The Boeing Company

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 9, 2019

368 NLRB No. 67 (N.L.R.B. 2019)

368 NLRB No. 67
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
bound volumes of NLRB decisions. Readers are requested to notify the Ex-
ecutive Secretary, National Labor Relations Board, Washington, D.C.
20570, of any typographical or other formal errors so that corrections can
be included in the bound volumes.
The Boeing Company and International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Case 10–
RC–215878
September 9, 2019
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN RING AND MEMBERS MCFERRAN,
KAPLAN, AND EMANUEL
The issue here is whether the petitioned-for unit limited
to two classifications within the Employer’s South Caro-
lina production line of the 787 aircraft is an appropriate
unit under the National Labor Relations Act. On May 21,
2018, the Regional Director issued a Decision and Direc-
tion of Election in which he found the petitioned-for unit
appropriate under the National Labor Relations Board’s
decision in PCC Structurals, Inc., 365 NLRB No. 160
(2017). The election took place on May 31, 2018, and the
Petitioner prevailed. Absent any objections or determina-
tive challenged ballots, the Regional Director issued a
Certification of Representative on June 12, 2018. There-
after, pursuant to Section 102.67 of the Board’s Rules and
Regulations, the Employer timely filed a request for re-
view asking the Board to find the petitioned-for unit inap-
propriate. The Petitioner filed an opposition.1
Having carefully considered the record and briefs, we
find, as explained in detail below, that the unit is inappro-
priate because the two classifications in the petitioned-for
unit do not share a community of interest with each other,
and even if they did, they do not share a community of
interest that is sufficiently distinct from the interests of
other production-and-maintenance employees excluded
from the unit. Accordingly, we grant review, reverse the
Regional Director’s decision, vacate the Petitioner’s certi-
fication, and dismiss the petition.
I. FACTS
The Employer manufactures commercial 787 aircraft at
its facility in North Charleston, South Carolina. The com-
plex integrated production line required to produce these
sophisticated aircraft employs around 2700 production-
and-maintenance employees, and each aircraft requires
the completion of about 9000 tasks, called “Shop Order

1 The Board accepted six amicus curiae briefs: (1) the Coalition for
a Democratic Workplace, the Independent Electrical Contractors, the
National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, the National Federa-
tion of Independent Business, the National Retail Federation, the Restau-
rant Law Center, and the Retail Industry Leaders Association; (2) the
Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce of the United
States; (3) the State of South Carolina ex rel. Alan Wilson, Attorney
Instances” (SOIs), over about 119 days. Broadly, produc-
tion consists of constructing the tail of the airplane in the
AFT Building and the body and wings of the airplane in
the Mid-Body Building. These sections then travel to the
Final Assembly Building, where they are joined and addi-
tional components are installed. In each of these three
buildings, there are technicians who perform the work and
quality inspectors who check it.
After Final Assembly, the airplane is towed across a
taxiway to the Flight Line, which consists of nine stalls,
each with a workspace and a breakroom. At the Flight
Line, the aircraft is fully powered for the first time, final-
ized, tested, certified, and delivered to the customer. The
technicians permanently assigned to the Flight Line are
called Flight-Line Readiness Technicians (FRTs), and the
quality inspectors permanently assigned there are called
Flight-Line Readiness Technician Inspectors (FRTIs).
The Petitioner petitioned to represent a unit consisting of
only these two classifications, about 178 employees.
FRTs and FRTIs, respectively, perform and inspect
three types of work on the Flight Line. First, they perform
about 107 SOIs exclusive to the Flight Line (always per-
formed by FRTs, but not always inspected by FRTIs),
such as fueling the aircraft for the first time and conduct-
ing numerous preflight checks. Many of these checks are
redundant of what has been performed in prior stages,
though now the airplane is fully operational. Second, they
rework SOIs completed in prior stages when problems are
found with them on the Flight Line. Third, they complete
traveled work, which are SOIs that were not finished at an
earlier stage (e.g., Final Assembly) where they should
have been completed. There are routinely a significant
number of SOIs, from as few as 75 to more than 450, that
travel on because parts were unavailable or due to other
issues. By hours spent, about 14 percent of FRTs’ and
FRTIs’ work is rework and traveled work, though by num-
ber of SOIs completed and inspected, the share of rework
and traveled work is much higher.
A travel team of 10 or more technicians from Final As-
sembly is regularly on the Flight Line to help with traveled
work. Other technicians from earlier stages also come to
the Flight Line as needed. Inspectors based in earlier
stages sign off on a portion of the traveled work and even
sign off on 11 percent of the SOIs exclusive to the Flight
Line. There is a 10-employee cabin systems team
General; (4) the National Association of Manufacturers, the HR Policy
Association, and the Society for Human Resource Management; (5) the
South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance and the South Carolina Chamber
of Commerce; and (6) the Governors of South Carolina, Maine, Ken-
tucky, and Mississippi. The Petitioner filed a combined response to these
briefs.
2 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
permanently assigned to the Flight Line to work on cos-
metic items in the cabin.
Once an aircraft is certified by the Federal Aviation Ad-
ministration (FAA), it enters “repair station status,” which
means employees working on the airplane must hold a
qualifying certification and are subject to mandatory drug
testing. Repair station status, on average, lasts only the
final 4 or 5 days the aircraft is on the production line. The
Employer requires FRTs and FRTIs to hold an Airframe
& Powerplant (A&P) license, a certification that satisfies
the FAA’s requirements, so that they have the flexibility
to work on aircraft in repair station status. An A&P li-
cense requires 1.5 to 2.5 years of schooling with classroom
and hands-on work, as well as passing written, oral, and
practical testing. Only about 6 percent of employees ex-
cluded from the unit hold an A&P license. FRTs and
FRTIs share most other skills and training with excluded
technicians and inspectors, respectively.
FRTs belong to the Employer’s operations department
with the other technicians throughout the facility. FRTIs
are in the quality department with the rest of the produc-
tion line’s quality inspectors. In addition to being in sep-
arate departments, FRTs and FRTIs work under entirely
separate supervisory structures, all the way up to CEO.
FRTs are supervised by nine operations managers, two of
whom also supervise excluded employees on the cabin
systems team. FRTIs are supervised by field quality man-
agers, who also give direction to inspectors based in ear-
lier stages while they are working on the Flight Line.
FRTIs also share supervision at the second level with other
employees excluded from the unit.
Excluded employees have never interchanged into ei-
ther FRT or FRTI roles. Before 2017, FRTs and FRTIs
occasionally have been temporarily loaned to other pro-
duction stages when those stages were behind or the Flight
Line lacked work. During 2017, there was a higher level
of temporary interchange because of a shortage of work
on the Flight Line. The Employer reassigned 30 FRTs to
earlier production stages for about 6 months, selected sev-
eral FRTs to work on a special project with technicians
from other stages, and rotated at least eight FRTIs into Fi-
nal Assembly. There has never been interchange between
FRTs and FRTIs.
FRTs and FRTIs earn higher wages than many, though
not all, excluded employees. Beyond a few minor differ-
ences, such as being able to wear shorts and having
slightly different shift times, FRTs and FRTIs share all
other terms and conditions of employment with excluded
production-and-maintenance employees. All production-
and-maintenance employees have the same timekeeping
system, the same payroll and direct-deposit system, the
same performance-management system to determine pay
and pay increases, the same attendance guidelines, the
same overtime system, the same corrective-discipline sys-
tem, the same policies for environmental health and
safety, the same hiring process, the same leave policies,
the same healthcare benefits and dental plan, the same vol-
untary-investment plans, the same life-insurance and dis-
ability plans, the same flexible-spending accounts, the
same gift-matching program, the same physical-fitness
program, the same cash-awards program, the same badge
protocols, and the same alternative dispute resolution pro-
gram.
II. LEGAL PRINCIPLES
In PCC Structurals, Inc., supra, 365 NLRB No. 160, the
Board announced its “return[] to the traditional commu-
nity-of-interest standard that [it] has applied throughout
most of its history.” Id., slip op. at 7. Under that standard,
when a party asserts that the smallest appropriate unit must
include employees excluded from the petitioned-for unit,
the Board applies its traditional community-of-interest
factors to “determine whether the petitioned-for employ-
ees share a community of interest sufficiently distinct
from employees excluded from the proposed unit to war-
rant a separate appropriate unit.” Id.
The Board has historically considered the following fac-
tors under its traditional community-of-interest test:
“[W]hether the employees are organized into a separate
department; have distinct skills and training; have dis-
tinct job functions and perform distinct work, including
inquiry into the amount and type of job overlap between
classifications; are functionally integrated with the Em-
ployer’s other employees; have frequent contact with
other employees; interchange with other employees;
have distinct terms and conditions of employment; and
are separately supervised.”
Id., slip op. at 5 (quoting United Operations, Inc., 338 NLRB
123, 123 (2002)). In determining appropriate bargaining
units, the Board has also long given substantial weight to
prior bargaining history. The Board is reluctant to disturb
units established by collective bargaining as long as those
units are not repugnant to Board policy or so constituted as to
hamper employees in fully exercising rights guaranteed by
the Act. Buffalo Broadcasting Co., 242 NLRB 1105, 1106 fn.
2 (1979).
When weighing these factors, the Board
never addresses, solely and in isolation, the question
whether the employees in the unit sought have interests
in common with one another. Numerous groups of em-
ployees fairly can be said to possess employment condi-
tions or interests “in common.” Our inquiry—though
perhaps not articulated in every case—necessarily
THE BOEING CO. 3
proceeds to a further determination whether the interests
of the group sought are sufficiently distinct from those
of other employees to warrant the establishment of a sep-
arate unit.
Wheeling Island Gaming, 355 NLRB 637, 637 fn. 2 (2010)
(emphasis and citation omitted). As the Board explained in
PCC Structurals, supra, slip op. at 5:
[t]he required assessment of whether the sought-after
employees’ interests are sufficiently distinct from those
of employees excluded from the petitioned-for group
provides some assurance that extent of organizing will
not be determinative, consistent with Section 9(c)(5); it
ensures that bargaining units will not be arbitrary, irra-
tional, or “fractured”—that is, composed of a gerryman-
dered grouping of employees whose interests are insuf-
ficiently distinct from those of other employees to con-
stitute that grouping a separate appropriate unit; and it
ensures that the Section 7 rights of excluded employees
who share a substantial (but less than “overwhelming”)
community of interests with the sought-after group are
taken into consideration.
The Board’s inquiry necessarily begins with the peti-
tioned-for unit. If that unit is appropriate, then the inquiry
into the appropriate unit ends. Boeing Co., 337 NLRB
152, 153 (2001). Moreover, as the Board reaffirmed in
PCC Structurals, a proposed unit need only be an appro-
priate unit, and need not be the most appropriate unit. 365
NLRB No. 160, slip op. at 12.
In determining whether the petitioned-for unit is appro-
priate, PCC Structurals makes clear that the Board will
consider “both the shared and the distinct interests of pe-
titioned-for and excluded employees.” PCC Structurals,
supra, slip op. at 11. This analysis, in turn, is firmly rooted
in the Board’s traditional, pre–Specialty Healthcare prec-
edent. See, e.g., Wheeling Island Gaming, supra; Newton-
Wellesley Hospital, 250 NLRB 409, 411–412 (1980).
Nevertheless, we recognize that both PCC Structurals and
the precedent on which it is based have not clearly de-
scribed how the shared and distinct interests should be
weighed.2 In addition, the Board in PCC Structurals
adopted the Second Circuit’s standard in Constellation
Brands, U.S. Operations, Inc. v. NLRB, 842 F.3d 784, 794
(2d Cir. 2016) (emphasis in original), that the community-
of-interest analysis must consider whether excluded em-
ployees “have meaningfully distinct interests in the

2 Indeed, the Board frankly acknowledged in Wheeling Island Gam-
ing that the Board’s historic examination of the community of interest of
employees within and outside the proposed unit, as noted above, has “not
[been] articulated in every case.” 355 NLRB at 637 fn. 2.
3 Multifactor tests “lead to predictability and intelligibility only to the
extent the Board explains, in applying the test to varied fact situations,
context of collective bargaining that outweigh similari-
ties” with the included employees, but it did not clearly
articulate how that standard should be applied. In light of
the contentions of the parties and amici, we believe that
further guidance with respect to these matters is warranted
here.3
Accordingly, we clarify that PCC Structurals contem-
plates a three-step process for determining an appropriate
bargaining unit under our traditional community-of-inter-
est test. First, the proposed unit must share an internal
community of interest. Second, the interests of those
within the proposed unit and the shared and distinct inter-
ests of those excluded from that unit must be compara-
tively analyzed and weighed. Third, consideration must
be given to the Board’s decisions on appropriate units in
the particular industry involved.
(1) Step One: Shared Interests Within the
Petitioned-or Unit
The first step requires “‘identify[ing] shared interests
among members of the petitioned-for unit.’” PCC Struc-
turals, supra, slip op. at 9 (quoting Constellation Brands,
842 F.3d at 794). Thus, the traditional community-of-in-
terest standard is not satisfied if the interests shared by the
petitioned-for employees are too disparate to form a com-
munity of interest within the petitioned-for unit. See, e.g.,
Saks & Co., 204 NLRB 24, 25 (1973) (“[T]he record indi-
cates that [the petitioned-for employees] perform dissimi-
lar functions, work throughout the entire store and service
center, and do not share any common supervision. Thus
we are unable to find that the unit sought is appropriate on
the basis of similarity of job function.”); Publix Super
Markets, Inc., 343 NLRB 1023, 1027 (2004) (“In reaching
the conclusion that the Regional Director’s unit determi-
nations are not appropriate, we rely on the fact that the
differences among the fluid processing unit employees
and among the distribution unit employees are nearly as
great as the differences between the units” (emphasis in
original).). In sum, the analysis logically begins by con-
sidering whether the petitioned-for unit has an internal
community of interest using the traditional criteria dis-
cussed above. A unit without that internal, shared com-
munity of interest is inappropriate.
which factors are significant and which less so, and why.” LeMoyne-
Owen College v. NLRB, 357 F.3d 55, 61 (D.C. Cir. 2004). Absent such
explanations, a “totality of the circumstances” analysis can become
“simply a cloak for agency whim.” Id.
4 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
(2) Step Two: Shared Interests of Petitioned-For and
Excluded Employees
Step Two requires a comparative analysis of excluded
and included employees. In restoring the traditional com-
munity-of-interest analysis, the Board in PCC Structurals
stressed that it is not enough to “focus[ ] on the interests
shared among employees within the petitioned-for group.”
Id., slip op. at 10 (emphasis in original). Instead, the in-
quiry must also consider whether “‘excluded employees
have meaningfully distinct interests in the context of col-
lective bargaining that outweigh similarities with unit
members.’” Id., slip op. at 11 (quoting Constellation
Brands, 842 F.3d at 794) (emphasis in Constellation
Brands).4 Again, this inquiry is firmly rooted in tradi-
tional community-of-interest principles. See, e.g., Har-
rah’s Club, 187 NLRB 810, 812–813 (1971) (finding that
“a unit limited to maintenance department employees does
not comprise a homogeneous grouping of employees pos-
sessed of interests sufficiently distinct from other employ-
ees to constitute a separate unit appropriate for purposes
of collective bargaining” and that all employees perform-
ing a similar primary function must be included in the
unit); Texas Color Printers, Inc., 210 NLRB 30, 31 (1974)
(“[I]n view of the frequent work contacts and temporary
interchange and overlapping supervision of employees of
the shipping and receiving and bindery departments, and
in the absence of any bargaining history as to any of the
plant employees, we find that the shipping and receiving
department employees do not enjoy a sufficiently distinct
community of interest to warrant their establishment as a
separate appropriate unit apart from other employees.”).5
Of course, the fact that excluded employees have some
community-of-interest factors in common with included
employees does not end the inquiry. Consistent with PCC
Structurals, the Board must determine whether the em-
ployees excluded from the unit “‘have meaningfully dis-
tinct interests in the context of collective bargaining that
outweigh similarities with unit members.’” Id., slip op. at
11 (quoting Constellation Brands, supra). If those distinct
interests do not outweigh the similarities, then the unit is
inappropriate.
This inquiry does not require that distinct interests must
outweigh similarities by any particular margin, nor does it
contemplate that a unit would be found inappropriate

4 In this regard, PCC Structurals rejected the Specialty Healthcare
standard, under which units would be found appropriate unless the em-
ployer proved there was an overwhelming community of interest be-
tween the petitioned-for unit and excluded employees. Specialty
Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, 357 NLRB 934 (2011),
enfd. sub nom. Kindred Nursing Centers East, LLC v. NLRB, 727 F.3d
552 (6th Cir. 2013). PCC Structurals corrected that error by requiring a
determination “whether ‘excluded employees have meaningfully distinct
interests in the context of collective bargaining that outweigh similarities
merely because a different unit might be more appropriate.
Instead, as the court’s opinion in Constellation Brands
makes clear, what is required is that the Board analyze the
distinct and similar interests and explain why, taken as a
whole, they do or do not support the appropriateness of the
unit. “Merely recording similarities or differences be-
tween employees does not substitute for an explanation of
how and why these collective-bargaining interests are rel-
evant and support the conclusion. Explaining why the ex-
cluded employees have distinct interests in the context of
collective bargaining is necessary to avoid arbitrary lines
of demarcation.” Constellation Brands, supra at 794–795.
(3) Step Three: Special Considerations of Facility, In-
dustry, or Employer Precedent
As the Board explained in PCC Structurals, supra, slip
op. at 11, the traditional community-of-interest standard
includes, where applicable, consideration of guidelines
that the Board has established for specific industries with
regard to appropriate unit configurations. See, e.g., Colo-
rado Interstate Gas Co., 202 NLRB 847, 848 (1973) (pub-
lic utilities); North American Rockwell Corp., 193 NLRB
983 (1971) (defense contractors); Stern’s, Paramus, 150
NLRB 799, 803 (1965) (retail establishments). These
guidelines are appropriately considered at the third and fi-
nal step of the community-of-interest analysis.
III. APPLICATION TO FACTS
(1) Step One: Shared Interests Within the
Petitioned-For Unit
On balance, we find that the interests shared by the pe-
titioned-for employees, FRTs and FRTIs, are too disparate
to form a community of interest within the petitioned-for
unit. FRTs and FRTIs do share some interests that weigh
in favor of the petitioned-for unit. They share nearly iden-
tical terms and conditions of employment, have frequent
daily contact with each other on the Flight Line, and share
many of the same skills and much of the same training,
including A&P licenses. But FRTs and FRTIs also have
significantly different interests in the context of collective
bargaining. They belong to separate departments and do
not share any supervision with each other, immediately or
at any level below CEO. Beyond working toward com-
pleting the same SOIs, they have fundamentally different
job functions from each other. FRTs are technicians who
with unit members.’” PCC Structurals, supra, slip op. at 11 (quoting
Constellation Brands, 842 F.3d at 794) (emphasis in Constellation
Brands).
5 Fractured units are one example of this issue. A fractured unit is a
“combination[] of employees that [is] too narrow in scope or that ha[s]
no rational basis” because the petitioned-for employees have duties,
skills, and other interests that are so similar to those of excluded employ-
ees that it would be arbitrary for the two groups to be represented in dif-
ferent units. See Seaboard Marine, 327 NLRB 556, 556 (1999).
THE BOEING CO. 5
do the mechanical work, and FRTIs are inspectors who
assure quality. Moreover, there has never been inter-
change between the FRT and FRTI classifications. Lack-
ing an internal community of interest, the petitioned-for
unit is inappropriate at the first step, and we need not con-
tinue the analysis any further. We do continue here, how-
ever, to demonstrate how this three-step analysis works
and to provide an alternative basis for our conclusion.
(2) Step Two: Shared Interests with
Excluded Employees
Even if the petitioned-for unit here had shared an inter-
nal community of interest, on balance the interests of ex-
cluded employees are not meaningfully distinct from and
do not outweigh similarities with the interests of the peti-
tioned-for employees.
Particularly compelling here is that the FRTs and
FRTIs, the employees in the petitioned-for unit, have a
high degree of functional integration with excluded em-
ployees on the Employer’s 787 production line. The 2700
production-and-maintenance employees stationed
throughout the production line all work toward producing
a single product, 787 aircraft. The 178 included FRTs and
FRTIs are only exclusively responsible for about 107 of
the 9000 SOIs, or about 1 percent of the tasks necessary to
deliver a single aircraft to a customer. Otherwise, they aid
earlier production stages by finishing and fixing many
other SOIs alongside or in place of excluded employees.
As the Board has observed before, it is “particularly inap-
propriate to carve out a disproportionately small portion
of a large, functionally integrated facility as a separate
unit.” Publix Super Markets, 343 NLRB at 1027.
The petitioned-for unit’s shared collective-bargaining
interests with excluded employees by no means end there.
FRTs are in the same department as excluded technicians,
and FRTIs are in the same department as excluded inspec-
tors. FRTs and FRTIs separately share overall supervision
with excluded technicians and inspectors, respectively, in-
cluding some immediate and secondary supervision.6
FRTs and FRTIs have meaningful similarities in job func-
tions with excluded employees. A significant 14 percent
of FRTs’ and FRTIs’ functions by time spent, and even
more by SOIs performed, overlap entirely with work also
performed by excluded employees—the rework and trav-
eled work.7 Even a portion of the work that is exclusive
to the Flight Line is at least similar to, if not redundant of,

6 See Harrah’s Illinois Corp., 319 NLRB 749, 750 (1995) (sharing
overall and immediate supervision with excluded employees are each
relevant to the supervision factor).
7 See Brand Precision Services, 313 NLRB 657, 658 (1994) (peti-
tioned-for unit not sufficiently distinct in part because excluded employ-
ees did 10 percent of the same work as the included employees).
work performed by excluded employees earlier on the pro-
duction line. FRTIs do not even exclusively perform this
Flight Line work. Excluded inspectors sign off on 11 per-
cent of it.
By contrast, the factors here that might distinguish ex-
cluded employees from the FRTs and FRTIs are relatively
insignificant in the context of collective bargaining. FRTs
and FRTIs have higher wages than many excluded em-
ployees, but FRTs and FRTIs share almost all other terms
and conditions of employment, including all personnel
policies and benefits, with excluded employees.8 FRTs
and FRTIs are the only classification required to hold the
A&P license, which requires significant schooling and
testing to secure. This signals that FRTs and FRTIs have
more training and greater skills than most excluded em-
ployees. But we find this distinction between included
and excluded employees tempered by other facts in the
record. First, FRTs and excluded technicians share almost
all other skills and training, as do FRTIs and excluded in-
spectors. Second, the Employer’s A&P license require-
ment is in place to meet FAA regulations about who can
work on an airplane in repair station status, following
FAA certification. Repair station status lasts only a short
portion of the time the aircraft is on the Flight Line. In
any event, evidence tends to support that FRTs and FRTIs
largely use the same skills as excluded employees before
and even during repair station status. Although FRTs and
FRTIs may share some different interests arising from
their A&P license, it seems unlikely, overall, that their in-
terests related to skills and training in these circumstances
are much different than the interests of excluded employ-
ees.
Regarding interchange, it is true that excluded employ-
ees have never interchanged into the FRT or FRTI classi-
fications, and the history of permanent or temporary trans-
fers of FRTs or FRTIs into excluded positions is limited.
But there was a material amount of temporary interchange
of FRTs and FRTIs into excluded jobs in 2017. Contact
is the only factor that unreservedly favors the petitioned-
for unit. The Flight Line is located across a taxiway from
other production buildings, and FRTs and FRTIs tend to
park at the Flight Line lot and eat at the Fight Line break-
rooms, instead of making the 10-minute walk to the com-
mon “Hub” cafeteria. FRTs and FRTIs generally only
8 See TDK Ferrites Corp., 342 NLRB 1006, 1009 (2004) (finding
petitioned-for unit not sufficiently distinct after weighing higher wages
in favor of the petitioned-for unit and “common working conditions and
terms and conditions of employment” against the petitioned-for unit);
United Operations, Inc., supra, 338 NLRB at 125 (weighing “signifi-
cantly higher wages” in favor of the petitioned-for unit and “common
. . . personnel policies[] and work rules” against the petitioned-for unit).
6 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
have contact with the subset of excluded employees that
come to the Flight Line to help with traveled work.
At most, FRTs and FRTIs are a group of employees
with higher wages and A&P licenses working in a physi-
cally separate area that tend to stay in their respective job
classifications. However, the interests they share with ex-
cluded employees are far more significant than those that
differentiate them. FRTs and FRTIs are fully functionally
integrated with excluded employees, share departments
with excluded employees, share supervision with ex-
cluded employees, perform a significant portion of the
same job functions as excluded employees, share most
terms and conditions of employment with excluded em-
ployees, and share most of the same skills and training
with excluded employees. We find that excluded produc-
tion-and-maintenance employees would largely have the
same interests as FRTs and FRTIs in the context of collec-
tive bargaining and thus the petitioned-for unit’s distinct
interests certainly do not outweigh the interests shared
with excluded employees. Because the petitioned-for unit
does not share a community of interest that is sufficiently
distinct from the interests of excluded employees, the unit
is also inappropriate under the second step.
(3) Step Three: Special Unit Rules
No industry-specific guidelines are applicable to this
case. In this regard, we reject the Employer’s contention
that the Board has established a presumption in favor of a
plantwide unit for integrated manufacturing facilities that
must be rebutted by a union seeking a smaller unit. We
recognize that, consistent with Section 9(b) of the Act, the
Board has long held that “[a] plantwide unit is presump-
tively appropriate under the Act, and a community of in-
terest inherently exists among such employees.” Kalama-
zoo Paper Box Corp., 136 NLRB 134, 136 (1962) (refus-
ing to sever truck drivers from existing production and
maintenance unit). But neither Kalamazoo Paper Box nor
any other case establishes that a less-than-plantwide man-
ufacturing unit is presumptively inappropriate, or that a
petitioner seeking such a unit bears any heightened burden
of proving that it is appropriate. “[T]he Board has held
that the appropriateness of an overall unit does not estab-
lish that a smaller unit is inappropriate.” Montgomery
Ward & Co., 150 NLRB 598, 601 (1964) (citing cases)
(petitioned-for unit of automotive service center service

9 Boeing Co., 337 NLRB 152 (2001), cited by the Employer, is not to
the contrary. There, the Board found that a petitioned-for unit of 10 re-
covery and modification (RAM) employees was inappropriate and that
the smallest appropriate unit was an overall production and maintenance
unit. But the Board’s unit determination was based on its conclusion,
after considering all of the traditional community-of-interest factors, that
the factors supporting the petitioned-for unit were “offset by the highly
integrated work force, the similarity in training and job functions
department employees was appropriate, even though the
employer contended that only a storewide-unit was appro-
priate). To be sure, functional integration is a factor in
determining whether a petitioned-for unit is appropriate
and, where present, cuts against the appropriateness of a
less-than-plantwide unit, as this case demonstrates. But it
is only one factor in the community-of-interest analysis.9
IV. RESPONSE TO THE DISSENT
Our dissenting colleague continues in this case to pro-
test our overruling, in PCC Structurals, the Specialty
Healthcare standard, which discounted or altogether elim-
inated any assessment of whether shared interests among
employees within the petitioned-for unit are sufficiently
distinct from the interests of excluded employees to war-
rant a finding that the smaller petitioned-for unit is appro-
priate. Not quarreling with the first and third steps out-
lined above, the dissent also claims the second step is a
significant, impermissible departure from precedent, even
including PCC Structurals. This is not so. As we ex-
plained above, the Board has long required that included
employees have a sufficiently distinct community of inter-
est from excluded employees, and we adopted in PCC
Structurals the Second Circuit’s expression of when inter-
ests are sufficiently distinct, i.e., when “‘excluded em-
ployees have meaningfully distinct interests in the context
of collective bargaining that outweigh similarities with
unit members.’” 365 NLRB No. 160, slip op. at 9 (quoting
Constellation Brands v. NLRB, 842 F.3d at 794). Each
case in this area is highly specific to its unique mix of
facts, but we read the conclusions of our prior cases to be
consistent with this standard.
Our colleague maintains that the interests of included
employees are insufficiently distinct from those of ex-
cluded employees only where the two groups share “a sub-
stantial community of interests.” She finds this substanti-
ality requirement in cases such as Harrah’s Club, 187
NLRB 810 (1971), and Texas Color Printers, Inc., 210
NLRB 30 (1974), in which the Board found the petitioned-
for units inappropriate where excluded employees had
substantial similarities with included employees. Those
cases, like this one, may have involved substantial simi-
larities, but they by no means set the lower bounds of in-
sufficient distinctness, below which the petitioned-for unit
must be found appropriate. We also reject that we are
between the RAM and” excluded employees, and the comparable terms
and conditions of employment among the overall work force. Id. at 153.
The Board neither stated nor applied a presumption in favor of the
broader unit. To the contrary, the decision specifically acknowledges
that the Board “generally attempts to select a unit that is the smallest
appropriate unit encompassing the petitioned-for employee classifica-
tions” and that “the unit need only be an appropriate unit, not the most
appropriate unit.” Id.
THE BOEING CO. 7
creating a presumption “in favor of the largest and most
comprehensive units.” We are, in each case, considering
the rights of all employees, included and excluded, and the
prospects of a stable and productive collective-bargaining
relationship.
Our colleague’s criticism of our second step betrays her
belief that nearly any distinction between the interests of
included and excluded employees is sufficient to warrant
a separate appropriate unit, and almost any petitioned-for
unit should be approved. In her mind the “fullest freedom
in exercising the rights guaranteed by this Act” described
in Section 9(b) effectively means employees should get
the unit they ask for, which generally coincides with the
extent of their organization—what Section 9(c)(5) ex-
pressly provides “shall not be controlling” in determining
an appropriate unit. Her application to the facts here
shows how small of a distinction she finds sufficient. Un-
der her analysis, anytime higher paid, higher skilled em-
ployees work in a separate area, they constitute a separate
appropriate unit when they ask for it, no matter how many
other interests they share with excluded employees. We
profoundly disagree with her view.
V. CONCLUSION
We find the petitioned-for unit inappropriate both be-
cause the employees in that unit do not share an internal
community of interest and because their interests are not
sufficiently distinct from the interests of excluded em-
ployees. We accordingly vacate the Union’s certification,
and because the Union expressed an unwillingness at the
hearing to proceed to an election in a unit extending be-
yond the Flight Line, we also dismiss the petition.10
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that the certification of representative is-
sued on June 12, 2018, is vacated and the petition is dis-
missed.
Dated, Washington, D.C. September 9, 2019
______________________________________
John F. Ring, Chairman
_____________________________________
Marvin E. Kaplan, Member

10 We accordingly do not pass here on whether the smallest appropri-
ate unit encompasses all production and maintenance employees plant-
wide.
1 365 NLRB No. 160 (2017) (PCC Structurals).
_____________________________________
William J. Emanuel, Member
(SEAL) NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
MEMBER MCFERRAN, dissenting.
In PCC Structurals,1 a Board majority purported to “re-
turn[] to the traditional community-of-interest standard
that the Board has applied throughout most of its history.”2
Taking PCC Structurals at its word, the Regional Director
faithfully applied traditional community-of-interest prin-
ciples here and determined that the petitioned-for unit of
178 Flight Readiness Technicians (FRTs) and Flight
Readiness Technician Inspectors (FRTIs) is an appropri-
ate unit. That is manifestly the correct result here.
Yet now, the majority reverses the Regional Director
and declares, after professing to “clarify” PCC Structur-
als, that the petitioned-for unit is inappropriate because
the FRTs and FRTIs are not “sufficiently distinct” from
“other” production and maintenance employees that were
excluded from the unit. The majority makes no effort to
explain precisely which of these “other” production and
maintenance employees have notable similarities with the
petitioned-for employees, or to suggest which of these
“other” classifications should be included to render the pe-
titioned-for unit appropriate; indeed, my colleagues ne-
glect to mention any specific non-FRT or FRTI classifica-
tions at all. Rather, they find the unit inappropriate based
on factors which apply to every single production and
maintenance employee at the plant, leading to the inescap-
able conclusion that the only appropriate bargaining unit
here, at least under the majority’s analysis, is one that
combines every production and maintenance employee at
the Employer’s North Charleston plant—a unit that would
include approximately 2,700 employees. This conclusion
cannot be reconciled with the “traditional community-of-
interest standard” that PCC Structurals claimed to rein-
state.
Not surprisingly then, the majority’s “clarification” of
PCC Structurals is actually much more than that. The ma-
jority has fashioned a new standard—embedded in a
“three-step process”—that departs from the traditional
community-of-interest test and the unit determination
principles that have guided the Board for almost 70 years.
Step One of the majority’s process is uncontroversial in
principle—the Board must determine whether the
2 Id., slip op. at 7. For the reasons articulated in the dissent in PCC
Structurals, 365 NLRB No. 160, slip op. 13–26, I continue to believe
that the Board’s decision in Specialty Healthcare & Rehabilitation Cen-
ter of Mobile, 357 NLRB 934 (2011) (Specialty Healthcare), enfd. sub
nom. Kindred Nursing Centers East, LLC v. NLRB, 727 F.3d 552 (6th
8 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
petitioned-for employees share a community of interest
among themselves—but as explained below the majority’s
application here is clearly erroneous. Step Three is also
unremarkable—the Board must consider long-established
unit-determination guidelines for specific industries.
But Step Two of the majority’s new test is a significant
(and statutorily impermissible) departure from traditional
community-of-interest principles. Under that step, the
majority says “the Board must determine whether the em-
ployees excluded from the unit have meaningfully distinct
interests in the context of collective bargaining that out-
weigh similarities with unit members. If those distinct in-
terests do not outweigh the similarities, then the unit is in-
appropriate.” (internal quotations omitted). This “weigh-
ing” of excluded employees’ interests is not a mere clari-
fication of PCC Structurals, but an upending of well-set-
tled unit determination principles that PCC Structurals
purported to reinstate. For the majority to pretend other-
wise, and not acknowledge or explain the dramatic change
it makes, constitutes a failure to engage in the reasoned
decision-making required of administrative agencies.3
Even accepting the majority’s new test, however, there
is no basis for finding this petitioned-for unit inappropri-
ate. As demonstrated below, the FRTs and FRTIs share a
strong internal community of interests, and there is no in-
dustry-specific standard mandating a broader unit. The
Employer’s more than 2500 other production employees
certainly share some terms and conditions of employment
with the FRTs and FRTIs (many of those being general
Employer-wide policies), but those commonalities are far
outweighed by key terms and conditions that plainly dis-
tinguish those 2500 employees from the FRTs and FRTIs.
In finding otherwise, the majority erroneously downplays
fundamental subjects of collective bargaining that matter
most to workers, impermissibly prioritizes employer pref-
erence over employees’ organizational desires, and ulti-
mately robs employees of their fullest freedom to organize
in an appropriate unit of their choosing. Such an outcome
cannot be squared with the mandates of the National La-
bor Relations Act.
I.
The Employer’s North Charleston facility has been in
operation since 2011 and is primarily responsible for pro-
ducing commercial 787 aircraft. Aircraft are

Cir. 2013), which PCC Structurals overruled, correctly summarized the
Board’s “traditional” community-of-interest standard and was entirely
consistent with the Act. As I explain below, it is clear that the majority’s
decision today fails on both counts.
3 Allentown Mack Sales & Service v. NLRB, 522 U.S. 359, 374–375
(1998). Further, just as it did in PCC Structurals, the majority once again
issues a significant decision without notifying the public that it is recon-
sidering its unit determination standard, inviting amicus briefs or public
manufactured in stages, with different sections of the air-
craft being produced separately and then fused together in
the “Final Assembly” building. After final assembly, air-
craft are towed to the “Flight Line,” a geographically sep-
arate area of the North Charleston facility consisting of
nine stalls and an active taxiway on which airplanes take
off and land for flight tests. It is only at this point that the
petitioned-for FRTs and FRTIs enter the manufacturing
process.
The FRTs, FRTIs, and their supervisors form the bulk
of the small group of employees who work at the Flight
Line. They are accompanied only by a handful of painters;
the 10-member Cabin Systems Team, which works on
making the final adjustments to the interior of the plane
after it has been assembled; and a “travel team” of about
10 employees who perform “traveled work” that was not
timely completed in earlier stages of the manufacturing
process. As the majority concedes, the isolated nature of
the Flight Line and the work performed there leads to lim-
ited contact between the FRTs and FRTIs and the rest of
the Employer’s production force.
At the Flight Line, the FRTs and FRTIs are responsible
for rendering aircraft operational for the first time in the
manufacturing process, performing an extensive array of
pre-flight checks to ready aircraft for flight testing, and
assisting in “rework” to cure any defects discovered dur-
ing the test flights. These duties include over 100 unique
functions, or “shop order instances,” that are not per-
formed by any other employees, such as fueling the plane
for the first time (a process that takes 10–12 hours, if all
goes smoothly), setting the compass, performing engine
tests, and engaging in systems testing with respect to the
aircraft’s fuel and power systems, which have never be-
fore operated on independent power. To the extent that
FRTs and FRTIs also complete “rework” or “traveled
work” that other employees perform, this represents only
14 percent of their total working hours.
The FRTs and FRTIs perform their work in tandem: the
FRT performs the work while the FRTI watches, ensures
that it is being done properly, and then “signs off” on the
task in the Employer’s workflow system to indicate that it
has been completed. Because the work of the FRTs and
FRTIs is so highly integrated, the FRTs, FRTIs, and their
supervisors meet every morning to coordinate the day’s
activities. Their actual work tasks also substantially
input of any kind, or even allowing the parties an opportunity to brief the
case after the Board has granted review. For the reasons articulated in
PCC Structurals, it remains my view that proceeding in this fashion ab-
rogates the Board’s duty, under the Administrative Procedures Act, to
engage in “reasoned decisionmaking” and amounts to an abuse of dis-
cretion. 365 NLRB No. 160, slip op. at 14–17 (Members Pearce and
McFerran, dissenting).
THE BOEING CO. 9
overlap; indeed, the Employer has assigned them the same
job code and same job description.4 That the FRTs and
FRTIs perform the same underlying work is underscored
by the fact that, in 2017, a shortage of work for the FRTs
and FRTIs affected both classifications equally, resulting
in a voluntary layoff package that the Employer offered
exclusively to the FRTs and FRTIs as a group. The FRTs
and FRTIs are also paid the same amount, at a rate notably
higher than most of the other production and maintenance
employees at the plant.5 In fact, the FRTs and FRTIs were
given an exclusive pay increase in 2016. This exclusive
pay increase was granted, according to the Employer’s
communications regarding the pay raise, because “[t]he
flight readiness technician’s skill requires additional ex-
pertise and certifications which [sic] is why the pay scale
is different at Boeing and other companies.” They also
have the same hours and shifts, which are different from
the shifts of other production and maintenance employees
at the plant and bid on these shifts only amongst them-
selves.
Notably, the FRTs and FRTIs are the only employees at
the North Charleston plant required to possess an Air-
frame and Powerplant, or “A&P,” license. An A&P li-
cense requires about 18–30 months of instruction, includ-
ing classroom and hands-on training; involves extensive
written and practical exams; and can cost up to $30,000 to
procure. Only 6 percent of employees at the Employer’s
plant, besides the FRTs and FRTIs, possess an A&P li-
cense. Among other reasons, the FRTs and FRTIs are re-
quired to hold the A&P license because they represent
some of the very few employees at the plant allowed to
perform work on aircraft that have entered “repair station”
status, which occurs after the FAA has certified the craft
for use by the public, and any further work on an aircraft
in this status requires additional safety precautions and
heightened expertise. On that count, because they perform
“repair station” work, the FRTs and FRTIs are subject to
random, mandatory drug tests, unlike the vast majority of
the Employer’s production force. And, because FRTs and
FRTIs are some of the few employees who work with op-
erational planes on the Flight Line, they are also subject to
special Flight Line safety procedures that have no appli-
cation elsewhere in the Employer’s facility. In fact, one
manager testified that whenever non-FRT or FRTI person-
nel make decisions about work performed on the Flight
Line, an FRT or FRTI manager “has to be involved in

4 Specifically, FRTs and FRTIs “perform[] final component installa-
tion and systems operational functional testing [and] [t]rouble shoot[]
pre-flight and post-flight functions for delivery.”
5 FRTs and FRTIs are paid an average of $32.70 per hour. This wage
is about $8 an hour, or 32.55 percent, more than the average wage for the
every one of [the] decisions just from a safety standpoint
because there’s power on the airplane.”
Given that the FRTs and FRTIs perform highly skilled,
specialized work, it is not surprising that there is no evi-
dence of any other employee classifications temporarily or
permanently transferring into FRT or FRTI positions.
Similarly, there is limited evidence of FRTs or FRTIs
transferring into other classifications on a temporary or
permanent basis outside of a brief period in 2017, dis-
cussed above, when FRTs and FRTIs accepted temporary
transfers to avoid layoff during a shortage of work on the
Flight Line. And, as stated, they have little contact with
the Employer’s other production employees due to the ge-
ographic separation of the Flight Line.
Although the FRTs and FRTIs are organized in the same
departments as some excluded production employees, the
FRTs do not share immediate or secondary supervision
with any other production and maintenance employees ex-
cept for the 10 Cabin Systems Team Employees, and the
FRTIs do not share immediate supervision with any other
employees at all. This separate immediate supervision
plays an important role with respect to many of the FRTs’
and FRTIs’ terms and conditions of employment, as the
Employer’s first-line supervisors are given discretion and
responsibility for implementing a large number of the Em-
ployer’s universal personnel policies, including discipline,
granting time off, resolving scheduling disputes, and man-
aging overtime. Also, as mentioned, the FRTs’ and
FRTIs’ daily work assignments are coordinated in morn-
ing meetings with their supervisors at the Flight Line,
meetings not attended by other production employees.
II.
On those facts, the petitioned-for unit of FRTs and
FRTIs clearly is an appropriate unit. Section 9(a) of the
Act explains that a designated or selected labor organiza-
tion represents employees “for the purposes of collective
bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of em-
ployment, or other conditions of employment.”6 To facil-
itate this representation, Section 9(b) provides that “the
Board shall decide in each case whether, in order to assure
to employees the fullest freedom in exercising the rights
guaranteed by this Act . . . the unit appropriate for the pur-
poses of collective bargaining shall be the employer unit,
craft unit, plant unit, or subdivision thereof.”7 This statu-
tory language mandates that the Board “maintain the two-
fold objective of insuring to employees their rights to self-
organization and freedom of choice in collective
excluded production and maintenance employees at the North Charleston
facility.
6 National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §159(a).
7 National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §159(b) (emphasis added).
10 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
bargaining and of fostering industrial peace and stability
through collective bargaining.”8
In gauging whether employees’ chosen unit is “appro-
priate” for collective bargaining, the Board looks to a va-
riety of factors to assess whether a “community of inter-
est” exists among the employees. These factors include
whether the employees are organized into a separate de-
partment; have distinct skills and training; have distinct
job functions and perform distinct work, including inquiry
into the amount and type of job overlap between classifi-
cations; are functionally integrated with the employer’s
other employees; have frequent contact with other em-
ployees; interchange with other employees; have distinct
terms and conditions of employment; and are separately
supervised.9 The Board’s role in evaluating these factors
is “to group together only employees who have substantial
mutual interests in wages, hours, and other conditions of
employment.”10 As the Supreme Court has explained,
“[s]uch a mutuality of interest serves to assure the coher-
ence among employees necessary for efficient collective
bargaining and at the same time to prevent a functionally
distinct minority group of employees from being sub-
merged in an overly large unit,” and therefore “effectu-
ate[s] the policy of the act, the policy of efficient collective
bargaining.”11
To “prevent a functionally distinct minority group of
employees from being submerged in an overly large unit,”
the Board has consistently required that a petitioned-for
unit be only an appropriate unit for collective bargaining.
That other unit configurations may be equally or even
more appropriate does not warrant rejecting the proposed
unit.12 As the Supreme Court has recognized, “the initia-
tive in selecting an appropriate unit resides with the em-
ployees.” American Hospital Assn. v. NLRB, 499 U.S.

8 See Kalamazoo Paper Box Corp., 136 NLRB 134, 137 (1962).
9 United Operations, 338 NLRB 123, 123 (2002).
10 15 NLRB Annual Rep. 39 (1950).
11 Allied Chemical and Alkali Workers of America, Local Union No.
1 v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., Chemical Division, 404 U.S. 157, 172
(1971).
12 As the Board put it nearly 70 years ago, the word “appropriate” in
this context merely means “[s]uitable for the purpose and circumstances;
befitting the place or occasion,” with “no overtones of the exclusive or
the ultimate or the superlative.” Morand Brothers Beverage Co., 91
NLRB 409, 418 fn. 13 (1950) (internal quotations omitted).
13 See also Montgomery Ward & Co., 150 NLRB 598, 601 (1964)
(“the Act does not compel labor organizations to seek representation in
the most comprehensive grouping of employees unless such grouping
constitutes the only appropriate unit.”).
14 Accordingly, the Board has consistently held that “the appropriate-
ness of an overall unit does not establish that a smaller unit is inappro-
priate.” Montgomery Ward & Co., supra, 150 NLRB at 601. This fun-
damental principle is rooted in Sec. 9(b) itself, which explicitly contem-
plates that numerous unit configurations of employees may be appropri-
ate for union representation, including “the employer unit, craft unit,
606, 610 (1991). “[E]mployees may seek to organize ‘a
unit’ that is ‘appropriate’—not necessarily the single most
appropriate unit . . . .” 13 The sole issue in any unit deter-
mination case then is “simply whether [the unit sought] is
appropriate in the circumstances of this case and not
whether another unit consisting of . . . [additional excluded
employees] would also be appropriate, more appropriate,
or most appropriate.”14 Taking this approach is essential
to fulfilling the Act’s command that the Board “assure to
employees the fullest freedom in exercising” their rights.
Under any faithful application of those traditional com-
munity-of-interest principles, the petitioned-for unit of
FRTs and FRTIs is manifestly an appropriate unit. Indeed,
six of the eight community-of-interest factors set forth
above weigh in favor of finding the unit appropriate: the
FRTs and FRTIs are highly skilled individuals who pos-
sess an A&P license, which only 6 percent of other pro-
duction and maintenance workers also possess; they per-
form the distinct job function of rendering operational and
then testing said fully operational aircraft, which involves
over 100 tasks not performed by any other employee; they
have no meaningful contact with other employees; they
have, at best, limited interchange with other employees;
they are separately supervised and attend separate super-
visory meetings with each other on a daily basis; and they
have distinct terms and conditions of employment, includ-
ing a significantly higher wage than the average worker,
their own unique shifts and hours, a mandatory drug test-
ing program, and special safety procedures for dealing
with live aircraft on the Flight Line. The Board has fre-
quently approved units in which the petitioned-for em-
ployees possessed these similarly distinct interests, and I
would do so here.15
plant unit, or subdivision thereof.” National Labor Relations Act, 29
U.S.C. §159(b). See also Overnite Transportation Co., 322 NLRB 723,
723 (1996) (“For example, under Section 9(b), the same employees who
may constitute part of an appropriate employerwide unit also may con-
stitute an appropriate unit if they are a craft unit or are a plantwide unit.
The statute further provides that units different from these three, or ‘sub-
divisions thereof,’ also may be appropriate.”).
15 See, e.g., Bartlett Collins, 334 NLRB 484, 485–486 (2001); Home
Depot USA, 331 NLRB 1289, 1291 (2000); Fresno Community Hospital,
241 NLRB 521, 522–523 (1979); St. Vincent Hospital and Medical Cen-
ter of Toledo, Ohio, 241 NLRB 492, 493 (1979); J.C. Penney Company
Store, 196 NLRB 446, 446–447 (1972); Monsanto Research Corp., 185
NLRB 137, 141 (1970); E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., 162 NLRB
413, 418–420 (1966); Union Carbide, 156 NLRB 634, 639–640 (1966);
G. Fox & Co., 155 NLRB 1080, 1081–1082 (1965); American Cyanamid
Co., 131 NLRB 909, 910 (1961). Thus, while the majority states that my
approach would require the Board to approve a petitioned-for unit “any
time higher paid, higher skilled employees work in a separate area”—as
if this would somehow be an unusual or even idiosyncratic result—this
is precisely what the Board has regularly done under its traditional com-
munity-of-interest test. That is especially so where, as here, the
THE BOEING CO. 11
III.
The majority purports to acknowledge the traditional
community-of-interest factors and even repeats the asser-
tion, reaffirmed in PCC Structurals, that “a proposed unit
need only be an appropriate unit, and need not be the most
appropriate unit.”16 Yet, despite such affirmations, the
majority concludes that the petitioned-for unit here is in-
appropriate. The majority can reach this conclusion only
by first rewriting the Board’s unit-determination standard,
under the guise of “clarifying” PCC Structurals, and then
misapplying the Board’s longstanding community-of-in-
terest factors.
A.
As described, the majority holds at Step Two of its
“three-step process” that a petitioned-for unit is appropri-
ate only if “the employees excluded from the unit have
meaningfully distinct interests in the context of collective
bargaining that outweigh similarities with unit mem-
bers.”17 The majority’s focus on the interests of excluded
employees is rooted in PCC Structurals, itself a flawed
decision. In PCC Structurals, a Board majority held that,
when a party asserts that the smallest appropriate unit must
include employees excluded from the petitioned-for unit,
the Board will apply its “traditional” community-of-inter-
est factors to “determine whether the petitioned-for em-
ployees share a community of interest sufficiently distinct
from employees excluded from the proposed unit to war-
rant a separate appropriate unit.”18 The PCC Structurals
majority maintained that by reinstating the “sufficiently
distinct” test it was merely returning to the Board’s “tra-
ditional” or “historical community-of-interest standard.”19
But the PCC Structurals majority did not explain what de-
gree of difference makes the petitioned-for employees’ in-
terests “sufficiently distinct,” and it did not adopt the Step
Two weighing of excluded employees’ interests that the
present majority adopts today.20
The majority now tries to answer the question left unre-
solved by PCC Structurals, but its answer—again, that a

petitioned-for employees also have separate shifts, separate immediate
supervision, and no meaningful interchange or contact with excluded
employees.
16 365 NLRB No. 160, slip op. at 2.
17 I have no quarrel with other aspects of the majority’s decision.
Specifically, I have no objection to the majority’s statements that a unit
is inappropriate if the petitioned-for employees do not share a commu-
nity of interest with each other (Step One of the majority’s “three-step
process”), as this is clearly an essential component of the Board’s histor-
ical unit determination case law. Similarly, I agree that the Board’s unit
determinations should be consistent with the various industry-specific
rules and guidelines that have been developed over the years (Step
Three).
18 365 NLRB No. 160, slip op. at 7 (emphasis added).
19 Id., slip op. at 8. Indeed, the Board has described the applicable
standard using the “sufficiently distinct” language quoted by the PCC
petitioned-for unit is appropriate only if “the employees
excluded from the unit have meaningfully distinct inter-
ests in the context of collective bargaining that outweigh
similarities with unit members”—cannot be right. This
standard is not grounded in any prior Board precedent. In-
deed, I am aware of no Board case finding a unit inappro-
priate because a petitioner failed to prove that the peti-
tioned-for employees were more different from than they
were similar to excluded employees.
The absence of precedent supporting the majority’s new
standard should come as no surprise, moreover, because
its standard substantially impairs the Act’s stated objec-
tive to assure to employees the “fullest freedom in exer-
cising the rights guaranteed by this Act.” As described
above, the Board traditionally has fulfilled that statutory
objective by requiring only that a proposed unit be an ap-
propriate unit. The majority’s standard contradicts this
fundamental principle because it effectively creates a de-
fault rule that every employee who shares some similar
interests with the petitioned-for employees must be in-
cluded in the unit, unless the union can prove that the ex-
cluded employees are more different from, than they are
similar to the petitioned-for employees. Simply put, if the
union cannot make that showing—and it is unclear how
this evaluation will be conducted, as the outcome in this
case suggests that the majority clearly finds some factors
more significant than others—then the petitioned-for unit
is inappropriate. But the fact that excluded employees
may have similar interests with petitioned-for employees
would establish only that a broader unit might also be ap-
propriate. Again, that is not a reason to reject a proposed
unit. And, in fact, the Board, with court approval, has
never held—as the majority does here, regardless of the
lip service it pays to prior precedent—that a unit is inap-
propriate simply because excluded employees also happen
to share some community of interest with petitioned-for
employees.21
Structurals majority. See Specialty Healthcare, supra, 357 NLRB at
944–945.
20 The Step Two language was suggested in PCC Structurals, but the
majority in that case stated clearly that the Board was “return[ing] to the
traditional community-of-interest standard that the Board has applied
throughout most of its history” and categorically denied that it was mak-
ing any significant changes to the Board’s traditional test. If the PCC
Structurals majority can be taken at its word, then it could not have been
simultaneously adopting the new standard imposed by the majority to-
day. See 365 NLRB No. 160, slip op. at 9, 11.
21 See, e.g., Blue Man Vegas, LLC v. NLRB, 529 F.3d 417, 421 (D.C.
Cir. 2008) (“If the employees in the proposed unit share a community of
interest, then the unit is prima facie appropriate. In order successfully to
challenge that unit, the employer must do more than show there is an-
other appropriate unit because more than one appropriate bargaining unit
12 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Rather, if the petitioned-for employees share a commu-
nity of interest among themselves that is suitable for bar-
gaining, then the Board traditionally has required a height-
ened showing that excluded employees share such a sub-
stantial community of interests with the included employ-
ees that the proposed unit is unsuitable for bargaining.22
Indeed, the two Board cases cited by the majority in sup-
port of its new standard follow this traditional approach:
although both Harrah’s Club23 and Texas Color Printers24
were cases in which the Board used the “sufficiently dis-
tinct” formulation the majority purports to apply here, the
Board found the petitioned-for units inappropriate in those
cases because, in each case, the unit sought excluded em-
ployees who shared substantial similarities with unit em-
ployees.25
The majority turns that traditional approach on its head
in cases where a party seeks to add employees to a peti-
tioned-for unit. In such cases, the majority’s new standard
effectively imposes a heightened burden on the union.
Thus, it is no longer enough that a union has demonstrated
that the petitioned-for employees share an internal com-
munity of interests, and that those interests are distinct
from the interests of excluded employees. Under the ma-
jority’s formulation, the union must then also establish
that those distinctions are so great that they outweigh

logically can be defined in any particular factual setting.”) (internal quo-
tations omitted).
22 As previously indicated, the exact verbal formulation of that show-
ing has varied, but Board precedent is clear that the showing is indeed
heightened: for example, the shared community of interest must be sig-
nificant or substantial to render the petitioned-for unit inappropriate.
See, e.g., Mc-Mor-Han Trucking Co., 166 NLRB 700, 701 (1967) (ob-
serving that “[w]hile there are also some employment interests which
both groups share—identical insurance and holiday benefits and their
current common supervision—these factors are not so significant as to
require the inclusion of all the employees in a single unit”) (emphasis
added); Colorado National Bank of Denver, 204 NLRB 243, 243 (1973)
(“On the basis of the foregoing facts, we find that the unit sought is too
narrow in scope in that it excludes employees who share a substantial
community of interest with employees in the unit sought.”) (emphasis
added).
23 187 NLRB 810, 812–813 (1971).
24 210 NLRB 30, 31 (1974).
25 See Harrah’s Club, supra, 187 NLRB at 811–813 (maintenance
unit found inappropriate where certain excluded employees performed
many of the same functions as the maintenance employees, and often did
so in cooperation with the maintenance employees; the maintenance em-
ployees did not perform highly skilled maintenance work; there was con-
stant contact between the two groups; and the maintenance employees
shared “common working conditions and benefits” with the excluded
employees); Texas Color Printers, supra, 210 NLRB at 31 (finding a
combined unit required “in view of the frequent work contacts and tem-
porary interchange and overlapping supervision of employees of the
shipping and receiving and bindery departments.”). The majority
acknowledges that these cases “may have involved substantial similari-
ties” between the petitioned-for and excluded employees, but states that
they “by no means set the lower bounds of insufficient distinctness” un-
der the Board’s “sufficiently distinct” standard, despite the fact that the
whatever commonalities exist between the excluded and
included employees. This scheme effectively, and imper-
missibly, creates a presumption in favor of the largest and
most comprehensive units in which the greatest number of
employees can be said to share a general community of
interest, and places a corresponding burden on the union
to rebut that presumption. The majority’s approach thus
contradicts the accepted principle that “it is not the
Board’s function to compel all employees to be repre-
sented or unrepresented at the same time or to require that
a labor organization represent employees it does not wish
to represent, unless an appropriate unit does not otherwise
exist.”26
The majority contends that its approach is supported by
the Second Circuit’s decision in Constellation Brands v.
NLRB, 842 F.3d 784 (2d Cir. 2016). But there is no merit
to that contention. In Constellation Brands, the court was
presented with two questions: first, whether the Specialty
Healthcare two-part framework27 violated the Act or was
a meaningful departure from the Board’s past precedents;
and, second, whether the Board had misapplied that
framework in finding that a unit of the employer’s “out-
side cellar” employees was an appropriate unit, contrary
to the employer’s contention that the only appropriate unit
majority relies on these cases as the sole support for its interpretation of
that standard. If there are different cases which actually demonstrate the
“lower bounds of insufficient distinctness” that the majority suggests are
part and parcel of the Board’s traditional community-of-interest test it
would certainly be helpful for the majority to identify those authorities.
26 Mc-Mor-Han Trucking, supra, 166 NLRB at 701. This is why,
contrary to the standard established by the majority today, the Board’s
“traditional” or “historical” test has always placed a burden on the party
seeking to include additional employees in a proposed unit to show that
the petitioned-for employees are not “sufficiently distinct” from ex-
cluded employees with whom they also share a community of interest,
as opposed to placing a burden on the union to show that the petitioned-
for employees are “sufficiently distinct” (or, under the majority’s stand-
ard, more distinct) from excluded employees with whom they might ap-
propriately form a larger unit. For similar reasons, a burden is also ap-
plied in the opposite situation, where a union petitions for a “presump-
tively appropriate” unit—that is, a unit configuration in which the Board
has determined that “a community of interest inherently exists among
such employees,” see Kalamazoo Paper Box Corp., supra, 136 NLRB at
136—and the employer contends that a subset of the petitioned-for em-
ployees should be excluded from the unit. See Airco, Inc., 273 NLRB
348, 349 (1984) (observing that “the burden is on the [party opposing the
unit] to demonstrate that the interests of a given classification are so dis-
parate from those of other employees that they cannot be represented in
the same unit.”).
27 Under Specialty Healthcare, the initial burden was on the petitioner
to show that the proposed unit comprised a “readily identifiable” group
of employees who shared a sufficient community of interests to make the
unit appropriate for collective bargaining. If so, then the Board would
find the unit appropriate, unless the party seeking to expand the unit
demonstrated that excluded employees shared an “overwhelming” com-
munity of interests with the petitioned-for employees, thus requiring
their inclusion in the unit. 357 NLRB at 942, 944.
THE BOEING CO. 13
had to include all of its production and maintenance em-
ployees, or at least its “barrel” employees.
As to the first question, the court squarely upheld the
validity of the Specialty Healthcare framework, as had
seven other federal appellate courts.28 Notably, in reject-
ing the employer’s challenge to that framework, the court
unambiguously concluded that Specialty Healthcare was
consistent with “earlier Board precedents that imposed a
heightened burden on a party who urges the Board to add
employees to a unit that has otherwise been deemed ap-
propriate.”29
With respect to the Board’s application of Specialty
Healthcare, the court found that the Regional Director
(whose decision the Board had declined to review) had not
adequately analyzed at Step One of the Specialty
Healthcare framework why the petitioned-for employees
were “sufficiently distinct” from the excluded employees.
The court observed that the Regional Director had rec-
orded the similarities or differences between included and
excluded employees, but had not explained how and why
their collective-bargaining interests were relevant and
supported finding a unit limited to the “outside cellar” em-
ployees appropriate.30 To be sure, the court said that at
Step One of the Specialty Healthcare framework the
Board had to “explain why excluded employees have
meaningfully distinct interests in the context of collective
bargaining that outweigh similarities with unit mem-
bers.”31 But, in context, it is evident that the court did not
contemplate the wholesale revision of the Board’s tradi-
tional unit-determination analysis imposed by the majority
today.
As described, the court upheld the Specialty Healthcare
framework, which clearly required only that a petitioned-
for unit be an appropriate unit, even if other, broader units
might also be appropriate. As the court recognized, more-
over, that framework did incorporate the element of “dis-
tinctness” into the analysis of a unit’s appropriateness. At
bottom, the court held only that the Regional Director had
not explained adequately why the petitioned-for employ-
ees’ distinct interests made them a suitable grouping for
purposes of collective bargaining. The court certainly did
not impose some heightened burden on a petitioning union
to justify why employees’ chosen “subdivision,” in the

28 Constellation Brands, supra, 842 F.3d at 792–793; see also Rhino
Northwest, LLC v. NLRB, 867 F.3d 95, 100–101 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (col-
lecting cases from Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and
Eighth Circuits).
29 Constellation Brands, supra, 842 F.3d at 792 (emphasis added).
30 Id. at 794–795.
31 Id. at 794 (emphasis in original).
32 Id. at 791.
33 The majority’s eagerness to rely on the Second Circuit’s decision
is a remarkable about-face. Less than 2 years ago, the PCC Structurals
Act’s words, may be an appropriate unit, even where that
subdivision of employees may also share a community of
interests with excluded employees. If the court was im-
posing such a heightened burden, one surely would have
expected the court to say so, particularly given its ac-
ceptance of Specialty Healthcare as a whole, which reaf-
firmed that there was a heightened burden on an employer
to prove that excluded employees shared “overwhelming”
interests with petitioned-for employees.32 For those rea-
sons, the majority’s invocation of Constellation Brands
here is mistaken, if not disingenuous.33
The Board has primary responsibility to deliver on the
Act’s promise that employees should have the “fullest
freedom” to exercise their statutory rights, and thus must
take great care in developing its unit-appropriateness
standards.34 The majority’s new standard undermines that
goal by making it significantly more difficult for employ-
ees to organize in appropriate subdivisions of their choos-
ing, rather than an employer’s overall work force. It is no
secret that large units are more difficult to organize: as the
Board has observed, “[t]he failure of any labor organiza-
tion to file a petition for, no less win an election in, [a
larger unit than the one petitioned for] . . . vividly attests
to its adverse impact on organizational development.”35
Accordingly, “[t]o withhold from these employees the op-
portunity to express their wishes unless and until the
[larger unit] is successfully organized would, in practical
effect, deny them their statutory rights to self-organization
and bargaining.”36 This denial of rights is precisely the
effect of the new standard adopted by the majority today.
B.
The injury to employees’ statutory rights is only exac-
erbated by the majority’s application of its new standard.
As stated, the majority finds, at “Step One” of its frame-
work, that the petitioned-for employees do not share a
community of interest amongst themselves, and then goes
on to find, at “Step Two,” that they do not have “meaning-
fully distinct interests” that “outweigh similarities” with
excluded employees. At both steps, the majority’s analy-
sis of the relevant community of interest factors is deeply
flawed; it reflects a troubling deference to the Employer’s
convenience and preferences while devaluing the factors
that most directly implicate the concerns of workers and
majority had no qualms about disregarding multiple federal appellate
court decisions in reversing Specialty Healthcare, which those courts had
approved.
34 The Board “must be wary lest its unit determinations unnecessarily
impede the exercise by employees of these rights.” P. Ballantine & Sons,
141 NLRB 1103, 1106 (1963).
35 Id.
36 Id.
14 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
the collective-bargaining process. Not surprisingly, the
result the majority reaches is irreconcilable with Board
precedent, and serves neither the employees’ interests nor
the Act’s interest in fostering units appropriate “for the
purposes of collective bargaining.”37
1.
There is no basis for the majority’s finding that the
FRTs and FRTIs do not share a community of interest with
each other. The majority concludes that the FRTs and
FRTIs “have significantly different interests in the context
of collective bargaining,” but in reaching that conclusion
the majority turns a blind eye toward the substantial simi-
larities between the FRTs and FRTIs. As described above,
the FRTs and FRTIs share myriad interests that render a
unit combining both classifications “suitable” for collec-
tive-bargaining. FRTs and FRTIs work hand-in-hand to
execute and approve the same tasks, or “shop order in-
stances,” thus carrying out a distinct stage of the Em-
ployer’s manufacturing process (rendering aircraft opera-
tional, performing systems testing on operational aircraft,
and readying aircraft for flight testing).38 The functional
integration of FRTs and FRTIs is accordingly self-evident,
as is the fact that any changes to these tasks, or to the
standards and procedures governing them, implicate the
interests of both the FRTs and the FRTIs, even if they per-
form different functions in completing these tasks to-
gether. Indeed, this is likely why the FRTs, FRTIs, and
their supervisors act as a single operational unit that meets
every day to coordinate their activities. Perhaps more im-
portantly, that fact that FRTs and FRTIs work on the same
underlying tasks means that a shortage in tasks can result,
and has resulted, in voluntary layoff packages and tempo-
rary transfers that apply to both groups equally, and which
represent an important subject for negotiation. Moreover,
FRTs and FRTIs share the same base job code, job de-
scription, and job requirements, all of which could be ne-
gotiated at the bargaining table. In fact, one of these jobs
requirements is the A&P license, a highly skilled

37 National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §159(b).
38 Even though the FRTs physically perform the work while the
FRTIs inspect it, this hardly precludes them from sharing a community
of interest, as their work is in service of the same distinct function. See
Monsanto Research Corp., 185 NLRB 137, 141 (1970) (“We are also of
the opinion that there is, contrary to the Employer’s contention, a com-
munity of interest among employees in the machine shop. Whether the
employee is a glassblower or a modelmaker he shares the same relation-
ship with the research and production personnel. Each machine shop
employee . . . supplies the skill necessary to physically create component
parts and instruments necessary to complete the research and production
projects. In other words, all these employees in the proposed unit serve
the same function within the laboratory’s organizational structure.”).
39 See, e.g., Bartlett Collins Co., 334 NLRB 484, 485 (2001); St. Vin-
cent Hospital and Medical Center of Toledo, Ohio, 241 NLRB 492, 493
(1979); E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, 162 NLRB 413, 418–
certification that requires a great investment of time and
money to procure, as well as considerable efforts to main-
tain. Finally, the FRTs and FRTIs share similar interests
with respect to some of the most essential terms and con-
ditions of employment, including that their wage rates are
determined as a group, that they bid on the same unique
shifts, that they undergo the same mandatory drug testing,
and that they adhere to the same Flight Line safety proce-
dures.
As the majority observes, there are some differences be-
tween the FRTs and FRTIs: there is no evidence that they
interchange with each other, and they are technically lo-
cated in different departments and therefore are placed un-
der different supervisory structures. Initially, though, it
should be recognized any unit combining more than one
classification will have some differences that could be
characterized as “significant,” but that does not neces-
sarily mean the unit is inappropriate for collective-bar-
gaining. To the contrary, the Board has consistently found
units to be appropriate where, as here, the petitioned-for
employees are highly skilled, perform distinct work, have
their own space apart from the rest of the work force, and
have separate immediate supervision from other employ-
ees, even though the petitioned-for employees are in dif-
ferent departments and do not necessarily share immediate
supervision.39 And, even in cases where employees may
be administratively placed in different departments, they
may form an appropriate unit that is “departmental in char-
acter” where, as here, the two different groups perform
heavily integrated tasks in service of the same overarching
function.40 Thus, Board precedent plainly supports a find-
ing that the FRTs and FRTIs, who share substantial bar-
gaining interests with one another, have an internal com-
munity of interests appropriate for bargaining.
2.
Board precedent also weighs strongly against the ma-
jority’s conclusion that the unit is inappropriate because
the FRTs and FRTIs are not “sufficiently distinct” from
420 (1966); Union Carbide Corp., 156 NLRB 634, 636, 640 (1966);
American Cyanamid Co., 131 NLRB 909, 910 (1961).
40 See Johnson Controls, Inc., 322 NLRB 669, 671 (1996) (“Thus,
we find that the employees in the petitioned-for unit work in an inte-
grated process which requires that they work together in the interrelated
process of installing and servicing the Employer’s systems.”); Fresno
Community Hospital, 241 NLRB 521, 521 (1979) (unit appropriate
where “[t]he engineering, electronics, and maintenance employees are a
distinct administrative grouping of employees apart from other service
employees” such that “[t]hey are organized in three departments which
are administered as a single entity”); J.C. Penney Company Store, 196
NLRB 446, 447 (1972) (“[T]he record in this case persuades us that the
automotive service employees are a homogeneous and identifiable
grouping, departmental in character and sufficiently distinct from the
other departments in the store to warrant their separate representation.”);
THE BOEING CO. 15
“other” production and maintenance employees. In fact,
the majority’s finding on almost every community-of-in-
terest factor is contrary to Board precedent, as is the ma-
jority’s finding when weighing the community-of-interest
factors as a whole.
First, the majority asserts that the FRTs and FRTIs
spend a “significant” portion of their time performing the
same work as excluded employees. The record estab-
lishes, however, that FRTs and FRTIs spend only 14 per-
cent of their working hours on rework and traveled work
that is performed by other employees. It is well-estab-
lished that some overlap of functions does not render a unit
inappropriate, and the degree of overlapping work here, a
mere 14 percent, is fully consistent with, and in fact less
than, the degree of overlap the Board has found acceptable
in prior cases.41 The single case cited by the majority on
this point, Brand Precision Services,42 is readily distin-
guishable. In finding the petitioned-for unit inappropriate
in that case, the Board did not rely solely on the fact that
excluded employees spent up to 10 percent of their time
performing the same duties as petitioned-for employees,
but also on the fact that “portions of all 3 jobs [on the site]
overlap” and that the job descriptions for various included
and excluded employees expressly covered many of the
same functions. By contrast, the FRTs and FRTIs perform
over 100 unique tasks that are limited to the Flight Line
and not performed by any other employee.43
The unique work performed the FRTs and FRTIs is due,
in part, to their specialized skills, which represent another

41 See United Operations, 338 NLRB 123, 125 (2002) (observing that
the presence of some overlapping work “does not render the unit inap-
propriate where, as here, the HVAC techs spend a substantial majority
of their time performing distinctive duties” (emphasis added)); Home
Depot USA, Inc., 331 NLRB 1289, 1290 (2000) (drivers unit appropriate
where drivers spent 30–40 percent of their time on overlapping “pulling”
functions and there was no evidence that other employees performed the
petitioned-for function of operating large delivery trucks); G. Fox & Co.,
Inc., 155 NLRB 1080, 1082 (1965) (mechanics perform sufficiently sep-
arate duties because the “great majority of their working time . . . is spent
on the trucks,” even though they “do some work in other parts of the
store where their special skills are needed”).
42 313 NLRB 657, 657–658 (1994).
43 These unique tasks include, but are not limited to, the 10–12-hour
process of fueling aircraft for the first time; performing engine checks;
setting the compass; and testing the aircrafts’ fuel and auxiliary power
systems. The Employer references an isolated statement from a single
manager that portions of the pre-flight testing performed by the FRTs
and FRTIs are “redundant” of checks performed earlier in the manufac-
turing process, in which components are tested individually using inde-
pendent power carts. Other testimony, however, established that the test-
ing done by FRTs and FRTIs is substantively different: it occurs once
the plane is operating on its own internal power system and when all
systems are working simultaneously with one another, introducing new
variables and complications into the testing process. For example, FRTI
Chris Jones testified to the differences between the testing done during
the initial installation of fuel pipes (where the production employees use
air pressure to check for leaks) with the comprehensive testing and
factor supporting the appropriateness of the unit and
which is unduly downplayed by the majority. The major-
ity notes that, apart from their A&P license requirement,
the FRTs and FRTIs share “almost all other skills and
training” with excluded employees. But the focus here
must be on the FRTs and FRTIs greater skills. In other
words, it should come as no surprise that highly skilled
employees will have the same baseline skills and training
as their lesser-skilled counterparts. As an example, a mas-
ter carpenter undoubtedly would be qualified to perform
tasks typically assigned to a laborer, but that would not
mean the laborer must be included in the same unit as the
master carpenter. Accordingly, the Board has regularly
held that “some overlap of lesser skilled duties does not
negate the separate identity of the petitioned-for unit.”44
And the Board has routinely found that the possession of
particular certifications or other licenses weighs in favor
of finding a unit appropriate, even where the petitioned-
for employees perform less-skilled work along with ex-
cluded employees.45
Moreover, it is significant that the Employer itself has
recognized that the FRTs and FRTIs greater skills distin-
guish them from other production and maintenance em-
ployees. The Board has consistently observed that when
petitioned-for employees receive a higher wage than ex-
cluded employees, this indicates that they exercise greater
skill in the performance of their work,46 a fact that the Em-
ployer itself acknowledged when it explained why the
FRTs and FRTIs had been granted an exclusive pay raise.
monitoring done when the aircraft is being filled with live fuel, observing
that the former “is not remotely a full systems check with a liquid and
quantities and weight and temperatures. That’s a completely different—
that’s—it’s kind of silly, actually.”
44 Capri-Sun, Inc., 330 NLRB 1124, 1126 (2000). See also Dick
Kelchner Excavating Co., 236 NLRB 1414, 1415 (1978) (observing that
“although [the petitioned-for employees] perform some laborers’ func-
tions during cold weather, the primary function of operators at all times
remains the operating of heavy construction equipment and they require
special training and skills in order to do that work.”); E. I. DuPont de
Nemours, supra, 162 NLRB at 418 (“[A]lthough other employee classi-
fications, such as instrument mechanics and oilers, perform some of the
less skilled functions of electricians, they do so infrequently, and none
exercise all of the electrical skills.”).
45 See United Operations, supra, 338 NLRB at 123 (finding that the
factor of skills and training weighs in favor of finding the unit appropri-
ate because “only HVAC techs are required to be certified by the EPA to
handle refrigerants.”); Southern Baptist Hospitals, Inc., 242 NLRB 1329,
1330 (1979) (finding unit appropriate in part because one quarter of the
petitioned-for maintenance employees are licensed and many went
through on-the-job or vocational training); The Long Island College Hos-
pital, 239 NLRB 1135, 1136 (1978) (maintenance employees more
highly skilled than other service employees because some are required
to be licensed by the city).
46 See United Operations, supra, 338 NLRB at 123 (observing that
“[t]he Employer bills its clients for work performed by the HVAC techs
at a separate, higher rate based on the fact that the HVAC techs have a
set of skills that the Employer sells as a separate service to its clients”);
16 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
If the bulk of the FRTs’ and FRTIs’ duties did constitute
lesser-skilled work, as the majority contends, then it
would make little sense for the Employer to pay them al-
most 33 percent more than the average production and
maintenance worker. In sum, the FRTs’ and FRTIs’ pos-
session of the A&P license, as well as their higher wages,
demonstrates special skills and training that heavily favor
finding the petitioned-for unit appropriate, notwithstand-
ing some overlap with excluded employees.47
The factor of interchange also favors finding the peti-
tioned-for unit appropriate, as the record contains no evi-
dence that any excluded employees have transferred, ei-
ther temporarily or permanently, into an FRT or FRTI po-
sition, and there is no evidence that FRTs or FRTIs regu-
larly interchange into excluded classifications absent unu-
sual circumstances. Although the majority characterizes
the temporary interchange in 2017, spurred by a shortage
of work that would otherwise have resulted in layoffs, as
“material,” the Board has made clear that interchange due
to such circumstances is not persuasive.48 And, even if the

Ore-Ida Foods, Inc., 313 NLRB 1016, 1019 (1994), affd. 66 F.3d 328
(7th Cir. 1995) (finding maintenance unit appropriate in part because
“[t]he greater skill of the maintenance employees is also reflected in the
fact that their wages are clustered at the two highest wage rates paid by
the Employer”).
47 Although the majority asserts that FRTs and FRTIs “largely use the
same skills as excluded employees before and even during repair station
status,” it provides no examples from the record to suggest that lesser-
skilled tasks comprise the bulk of the FRTs’ and FRTIs’ work, no doubt
because the record does not contain any such evidence. Although the
A&P license is a requirement under federal aviation law for the perfor-
mance of repair station work, one of the Employer’s managers testified
that the A&P license is required so that FRTs and FRTIs can perform the
“totality of work that happens on the Flight Line,” and not just repair
station work, which, as the majority notes, is only a small portion of man-
ufacturing process. For example, the “P” in “A&P license” stands for
“Powerplant” work, which is work related to the aircraft’s engines, fuel
supply, and internal power system. The FRTs and FRTIs are the only
employees at the plant who test the aircraft’s engines and who test and
monitor the aircraft’s operational fuel and power systems, and only a
small handful of other employees even work with live aircraft—all con-
siderations that clearly reflect the distinct and significant skills imparted
by the A&P license.
48 Dick Kelchner Excavating, supra, 236 NLRB at 1415 (evidence of
interchange not persuasive where “such assignments are secondary in
nature and are made basically to give [the petitioned-for employees]
something to do when there are no operator tasks for them to perform”);
R.L. Stott, 183 NLRB 884, 885 (1970) (observing that “drivers may aid
service or installation men during the summer, when the demand for fuel
is low,” but that “such interchange as exists is not shown to be so sub-
stantial as to destroy [the petitioned-for employees’] separate identity as
an appropriate unit”); Herron Testing Laboratories, 182 NLRB 508, 509
(1970) (“The [temporary] interchange is limited and irregular. Transfers
of drillers to other departments result in the performance of unskilled
tasks only and occur only when the drillers are unable to perform their
regular functions due to unforeseeable circumstances.”).
49 See MGM Mirage, 338 NLRB 529, 533 (2002) (limited one-way
interchange is not “the type of periodic temporary transfers or lateral,
two-way transfers between departments that may suggest blurred
FRTs and FRTIs interchanged into excluded classifica-
tions on a more regular basis, one-way interchange is of
limited weight.49 In sum, there is simply no support in
Board law for the majority’s assertion that the limited
amount of interchange here renders a plantwide unit nec-
essary.
The factor of supervision is yet another instance in
which the majority meaningfully departs from the Board’s
traditional community-of-interest precedent. The FRTIs
do not share immediate supervision with any excluded
employees, and the FRTs have largely exclusive first- and
second-level supervision.50 Separate immediate supervi-
sion has always weighed strongly in favor of finding a pe-
titioned-for unit appropriate.51 Because the FRTs and
FRTIs have separate immediate supervision and there is
no evidence that they are subject to additional supervision
from individuals who supervise the excluded production
and maintenance workers, the present case is readily dis-
tinguishable from Harrah’s Illinois Corp., the only case
the majority cites with respect to this factor.52
departmental lines and a truly fluid work force with roughly comparable
skills” (internal quotations omitted)).
50 The FRTs do share immediate and secondary supervision with the
10-member Cabin Systems Team, a group of employees who, like the
FRTs and FRTIs, work exclusively at the Flight Line and have no mean-
ingful contact with the rest of the Employer’s production and mainte-
nance force. While this shared supervision might support the inclusion
of the Cabin Systems Team in the petitioned-for unit, it cannot reasona-
bly be said to constitute any meaningful shared interests between the
FRTs and the Employer’s remaining 2,500 production and maintenance
workers, with whom the FRTs do not share either first or second-level
supervision.
51 See, e.g., United Operations, supra, 338 NLRB at 125 (finding that
the factor of supervision weighs in favor of finding the unit appropriate
where “[t]he [petitioned-for] HVAC techs and the [excluded] BSEs have
separate immediate supervision. The HVAC techs share common im-
mediate supervision with the [excluded] policers”); Transerv Systems,
311 NLRB 766, 766 (1993) (“Here, there are some factors which support
finding the petitioned-for unit appropriate, such as . . . the separate im-
mediate supervision”); Associated Milk Producers, 251 NLRB 1407,
1408 (1980) (unit appropriate, in part, due to “their separate immediate
supervision and less frequent contact with [the excluded] Stephenville
drivers”); Monsanto Research Corp., supra, 185 NLRB at 141 (“The rec-
ord is clear that all administrative functions relating to the employees in
the proposed unit are carried out through the machine shop regardless of
where they are working and at whose direction . . . Each employee in the
proposed unit is under the supervision of a machine shop foreman. This
foreman determines to which project the employee is to be assigned and
makes the evaluation of the employee’s performance”).
52 See 319 NLRB 749, 751 (1995) (“[E]mployees within the EVS and
maintenance department, including cleaners and heavy-duty cleaners,
share not only the same overall supervision but also some common im-
mediate supervision. Thus, although there is one supervisor, Terry Fe-
lowitz, to whom maintenance employees specifically report, there are
four other supervisors within the department, three assigned to cleaners
and one to heavy-duty cleaners. All five of these supervisors possess,
and at least some have exercised, authority to direct and discipline any
employee in the department as necessary.”).
THE BOEING CO. 17
Although the majority emphasizes that the FRTs and
FRTIs share common higher-level and overall supervision
with excluded employees in their department, the Board
rarely relies on common upper-level supervision to find a
unit inappropriate, and does so only under unique circum-
stances, namely where the second-level supervisors are re-
sponsible for the implementation of personnel policies
such as discipline, overtime, and other terms and condi-
tions of employment which are important subjects of bar-
gaining.53 That makes a great deal of sense: if the mere
presence of shared higher-level supervision were a rele-
vant consideration, it would be redundant and duplicative
of the “department” factor under the community-of-inter-
est test, as individuals in the same department inherently
share higher-level supervision. Accordingly, shared
higher-level supervision may be relevant, but only when
higher-level supervisors engage in functions typical of a
direct supervisor. Here, however, such functions are gov-
erned by the Employer’s first-level supervisors, and the
FRTs and FRTIs do not share this first-level supervision
with the vast majority of excluded employees. Under
Board precedent, therefore, this factor also weighs in favor
of finding the petitioned-for unit appropriate.
The majority’s disregard for fundamental subjects of
bargaining is even more evident in its discussion of the
FRTs’ and FRTIs’ basic terms and conditions of employ-
ment. The majority states that “the factors here that might
distinguish excluded employees from the FRTs and
FRTIs”—which include higher wages, distinct shifts, and
mandatory drug tests— “are relatively insignificant in the
context of collective bargaining.” This is an astonishing
statement, considering that the Act specifically contem-
plates that unions should represent employees “for the
purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of
pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of
employment.”54 Under well-established precedent, the
FRTs and FRTIs significantly higher wage rates alone
strongly supports finding a separate unit appropriate.55
Their distinct shifts also heavily favor finding a separate
unit appropriate.56 Contrary to the majority’s assertions,
there is no precedential basis for deeming these critical

53 See Typecraft Press, 275 NLRB 553, 554 (1985) (explaining that
the second-level supervisors “handle all the personnel and labor-related
matters affecting employees in every department” and therefore, “re-
gardless of which department they are in, an employee’s evaluation or
wage increase, for example, is determined solely by [the higher-level su-
pervisor]”); Monsanto Co., 183 NLRB 415, 416 (1970) (observing that
the “administrative group leaders” for both petitioned-for and excluded
employees are those responsible for “pay, record handling, overtime
equalization, vacation scheduling, and handling leaves, sickness, griev-
ances, and other personnel matters”).
54 National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §159(a) (emphasis added).
55 See, e.g., United Operations, supra, 338 NLRB at 125; Capri-Sun,
Inc., 330 NLRB 1124, 1124 (2000); Macy’s West, Inc., 327 NLRB 1222,
distinctions “insignificant” or “outweighed” by the other
more general terms and conditions the FRTs and FRTIs
share with excluded employees.
Although, as the majority points out, the Board in
United Operations did comment that shared personnel
policies and work rules “suggest[ed] a community of in-
terest between [the petitioned-for and excluded employ-
ees],” the Board did not state that these considerations
weighed against finding the petitioned-for unit appropri-
ate, and it ultimately found that “the commonalities are in-
sufficient to negate the propriety of a unit of the HVAC
techs,” in part because of “the significantly higher wages
of the HVAC techs.”57 And, in TDK Ferrites Corp.,58 the
Board found that a higher wage rate weighed unmistaka-
bly in favor of finding the petitioned-for unit appropriate,
but was outweighed by all of the other community-of-in-
terest factors in tandem, including “the highly integrated
nature of the Employer’s production process, the produc-
tion and maintenance employees interact and interchange
frequently, share common supervision, are functionally
integrated, and have common working conditions and
terms and conditions of employment.” The present case
does not involve the frequent interaction, interchange,
common supervision, and functional integration present in
TDK Ferrites. Thus, neither of these cases supports the
majority’s devaluing of the petitioned-for employees’ dis-
tinct wages and hours, which the text of the Act itself high-
lights as two of the foremost subjects for collective-bar-
gaining.
Finally, the majority’s discussion of functional integra-
tion sweeps broadly beyond how the Board has tradition-
ally defined and analyzed this factor. The Board has cau-
tioned against over-reliance on the factor of functional in-
tegration, making clear that “[i]ntegration of a manufac-
turing process is a factor to be considered in unit determi-
nations. But it is not in and of itself sufficient to preclude
the formation of a separate [] unit, unless it results in such
a fusion of functions, skills, and working conditions . . . as
to obliterate any meaningful lines of separate [] iden-
tity.”59 The majority has clearly relied too heavily on this
factor here.
1228 (1999); Executive Resources Associates, 301 NLRB 400, 402
(1991) (noting that $9,000 annual salary differential could become a
“prime source of friction” between the two groups, and that that fact
weighed in favor of a separate unit); Farmers Insurance Group, 164
NLRB 233, 233 (1967); Southern Baptist Hospitals, Inc., supra, 242
NLRB at 1130; Ramada Inn West, 225 NLRB 1279, 1280 (1976).
56 See Wheeling Island Gaming, 355 NLRB 637, 642 (2010). Cf.
Texas Color Printers, supra, 210 NLRB at 30.
57 United Operations, supra, 338 NLRB at 125.
58 342 NLRB 1006, 1009 (2004).
59 E. I. DuPont de Nemours, supra, 162 NLRB at 419.
18 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The majority asserts that the evidence of functional in-
tegration in this case is “particularly compelling” because
“the 2700 production-and-maintenance employees sta-
tioned throughout the production line all work toward pro-
ducing a single product” and because the FRTs and FRTIs
“are only exclusively responsible for . . . about 1 percent
of the tasks necessary to deliver a single aircraft to a cus-
tomer.” Functional integration, however, is not estab-
lished simply because multiple groups of employees are
working toward the same overall goal. If that were the
case, the factor of functional integration would always
weigh in favor of a larger unit because every employee
plays some role in accomplishing an employer’s overarch-
ing business function, whether the employer is running a
hotel, manufacturing a product, or operating a hospital.
Rather, the Board has historically found functional inte-
gration present only when employees must work with each
other and rely on each other to perform their assigned
tasks.60 When employees are able to perform their tasks
independently of one another, the Board finds that the two
groups are not functionally integrated.61 This distinction
is important, as workers who must rely on each other to
perform their duties have interlocking interests that affect
their daily working conditions, an important consideration
during the collective-bargaining process. But the mere
fact that employees work at the same plant and ultimately
produce the same product says very little about how one
subgroup of employees’ work affects the work of another.
Here, the FRTs and FRTIs are able to perform their role
in the manufacturing process independently: they perform
a specialized function, testing fully operational aircraft,
that has little overlap with the work of excluded employ-
ees; they perform this work in their own, geographically
distinct area of the facility; and they do not complete their
work in tandem with other employees, or rely heavily on
excluded employees in order to do so. The majority points

60 Casino Aztar, 349 NLRB 603, 605 (2007) (observing that “[t]he
functional integration between these three subdepartments is most clear
with regard to the Employer’s catering operation, which relies on [ex-
cluded] restaurant and [petitioned-for] beverage employees to staff ca-
tering events on a regular basis”); Publix Super Markets, Inc., 343 NLRB
1023, 1024–1025 (2004) (explaining that the petitioned-for employees
perform “duties functionally integrated with all aspects of the plant,” in-
cluding, but not limited to, dispatch functions that “support both the dis-
tribution operation and the milk plant operation;” pallet repair operations
that “are essential to all operations at the facility;” “maintaining the
building structure throughout the Deerfield Beach facility;” changing the
batteries for forklifts used universally across the facility; performing pest
control throughout the entire facility; shipping products from other pro-
cessing operations, and much more); Bartlett Collins, supra, 334 NLRB
at 485 (finding that “the functions of the mold-cleaning employees are
highly integrated with those of the petitioned-for employees” because
“[m]old-repair employees and mold-cleaning employees perform closely
related work; both maintain molds for use by production employees” and
because “[t]he mold-repair employees have regular and frequent
to no evidence of actual integration between the work of
the FRTs and FRTIs and the work of excluded classifica-
tions that would prove “particularly compelling” at the
bargaining table. For example, the fact that the FRTs and
FRTIs perform about 1 percent of the total tasks necessary
to manufacture an aircraft says nothing about how the pe-
titioned-for employees interact with and rely on excluded
employees in the performance of their work. It only serves
to demonstrate the rather obvious fact that manufacturing
an aircraft involves a lot of tasks, and that the average em-
ployee at such a facility only performs a small number of
these tasks.
Clearly, what the majority finds “particularly compel-
ling” is not that the work of the FRTs and FRTIs is “func-
tionally integrated” with the work of the excluded employ-
ees in any meaningful sense, but rather that the FRTs and
FRTIs are a small, distinct segment of an overall produc-
tion process. The Board has never held, however, that a
petitioned-for unit is inappropriate simply because it rep-
resents a single segment of a more comprehensive manu-
facturing process. Although the majority cites the Board’s
statement in Publix Super Markets that it is inappropriate
to carve out a small portion of a functionally integrated
facility,62 the petitioned-for unit employees in Publix were
heavily integrated with the excluded employees in the
most fundamental and traditional sense, as they regularly
interacted with excluded employees in the performance of
their work, engaged in the same duties and functions as
excluded employees, and performed critical support and
operations work for the totality of the employer’s opera-
tions.63 In those circumstances, it made sense not to carve
out a small group of employees who engaged in functions
that were the essential to the work of other employees.
That is simply not the case here, where the FRTs and
FRTIs have a unique function in the Employer’s
interaction with the mold-cleaning employees in the maintenance of the
equipment and by providing the mold-cleaners with directions and in-
struction through a logbook”); Transerv Systems, supra, 311 NLRB at
766 (observing “that most deliveries involve both a messenger and a
driver, which evidences a high degree of functional integration among,
and frequent contact between, drivers and bicyclists”).
61 See United Operations, supra, 338 NLRB at 124–125 (finding that
“[t]here is no significant functional integration between the HVAC techs
and the other field service employees” where the two groups service dif-
ferent types of calls, “[e]ach service call is independent of all others,”
[f]ew service calls require both an HVAC tech and a BSE,” and “when
this does occur . . . the HVAC tech performs the necessary HVAC work
and the BSE assists with unskilled labor”).
62 See 343 NLRB at 1027 (finding it “particularly inappropriate to
carve out a disproportionally small portion of a large, functionally inte-
grated facility as a separate unit”).
63 For a summary of some of the facts relied upon by the Board in
Publix, see fn. 60, supra.
THE BOEING CO. 19
manufacturing process and rarely interact with the vast
majority of the Employer’s production and maintenance
work force.
For all of those reasons, even under the new standard
introduced today, the majority should find the petitioned-
for unit appropriate because the FRTs and FRTIs plainly
have “meaningfully distinct interests . . . that outweigh
similarities” with the Employer’s 2500 other production
and maintenance workers. The only way the majority can
find otherwise is by ignoring relevant precedent and han-
dling various community-of-interest factors in a way that
cannot be reconciled with how they have been handled in
the past. As described, the majority erroneously down-
plays factors that matter most to workers on a day-to-day
basis—including wages, hours, and first-line supervi-
sion—and unjustifiably elevates the importance of factors
that, although relevant, have a far less immediate impact
on collective bargaining—such as departmental structure,
higher-level supervision, universal work rules, and the
fact that everyone works on the same production line.
Given the majority’s reliance on these latter factors, which
apply to nearly every employee at the Employer’s North
Charleston facility, it is difficult to see how, under the ma-
jority’s analysis, anything less than a plantwide unit of the
Employer’s 2,700 production and maintenance employees
could possibly be found appropriate, even though the facts
here fall far short of the circumstances in which the Board
has traditionally required such plantwide units.64
IV.
It is clear that the petitioned-for unit of FRTs and FRTIs
is appropriate under the Board’s “traditional” unit deter-
mination standard—the standard allegedly “restored” by
the Board less than 2 years ago in PCC Structurals—and
that a combined production and maintenance unit is not
required on the facts present here. Even under the stand-
ard the Board has introduced today, this unit is appropri-
ate, because the distinct interests of the FRTs and FRTIs
outweigh the interests they share with excluded employ-
ees. In finding to the contrary, the majority does real dam-
age to employees’ ability to exercise the “fullest freedom”
to organize under the Act. In the process, the majority
disregards the Board’s “traditional” community-of-inter-
est standard and at the same time refuses to acknowledge
that it is effecting a major change in Board law and policy
by departing from that standard. That is not reasoned de-
cisionmaking. And, perhaps that is not surprising given
the majority’s failure, once again, to notify and seek input
from the public on an important question.
From this flawed process emerges a flawed result: the
outcome of this case—effectively telling 178 highly
skilled, specialized employees that they cannot exercise
their rights under the Act unless they share a bargaining
unit with all of the thousands of other production and
maintenance workers employed at their plant—simply
cannot be reconciled with either the history of the Board’s
unit determination jurisprudence or the fundamental poli-
cies underlying the National Labor Relations Act. Be-
cause I cannot condone the majority’s denial of these
workers’ fundamental rights, I dissent.
Dated, Washington, D.C. September 9, 2019
______________________________________
Lauren McFerran, Member
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

64 Cf. Buckhorn, Inc., 343 NLRB 201, 203–204 (2004); TDK Ferrites,
supra, 342 NLRB at 1008–1009; Clinton Corn Processing, 251 NLRB
954, 954–955 (1980); Chromalloy Photographic Industries, 234 NLRB
1046, 1047 (1978); Alcan Aluminum Corp., 178 NLRB 362, 365–366
(1969).