The Kroger Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Feb 14, 1951

93 N.L.R.B. 274 (N.L.R.B. 1951)

274 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
THE KROGER COMPANY and AMALGAMATED MEAT CUTTERS AND BUTCHER
WORKMEN OF NORTH AMERICA, LOCAL 534, A. F. L., PETITIONER.
Case No. 14-RC-1266. February 14,1951
Decision and Direction of Election
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Milton 0. Talent, hearing
officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free
from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member
panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Houston and Reynolds].
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The labor organization involved claims to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The Petitioner seeks a unit composed of all meat department em-
ployees in eight rural grocery stores in the Employer's District 405,
situated in the State of Illinois. Alternatively, it requests a unit of
the meat department employees in all the stores, both.rural and urban,
in that district. The Employer opposes a unit limited to the eight'
stores, on the ground that they may not appropriately be set apart
from other nearby rural stores beyond the district'boundary. It also
opposes both the proposed units because it asserts that only a unit
composed of meat department employees in all of its Illinois stores
which are under the jurisdiction of its St. Louis branch would be ap-
propriate in this case.
The Employer, which operates 2,400 stores in 20 States,. functions
on two administrative levels in the St. Louis area; a branch and the
districts which it embraces. The St. Louis branch, which handles
purchasing, storage, accounting, and personnel matters, is comprised
of 11 districts, 5 within, the City of St. Louis, 3 in other parts of Mis-
souri, and 3 in southern Illinois (including District 405). Separate
sales records are kept for the various districts. Each district is under
the supervision of a district manager responsible for sales and promo-
tional policies, any local purchasing, and physical conditions in all
stores in the district. Although the Employer claims that its dis-
tricts. are fluid, and that then would soon be reorganized, its repre-
93 NLRB No. 32.
THE KROGER. COMPANY 275
sentative admitted at the hearing that no specific plans for redis-
tricting had been prepared.
There are 20 stores in District 405; 7 are in East St. Louis, an in-
dustrial city; one is in Washington Park, apparently a suburb of
East St. Louis; 4 are in Belleville, an industrial city of approximately
35,000 population ; and the remaining 8 are in small, rural towns at the
eastern end of the district.
There now exists three bargaining units among the employees in
District 405. One embraces both meat and grocery department em-
ployees in the East St. Louis stores; the Washington Park store, and
one of the Belleville stores; a second is limited to the meat department
employees in the remaining three Belleville stores; and the third is
composed of the grocery clerks in the same three Belleville stores.
The first two units are covered by current contracts between the Em-
ployer and the Petitioner; the third by an agreement between the Em-
ployer and Local 219, Retail Clerks International Association, AFL.
There are eight employees in the requested unit ; two head meat
cutters; three journeyman meat cutters; one apprentice meat cutter;
and two meat clerks. The head meat cutters and the journeymen cut,
display, and sell the meat. The head cutters also order the meat and
are responsible to the store managers for the profitable operation of
the, meat department. Where a journeyman works alone in a store,
the store manager does the buying and is responsible for the depart-
ment. The apprentice meat cutter differs from the journeyman only
in degree of skill and experience. The record shows neither the ex-
tent or nature of his training, nor the term of his apprenticeship. The
two meat clerks do no cutting, but devote between 75 and 90 percent
of their time to meat department work.
It is true, as the Employer points out, that because the eight stores.
in question do not comprise a separate administrative grouping within,
the Employer's organizational structure, the scope of the proposed
unit does not conform to the unit pattern which the Board ordinarily
seeks to establish for chain store employees.' However, where past
bargaining has proceeded without regard for administrative, or dis-
trict lines, the Board cannot feasibly ignore established units and im-
pose a disruptive finding upon a fixed bargaining pattern 2 Here, the
Employer and two unions have themselves chosen to bargain along
other lines, and have thus made impossible the optimum unit coex-
tensive with District 405. The eight stores here considered, being the
only remaining ones in that District not now included in any unit, are
therefore the residue in an otherwise appropriate unit. As such, they
constitute, in scope, an appropriate unit.
1 Schaffer Stores Co ., The, 88 NLRB 1446; Kroger Company ( St. Louis Branch office),-
88 NLRB 194
1 American Stores Company , 82 NLRB 882.
276 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
We find no merit in the Employer's argument that because the
parties have in the past ignored district lines, the Board must now do
likewise and join certain stores in an adjoining district to those here
involved. Although there is no interchange between the employees in
the eight rural stores and those in the other stores in District 405, and
the two groups are otherwise distinguished by certain minor differences
in their working conditions, the appropriateness of the eight store unit
in this case rests upon its residual character, and not on other factors.
No persuasive reason appears, therefore, for crossing the administra-
tive boundaries which normally delineate the scope of appropriate
units for this type of employee. For this same reason, we also reject
the Employer's further contention that these meat department em-
ployees may only be represented in a broader unit of such employees
embracing some, but not all, of the districts in its St. Louis branch.
No issue is raised respecting the composition of the unit. The Board
ha's long recognized the craft skills of meat department employees in
chain grocery stores, and for that reason has placed them, upon request,
in bargaining units apart from other store employees 3 The record
here shows no reason for departing from that practice in this case.
Accordingly, we find that all meat department employees in the
Employer's stores in Trenton, Waterloo, Mascoutah, Lebanon, Dupo,
Carlyle, New Athens, and Breeze, all in the State of Illinois, excluding
all other employees, guards, professional employees, and all super-
visors as defined in the Act, constitute a unit appropriate for the pur-
poses of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9 (b) of
of the Act 4
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
3 The Kroger Company, 77 NLRB 370; Colonial Stoves, Incorporated, 84 NLRB 558
s Uncontradicted testimony of the Employer's representative shows that head meat
cutters have supervisory authority within the meaning of the Act. Head meat cutters are
therefore excluded from the unit as supervisors. The record also shows that the head
meat cutter in the Carlyle store is the sole meat department employee assigned here. As
be has no subordinate working under hun and therefore has no occasion to exercise any
supervisory authority, he is included in the unit
1
'CONTINENTAL CAN CO., INC. and UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA,
C. I. 0., PETITIONER, Case No. 5-RC-184. February 14, 1951
Decision and Direction of Elections
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before John J. A. Reynolds, Jr.,
hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
93 NLRB No. 31.