General Electric Co. Appliance Service Center

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 28, 1951

96 N.L.R.B. 566 (N.L.R.B. 1951)

566 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BbARD
for granting the air-conditioning employees a separate bargaining
unit, and we shall accordingly dismiss the petition as to these
employees.
Order
IT Is HEREBY ORDERED that the petition in Case No. 13-RC-1922
be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY APPLIANCE SERVICE CENTER and LOCAL
463, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL, RADIO & MACHINE
WORKERS, C10, PETITIONER. Case No. 2-RC-3346. September 28,
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 James V. Altieri, 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 [Chairman Herzog and Members Houston and Reynolds].
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds : 2
1. The Employer -is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The labor organizations involved claim to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer.
3. The Intervenors, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of
America and its Local 1227, hereinafter called respectively UE and
Local 1227, assert that this local's certification by the Board on June
6, 1950, as the exclusive representative of those employees of the
I The hearing officer referred to the Board the motion of the Intervenor to dismiss the
petition as defective because of the following facts. The name signed to the petition is
Irving Abramson , who is attorney of record for the Petitioner . In fact, Abramson's name
was written not by himself but by one of his office associates , who appended his own
initials indicating that it was not the actual signature of Abramson. The Intervenors
assert that the certification formula appearing at the end of the petition form calls for a
declaration by the signatory of the truth of the facts contained in the petition, and that in
the circumstances described the certification is false because not made by the person in
whose name it was signed . We find no merit in this contention . The motion to dismiss
on this ground is hereby denied. The hearing officer also referred to the Board two other
motions for dismissal made by the Intervenors which are dealt with in the course of our
decision.
2 The request of the Intervenors for oral argument Is hereby denied because the record
and briefs, in our opinion , adequately present the issues and position of the parties
96 NLRB No. 77.
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY APPLIANCE SERVICE CENTER 567
Employer whom the Petitioner seeks to represent, and the existence
of an unexpired contract between the Intervenors and the Employer
covering these employees, constitute bars to the proceeding.3 The
Petitioner, Local 463, International Union of Electrical, Radio &,
Machine Workers, CIO, hereinafter called Local 463, IUE, urges that
these facts cannot operate to bar a present determination of represent-
atives because of a schism in the ranks of the Intervenor. The.
Employer takes no position on these issues.
The contract in question was executed September 15, 1950, to ter-
minate September 15, 1952. It is a Nation-wide contract covering
many units of employees in 45 General Electric Company facilities
for whom 35 of the UE's constituent locals had been certified as exclu-
sive bargaining representatives following Board-directed elections-
The employees whom the Petitioner seeks to represent are employed
by GE in its General Service Center in Long Island City. They con-
stitute a separate unit under the contract, as in the certification, and
are the only GE employees whom Local 1227 represents.
At the time of the execution of the contract, and of the later events
which the Petitioner characterizes as a schism, the UE members in
the Appliance Service Center constituted, 1 shop among approxi-
mately 30 shops whose members together constituted Local 1227.
Each shop had its own shop stewards and shop committee, elected by
the shop members, and held regular meetings., All of the workers in
these shops were engaged in the same general type of work as that
performed at the GE General Appliance Service Center but most were
employed by companies which operated only one plant and hence had
separate individual contracts with UE and its Local 1227 covering
the employees in their respective plants. Each shop committee par-
ticipated, in a measure, in the administration of the contract covering
its particular plant but the degree of participation varied and was not
as great in the GE shop under its chain contract as in some of the
shops covered by individual contracts.
On January 26, 1951, the Appliance Service Center shop chairman
posted a notice stating that there would be a shop meeting on Janu-
ary 29, 1951, for the purpose of taking action to disaffiliate from UE
3 The hearing officer referred to the Board a motion by the Intervenors to dismiss the
petition on the ground that we may not properly entertain a petition filed several months
before the termination of the certification year. The Act prohibits only the holding of an
election within a year of election . However, it has long been our administrative pol-
icy to afford a certified union a period of 1 year from the date of the certification ur
which to bargain collectively free from intrusion . The further administrative policies
which we have evolved to effectuate that policy are fully set forth in National Heat Treat-
ing Company, 95 NLRB No . 144, in which we state that absent unusual circumstances a
petition filed more than 1 month before the end of the certification year is untimely. The
Board ' s earlier precedents establish that evidence of schism is an unusual circumstance
justifying the processing of a petition within the certification year . Swift and Company,
94 NLRB 917 , and cases cited therein ; Jasper Wood Products Company , The, 72 NLRB'
-1306.
568 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
and to consider affiliation with IUE. At the meeting, which was at-
tended by all the employees in the contract unit, then 22 in number,
only 14 of whom were members of Local 1227, formal motions to
disaffiliate from Local 1227, UE, and to affiliate with 463, IUE, were
adopted unanimously. All present also voted that the employees who
had been functioning as the shop committee in Local 1227 should be
continued in office as the shop committee in Local 463, IUE. On
February 1, 1951, the 14 employees who had been members of UE
executed individual checkoff revocations and since March 1, 1951, Local
463 has collected dues from all but 1 of the employees in the contract
unit.'
On February 8, 1951, the Employer was notified of the disaffiliation
action and was requested to recognize Local 463, IUE-CIO, as exclu-
sive bargaining agent of the employees concerned. The Employer
did not accede to this request and has continued to carry out its con-
tractual obligation to UE and Local 1227.
Since these events Local 1227 has not been in a position to process
grievances or fully to administer the contract with respect to the
Appliance Service Center. UE, however, continues to administer the
contract on a national level.
The Intervenors assert that our recent decision in the RCA Service
Company case g precludes a present determination of representatives
where, as here, the contract asserted as a bar as a Nation-wide one,
unless schism exists in a majority of the contracting locals. In that
case, however, the contract unit comprised all employees of the com-
pany throughout the United States, who were engaged in specified
types of works Thus, although the local in which disaffiliation action
had been taken represented employees in 10 of the administrative units
of the employer, these employees constituted a mere segment of the
contract unit. Our holding that the contract was a bar was clearly
predicated on that fact and does not apply to situations where the
contract covers many separate units and the collective action to dis-
affiliate is taken by a group of employees who alone constitute one of
the certified units covered by the contract.
The Intervenors also assert that in schism cases it has been the
Board's practice to recognize a current contract as a bar unless formal
collective action has been taken by the local. In the Telex; case,7 on
-which the Intervenors rely, our dismissal was expressly predicated on
4 The one employee not paying dues to Local 463 Is not a member of Local 1227 or of any
.other union . He expects to retire shortly and gives this as a reason for not joining any
union.
RCA Service Company, Inc., 94 NLRB 1122.
Similarly in Columbia River Salmon and Tuna Packers Association , 91 NLRB 1424,
the caontract we held to be a bar was an association-wide contract and the contract unit
comprised designated employees in the plants of all its employer members.
' Telem, Inc., 90 NLRB 202.
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY APPLIANCE SERVICE CENTER 569
the absence of evidence of formalized collective action "at a general
shop meeting" 8 resulting in disaffiliation from the Intervenor,, Such
evidence is present, however, in the case before us. Similarly in The
Electric Storage Battery Company 10 where the majority of the em-
ployees in the "contract unit" met and voted to disaffiliate from the
amalgamated local which was their representative, we recognized their
action as formal collective action although the contract unit was
limited to the employees in only one of the many shops in which the
local had members."
The scope of the action taken here, together with the fact that
Local 1227 is not able to administer the contract in the customary
manner, makes it clear that to treat the contract as a bar to a present
determination of representatives would not promote stability in bar-
gaining relations with the Employer 12 We therefore believe that the
conflicting claims to representation of the labor organizations involved
can best be resolved by an election: 3
We find that a question affecting commerce exists concerning the
representation of employees of the Employer within the meaning
of Section 9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The following employees of the Employer constitute a unit appro-
priate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning^
of Section 9 (b) of the Act:
All hourly employees of the Employer at its Long Island City
Traffic Appliance Department Products Service Center, 21-25 44th
Avenue, Long Island City, New York, excluding salaried office and
clerical employees, sales employees, professional employees, guards,
and supervisors as defined in the Act.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
8 Emphasis supplied.
e Cf. Columbia River Salmon and Tuna Packers Assooiatton, Supra, wherein the Board
found that there was "at most , an unsuccessful attempt . . . to obtain a formal vote to
disaffiliate from the International , and, failing this, a number of individual withdrawals
and the creation of a new competing union."
18 94 NLRB 1308
11 We find no merit in the contention of the Intervenors that the disaffiliation action
taken by the employees of the Appliance Service Center was not formal action because
contrary to the requirements of the local 's constitution , no business agent of Local 1227
was present at the meeting at which the vote was taken . We have repeatedly held that
the question whether disaffiliation has been accomplished in compliance with the con-
tracting union's constitution and bylaws is not a matter within the Board's province to
resolve and is not material in deciding whether or not the contract is a bar. Sun Ship-
building and Drydock Company, 80 NLRB 20, and cases cited therein . It is also immaterial
that the meeting was open to the employees who were not members of the Intervenors. All
the members in the shop attended and voted for the disaffiliation and for the new affiliation.
12 Automatic Electric Company, 96 NLRB 314. United Specialties Company, 89
NLRB 605.
18 Accordingly , the Intervenor 's motion to dismiss the petition for failure of proof is
denied.