
sought by the Petitioner and the alternative unit
sought by the Intervenor are inappropriate. The
Employer also contends that Petitioner's desire for
a carpet workroom unit is too restrictive in scope
and is based solely upon the extent of organization
which, as a controlling factor in the Board's deter-
mination, is prohibited by the Act. There appears to
be no bargaining history for the employees in the
unit proposed by the Petitioner. Moreover, in view
of our ultimate disposition of the petition, we do not
pass on the contract-bar issue.
In 1961 the Board dismissed a petition filed by
the Intervenor seeking a similar unit of carpet work-
room employees at the Spring Avenue facility.
Famous-Barr Company, Case 14-RC-3852 (not
published in NLRB volumes). In 1965 the Board
directed an election in a warehouse unit sought by
the present Petitioner consisting of certain classifi-
cations of employees at the Spring Avenue facility,
but excluding therefrom other employees among
whom were those employed in the carpet workroom
as well as in the workrooms for furniture, radio and
television, appliances, and fur storage. Famous-
Barr Company, 153 NLRB 341. The official
records, including the transcripts and exhibits, and
also the Board decisions, in both the above-men-
tioned cases, were received into evidence for con-
sideration herein.
While the Board has regarded a single com-
prehensive unit in retail establishments as "basi-
cally appropriate" or the "optimum" unit, it has
held that this is not necessarily the only appropriate
unit in such establishment.2 In addition to recogniz-
ing the separate interests of warehouse employees
in a mercantile operation,3 the Board has made it
clear that other units of less than all of the em-
' Carpet , Linoleum and Resilient Tile Layers Union , Local 1310, af-
filiated with Carpenters District Council of St Louis , United Brother-
hood of Carpenters and Joiners of America , AFL-CIO, was allowed to
intervene on the basis of a showing of interest
' Stern 's Paramus , 150 NLRB 799, 803
-'See, e g , Wigwam Stores, 166 NLRB 1034, John's Bargain Stores
Corp, 160 NLRB 1519, J W Robinson Co, 153 NLRB 989, Famous-
Barr Company, 152 NLRB 341, Sears, Roebuck and Co, 151 NLRB
1356, A Harris & Co , 1 16 N LRB 1628
168 NLRB No. 63
394 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ployees in such an establishment may be appro-
priate .' Recently , for example , the Board has
found that service repairmen for radio and televi-
sion sets, appliances , sewing machines , plumbing
and heating items together with parts employees
and service and parts clericals constituted an ap-
propriate unit in an employer ' s warehouse or ser-
vice building operated for the benefit of six major
retail stores.5 Such cases have applied the long-
established principles that the appropriate unit for
self-organization among the employees of a given
employer is generally based upon a community of
interest in their occupation as manifested , inter alia,
by their common experiences , duties, organization,
supervision , and conditions of employment. Con-
versely, of course , where the separation of the com-
munity of interest is less distinct , appropriateness
has not been found.6
In the present instance , the record reveals that
the Employer's workrooms are functionally
separate from the other departments at its hard
goods warehouse or service building . The Em-
ployer operates a downtown department store and
five branch stores in the St . Louis area. A soft
goods warehouse , the St . Charles Street facility, is
located within a block from the downtown store and
is connected thereto by a tunnel . Workrooms for al-
ternations , monogramming , busheling , and drap-
eries are located on the 12th floor of the downtown
store , and there is a candy kitchen and bakery
located within the St . Charles Street facility. The
Spring Avenue warehouse and service building han-
dles hard goods and is located some 2 miles from
the downtown store . It services all of the Em-
ployer ' s retail outlets in the area. Excluded by the
Board from the warehouse unit it earlier found ap-
propriate at the Spring Avenue facility are some 84
employees employed in workrooms for carpets, fur-
niture , applicances, radio and television , and fur
storage.'
Although all regular nonexecutive employees of
the Employer , including selling and nonselling per-
sonnel , are paid on a biweekly basis for a 40-hour
week , share similar wage scales (except for the
commissions given to selling personnel) as well as
vacation , holiday , insurance , and retirement
benefits , there are significant differences in the or-
ganization, supervision, duties, and conditions of
employment between employees in the various
workrooms and others in the Spring Avenue build-
ing. For example , the record reveals that the effort
of each workroom is confined solely to the prepara-
tion of its particular product in support of the selling
operation of the corresponding salesroom of the
Employer . More specifically , the principal function
of each workroom is to perform some physical work
upon , or to repair or service some particular line of
merchandise . Such duties are, of course , distin-
guishable from those of nonworkroom employees
at Spring Avenue engaged in the warehousing of
merchandise but who do not work on the actual
products themselves . In addition , the workrooms,
each of which has separate immediate supervision,
are all under the general supervision of one man
who in turn reports directly to the superintendent of
the Spring Avenue facility . Generally , each such
workroom operates from a confined area on the
floor . Each has clericals who coordinate the
product and service of their workroom with the
selling effort , each has service or operational em-
ployees who work both inside and/or outside the
plant (carpet measuremen and carpet layers, furni-
ture finishers and polishers , appliance and radio and
television servicemen or repairmen), and each has
stockmen or other handlers of materials and help-
ers, all of whom work with the type of product
handled by their particular workroom . Admittedly,
there is one difference in the actual kind of work
performed in the various workrooms as well as in
the training and skills requisite for the performance
of such work . For example , carpet workroom em-
ployees who measure , cut, trim , sew, or bind car-
pets and related material require different training
and skills than do employees in the radio and televi-
sion workroom who engage in the service or repair
of complex electronic instruments . Nevertheless,
the organization as well as the function of preparing
a particular product for selling is the same in all of
the workrooms . In addition , contact with other than
selling personnel is minimal . There is contact
between departmental buyers and selling personnel
with workroom personnel, but the evidence is not
sufficient to reveal a degree of integration that
might require a rejection of a request for an
identifiably distinct unit made up of these work-
rooms. Moreover , such contact concerns the or-
dering of material and products as well as the
specifications for the work or service to be per-
formed thereon, and is distinguishable from the
sales contact with sales personnel of other
warehouse departments which merely store
merchandise and fill orders for goods sold.
The record , including the transcripts of the earlier
hearing , discloses that the requested unit of carpet
workroom employees is not appropriate on a craft
basis. Moreover , it discloses that the carpet work-
4 Arnold Constable Corporation , 150 NLRB 788, Lord & Taylor, A
Division of Associated Dry Goods Corporation , 150 N LRB 812
Sears , Roebuck and Co , 160 NLRB 1435
The Wm H Block Company , 152 NLRB 594, Sears , Roebuck &
Co, 149 NLRB 1525, Montgomery Ward & Co, incorporated, 124
NLRB 1090
7 The employees excluded in Famous-Barr Company, 153 N LRB 341
were the following all employees working in the radio and television, ap-
pliance , furniture , and floor covering workrooms, and fur storage vaults,
invoice clerks and other office clerical employees , cafeteria employees,
nurse-photocopier, vehicle mechanics and their helpers , drivers and help-
ers, electricians and carpenters and their helpers, watchmen, guards, and
supervisors as defined in the Act
FAMOUS- BARR COMPANY 395
room employees share a community of interest
with other workroom employees at the Spring
Avenue facility : they share supervision , similar
operational procedures , and a similar relationship
with buyers and selling personnel as well as
customers ' and, of course , they perform work upon
or service a distinct category of products or
merchandise . Accordingly , we find that the carpet
workroom employees lack the cohesiveness and
homogeneity to constitute an appropriate unit apart
from other workroom employees at the Spring
Avenue facility .8 These same considerations are
pertinent and apply to the alternate unit proposed
by the Interven ir. Thus, upon the foregoing and the
entire record in this case , we find that the units
sought by the Pe itioner and the Intervenor are not
appropriate for 1-arposes of collective bargaining,
and we shall disnass the instant petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case
14-RC-5661 be , and it hereby is, dismissed.
" Famous-Barr Company, Case 14-RC-3852, supra Accord Sears,
Roebuck and Company, 160 NLRB 1435