John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 13, 1951

93 N.L.R.B. 778 (N.L.R.B. 1951)

778 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Order
Upon the basis of the entire record in this case, the National Labor
Relations Board hereby orders that the petition filed herein be, and it
hereby is, dismissed.
JOHN HANCOCK MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY and INSURANCE
AND ALLIED WORKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE , CIO, PETITIONER.
Case No. 1-RC--1659. March 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 Robert E. Greene, hearing
officer.,' The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from
prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed 2 UOPWA has requested
oral argument. As the record, briefs, and motion papers adequately
present the issues and the positions of the parties, the request is hereby
denied.
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the
Act.
2. The Petitioner, and National Federation of Insurance Agents
Council, AFL, an intervenor, herein called AFL, and United Office and
Professional Workers of America, an intervenor, herein called
i On February 8, 1951 , nearly 2 months after the close of the hearing on December 15,
1950, the UOPWA moved to reopen the hearing to take testimony that on or about
December 8, 1950 , a conference of employees in the unit herein involved met to establish a
policy for negotiating a wage increase ; that on December 12 and 13 , 1950, negotiations
were had with the Employer , and an increase agreed upon ; that the Petitioner conceded
UOPWA's status as an appropriate bargaining agent and its right to negotiate ; that an
increase was paid to employees on January 17, 1951, and another will be paid before
expiration of the contract on June 15 , 1951 ; that in December 1950, and since, many
employees have signed new checkoff cards in favor of UOPWA ; and, finally, that the
Employer continues to recognize UOPWA and UOPWA continues to administer , the
contract.
2 Except for the fact of actual payment of one installment of the wage increase , all the
points raised in the motion could have been litigated during the hearing. No request was
made to do so, or to continue the hearing for the purpose . The motion is therefore denied.
During the course of questioning J. H. Durkin, former president of UOPWA and now
secretary -treasurer of DPOWA, the Petitioner requested the minutes of the UOPWA
convention at which the merger agreement was approved , and of the DPOWA constitutional
convention . Durkin replied that because of the illness of the stenographer , the minutes
had not been transcribed . When asked the name of the stenographer by the hearing officer,
Durkin refused to answer . The Petitioner moved to strike Durkin's testimony. The
motion was referred to the Board. In view of the fact that Durkin offered no adequate
explanation for his refusal, the Petitioner 's motion to strike is hereby granted. See
National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations , Section 102 . 58 (d).
93 NLRB No. 132.
JOHN HANCOCK MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 779
UOPWA, are labor organizations 3 claiming to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer.
3. UOPWA contends that an existing collective bargaining agree-
ment between it and the Employer constitutes a bar to this proceeding.
The Petitioner and the AFL assert that the contract is not a bar for
any one or all of the following reasons : (1) UOPWA was expelled
from the CIO; (2) a schism within UOPWA has caused confusion
and doubt as to the representative status of UOPWA; and (3)
UOPWA, by reason of its merger into DPOWA, has ceased to exist
as a separate collective bargaining agency. The Employer is neutral.
The Employer sells life insurance throughout the United States.
For the Employer's administrative purposes, the United States is
divided into regions, in each of which are numbers of district offices.
Each district office has a manager, several assistant managers, and
from 10 to 50 agents. In all, there are about 205 district offices and
5,800 agents.
On June 15, 1949, after an election and Board certification,4 United
Office and Professional Workers, CIO, executed a contract with the
Employer covering all the Employer's agents in a single, Nation-wide
bargaining unit. Both the certification and the contract were in the
name of UOPWA-CIO. The contract expires on June 15, 1951, but
contains a 60-day automatic renewal clause.
UOPWA-CIO had as affiliates an undetermined number of insur-
ance locals, many of which were amalgamated locals which included
under their jurisdiction not only John Hancock agents, but also agents
of other insurance companies and, in some cases, several district offices
of one or more companies. Other locals were cpextensive with but
one Hancock office.
On March 1, 1950, UOPWA was expelled from the CIO. There-
after, the Insurance and Allied Workers Organizing Committee, CIO,
the Petitioner herein, was formed and has since issued charters to
groups of former UOPWA members who wished to affiliate with it.
The evidence of schism in the record is largely confined to dis-
affiliation activities in some 35 locals and district offices in the north-
UOPWA contends that the Petitioner is not a labor organization within the meaning of
the Act. The record shows that the Petitioner is an organization of insurance company
employees formed to represent such employees in matters pertaining to wages, hours, and
other conditions of employment . It is affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions. We find that the Petitioner is a labor organization within the meaning of the Act.
The Petitioner contends that UOPWA, formerly affiliated with the CIO, later expelled
therefrom , and now a division of Distributive, Processing , and Office Workers of America
(DPOWA), is no longer a labor organization Without deciding the question of UOPWA's
continued existence as an entirely independent union, we find that as a part or division of
DPOWA it is a labor organization within the meaning of the Act.
4 John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, 82 NLRB 179.
780 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
eastern United States .5 Of these, about 21 locals disaffiliated with
complete formality and with almost complete unanimity. Employees
of 11 district offices took individual formal action as there seemed no
chance that the locals of which they were parts would act as locals."
Most of these district offices and former UOPWA locals have now
joined the Petitioner. In addition, 2 or 3 locals met, adopted oral
resolutions to disaffiliate, signed CIO membership cards, and applied
for charters as CIO affiliates. In sum, the record shows that of
5,800-odd Hancock agents throughout the country, some 2,600 belonged
to locals or worked in district offices that took action to disaffiliate
from UOPWA and join the CIO. As there are about 1,480 Hancock
agents working out of offices which have never been organized or in
which the UOPWA local is admittedly defunct, the number of those
who have acted to disaffiliate is more than half of the UOPWA mem-
bership which was active at or about the time of expulsion.
Meantime, in October 1950, UOPWA joined with two other inter-
national unions' to form the new Distributive, Processing and Office
Workers of America (DPOWA). UOPWA first held a special con-
vention of its members, at which time a previously drawn up merger
agreement, signed by the three executive boards, was approved. The
merger agreement provided inter alia that (1) the three unions "shall-
merge and create a single union with one leadership, one headquarters,
one treasury and in all respects shall act in a united fashion"; (2)
the present membership of "UOPWA shall comprise the Office
and Professional Division, and be alternatively known as the, United
Office and Professional Workers of America." The officers were to
be the president, secretary-treasurer, administrative director, and eight
vice presidents, three each from FTA and DWU and two from
UOPWA. DWU was to designate the president, FTA the adminis-
trative director, and UOPWA the secretary-treasurer. In addition,
each union was to designate eight members of the executive board.
Following the UOPWA approval of the merger agreement, a con-
vention of the DPOWA organizing group was held and a constitution
adopted. It declares that "we, the workers in ... this International,
having become united, hereby declare ourselves to be an industrial
union" named Distributive, Processing and Office Workers of America.
5 There is no showing in the record of how many UOPWA locals existed in the United
States before or after the expulsion . UOPWA introduced in evidence a list of 48 locals it
claimed were active in October-November 1950 . The Petitioner contested the claim with
respect to 15 of the 48 Both parties agreed that another 15 locals, not on UOPwA's list,
were defunct or disaffiliated . No testimony was taken as to the number or status of locals
on the West Coast, in the south, or in the southwest , and almost none as to locals west of
the Mississippi River generally.
6 Such meetings of district office employees were normally called by the chairman of the
office "local relations" ( i e. grievance) committee , which existed in each district office.
' Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union (FTA), and Distributive Workers Union
(DWU).
JOHN HANCOCK MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 781
It provides in part III that the former unions shall be divisions of
DPOWA, alternatively known by their former names, and, with re-
spect to their powers, that they may, as subcommittees, meet and make
recommendations with reference to collective bargaining and other
matters. There is no other mention of the divisions in the constitu-
tion. The constitution further provides that the officers and general
executive board shall be elected by the convention, and in this part it
does not mention the formula set out in the merger agreement for
representation on the board of the three divisions as such. Article B
of part V gives "supreme authority" between conventions to the gen-
eral executive board. Per capita taxes are payable "to the Inter-
national Union," and union funds must be deposited by the secretary-
treasurer in the name of the union.
The CIO Petitioner introduced in evidence, in addition to the merger
agreement and new constitution, (1) a letter written by the new presi-
dent of DPOWA, who was formerly the president of the Distributive
Workers Union, to the Employer herein, requesting a bargaining
"conference between management . . . and a committee of this organi-
zation"; (2) a notice to all locals to pay their dues to DPOWA; (3)
and a canceled check showing that locals receive their remission of
checkoff dues directly from DPOWA and not from UOPWA.
We need not decide, as the Petitioner and the AFL would have us
do, that any single one of the three events, expulsion from the CIO,
schism, or merger, is sufficient to prevent operation of the contract as
a bar. It is clear that, taken together, they show an intraunion up-
heaval of such scope and effect as to create extreme confusion and un-
certainty with regard to the status of the contracting union as bargain-
ing representative of the Employer's employees. In these circum-
stances, to apply the Board's ordinary contract bar rule would impede
rather than encourage the practice of collective bargaining that the
Act was intended to foster and protect.' Accordingly, we find that
the contract Which will terminate on June 15, 1951, is not a bar to a
present determination of representatives.'
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 parties agree, and we find, that the following employees of
the Employer in its district offices in the United States constitute a unit
appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the mean-
ing of Section 9 (b) of the Act:
8 We have considered , but do not regard as controlling , the cases cited by UOPWA in its
supplemental motion dated February 26, 1951. Accordingly , the motion is denied.
'Cf. Slater System, Inc., 93 NLRB 204 ; Radio Station WBNY, 92 NLRB 1561;
J. J. Tourek Manufacturing Co., 90 NLRB 5; White Sewing Machine Company, 89 NLRB
1284 ; Airtemp Division, Chrysler Corporation, 89 NLRB 448.
782 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
All district agents, excluding clerical employees, district managers,
assistant district managers, and other supervisors as defined in the Act.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
MEMBERS HOUSTON and MURDOCK, concurring :
While we join our colleagues in directing an election here, we do
so without adopting their reasoning and conclusions with respect to
the expulsion from the CIO, the alleged schism and merger as remov-
ing the incumbent union's contract as a bar. We believe this case is
in such a posture as to make unnecessary any ruling at all on these
issues. It has been our practice to proceed with elections when there
is left only a short time before an existing contract expires. We have
proceeded to direct elections within 30 days of the commencement of
the renewal period. In this case, the contract involved will expire on
June 15, 1951, and contains a 60-day automatic renewal clause. Con-
sequently, an election is now timely, and we see no need to do more than
apply this rule and proceed to determine the representation question.
UNION STREET RAILWAY COMPANY and AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION OF
STREET, ELECTRIC AND MOTOR COACH EMPLOYEES OF AMERICA, AFL,
PETITIONER. Case No. 1-RC-1843. March 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 Joseph Lepie, 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-niem-
ber panel [Members Houston, Reynolds, and Styles].
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
. 2. The labor organization involved claims to represent certain em-
ployees 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 was certified by the Board in 1945 as the repre-
sentative of the production and, maintenance employees of the„ Em-
ployer. Inspectors were not included in this certification. During
93 NLRB No. 119.