United Parcel Service, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 23, 1981

258 N.L.R.B. 223 (N.L.R.B. 1981)

UNITED PARCEL SERVICE. INC.
United Parcel Service, Inc. and International Broth-
erhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehouse-
men and Helpers of America, Local Union No.
435, Petitioner. Case 27-RC-6058
September 23, 1981
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY MEMBERS FANNING, JENKINS, AND
ZIMMERMAN
On August 22, 1980, the Regional Director for
Region 27 issued a Decision and Direction of Elec-
tion in the above-entitled proceeding in which he
found appropriate a unit of full-time and part-time
operating center clerks employed in the Employ-
er's Metro Division operating centers at Lake-
wood' and Commerce City, Colorado. Thereafter,
in accordance with Section 102.67 of the National
Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations,
Series 8, as amended, the Employer timely filed a
request for review of the Regional Director's deci-
sion together with a supporting brief contending
that the Regional Director made erroneous findings
of fact and departed from Board precedent. The
Petitioner filed a brief in support of the Regional
Director's decision.
The National Labor Relations Board, by tele-
graphic order dated September 25, 1980, granted
the request for review and also granted the Em-
ployer's request to withdraw its motion to stay the
election. Accordingly, an election was conducted
on September 26, 1980, as scheduled, and the bal-
lots were impounded.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its au-
thority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.
The Board has reviewed the entire record in this
case with respect to the issues under review, in-
cluding the briefs on review, and makes the follow-
ing findings:
The Employer disputes the Regional Director's
unit finding, contending that its districtwide cen-
tralization of labor relations policies and integration
of district operations precludes finding appropriate
any unit which does not encompass all operating
centers within the Rocky Mountain District.
It further argues that the Regional Director's de-
cision is contrary to Board precedent which finds
systemwide units appropriate in cases involving
public utilities, and is inconsistent with two prior
Regional Director unit determinations involving
the same Employer. Finally, the Employer asserts
that the Regional Director misapplied community
I The Lakewsood facility, which is located in the southwestern part of
Denver, is referred to in the record as "Southwest."
258 NLRB No. 30
of interest factors to both the operating and office
clerical employees at Commerce City with the
result that his unit findings are either ambiguous or
erroneous. We find, for the following reasons, that
the scope of the unit found appropriate by the Re-
gional Director is supported by the evidence in this
record, 2 but we shall modify his unit composition
to include the unrepresented operating clerks in the
feeder and package operations in the hub at Com-
merce City.
The facts show that the Employer is a regulated
common carrier which operates a delivery service
for small packages. Its facilities, called operating
centers, are situated throughout the continental
United States and are organized administratively
into 9 regions and 61 districts, including the Rocky
Mountain District, which encompasses 31 business
locations in the States of Colorado and Wyoming,
each of which contains 1 or more operating cen-
ters. The Rocky Mountain District is further divid-
ed into five divisions, including the Metro Divi-
sion, which consists of eight operating centers in
the Commerce City facility and two in the Lake-
wood facility, all of which service the Denver,
Colorado, metropolitan area.
The Commerce City facility is the administrative
headquarters of the Rocky Mountain District and
also is the "hub" or central sorting and distribution
point for all packages entering and leaving the dis-
trict. The hub area consists of most of the first
floor of that facility, and is under the supervision
of the hub manager. 3 Packages are brought into
the hub by feeders, or long-distance drivers, un-
loaded, and sorted by bargaining unit personnel. 4
Operating clerks and supervisory personnel check
the incoming packages for damage, deficiencies in
wrapping, addresses, or misdirection before they
are stored or loaded according to their destinations.
Included in the hub area are the "blue label," or air
2 The Employer has adduced no probative evidence showing that it is
a public utility. Inasmuch as the Employer's package transportation com-
pany is not a public utility. we find no merit in its contention for a sys-
temwide unit on that basis. As to the Regional Director's unit determina-
tions involving this same Employer, we note that they have not been re-
viewed on the merits by the Board and, moreover. appear to be factually
distinguishable because. unlike the instant petition for a unit coextensive
with an administrative division of the Employer. the petition in Case 18-
RC-12278 (June 1979) was for a single location only. while the petition
in Case 17 RC-8887 (October 1979) was found to be defective in that it
sought a residual unit but failed to include all of the unrepresented em-
ployees
' The record is unclear whether the hub manager and the nonsupersi-
sory and nonbargaining unit personnel in the hub and feeder areas are
administratively assigned to the Metro Disision
4 The Petitioner was recognized as bargaining representalive for a unit
of drisers, sorters. mechanics, and maintenance men at Conmerce City.
Iake,ood. and Boulder: Teamster L[,ocals 17 and 307 represent the unit
members in the other facilities throughout the disirict. although all are
now covered by a master nationwide agreement bet,,ecnl the Emploer
and the Teamtcer,
223
DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
shipment, operating clerks who similarly check
packages which are being air shipped. Beyond the
hub, but in the same building, are eight package
operations centers where essentially the same duties
are performed on packages moving within the
Denver metropolitan area and which fall within
three categories: parcels which originate and termi-
nate within the Denver area; those originating in
Denver but for delivery outside the division or dis-
trict; and those brought in by feeder drivers from
outside the division or district, processed in the
hub, and forwarded by conveyor to one of the
package centers for local delivery in Denver. In
these operating, or package, centers, Metro Divi-
sion operating clerks and bargaining unit members
work alongside one another and are supervised by
frontline Metro supervisors, center managers, and
the division manager. The operating clerks work
part time, in staggered 3- to 5-hour shifts which
begin at 12:30 p.m. Although the operating clerks
at Commerce City regularly interchange between
the hub and the Commerce City centers, there is
no interchange with any other classification of em-
ployees at Commerce City or with Lakewood or
with any other facility either within or outside the
division. Similarly, there is no interchange of any
operating clerks at Lakewood with any other facili-
ty or employee group.
The Lakewood facility, where approximately
four operating clerks, two or three supervisors, and
two center managers perform these same duties, is
a mirror image of the Commerce City operation.
As noted supra, the Commerce City facility also
is the administrative headquarters for the Rocky
Mountain District, and houses district officials, in-
cluding the district manager, the district labor rela-
tions manager, and the district personnel manager.
There also are offices for supervisory and office
clerical personnel in various district departments,
such as personnel, industrial engineering, delivery
information, loss prevention, and, until recently, ac-
counting.5 These departments perform the function
of overseeing the administration and operations of
all work in the district. The office clerical employ-
ees in these departments utilize numerous company
forms, many of which are initiated by supervisors
and operating clerks in the hub and feeder area, to
track the progress and account for parcels in tran-
sit, and to chart the overall efficiency of the Em-
ployer's district operations. They generally work at
desks in the department offices under department
supervision during a single shift which begins at 8
a.m. Three or four industrial engineering clerks
work a later shift and spend approximately 60 to 70
1 The district accounting department is the only department located at
separate premises in the Denver area.
percent of their time in the hub area taking samples
of packages and address labels and auditing time-
cards, and the remainder of their worktime is per-
formed in the office compiling and analyzing the
statistics for the department's daily and weekly op-
erations reports. Clericals in the customer service
department are primarily engaged in telephone
conversations with customers, vendors, or employ-
ees at other facilities, although three of them are
regularly assigned, and others fill in as needed, at
the customer counter where they perfunctorily
accept packages which are brought directly by cus-
tomers for shipment.
The record evidence further shows a commonal-
ity of overall labor relations and personnel policies
for all employees in the Rocky Mountain District,
including wages and benefits for all clerical em-
ployees who are required to have similar entry
level skills and who, through their varying job
functions, perform the common mission of moving
parcels through the system. This commonality,
however, is subject to the Employer's separation of
operations into distinct divisions of a number of op-
erating centers, each of which has its own frontline
supervision, center manager, and division manager.
Work schedules for operating clerks within each
division are determined by the center manager and
the division manager. Division managers resolve
employee grievances on their own and make effec-
tive recommendations to district officials with re-
spect to other labor relations or personnel matters.
Common supervision for all district clerical em-
ployees, however, occurs only above the division
level. There is no company policy of transferring
operating clerks between the district operating
facilities, and, apart from the Metro Division, the
operating facilities in the district are geographically
separated by distances of up to several hundred
miles. In addition, there is no bargaining history for
either office or operating clerical employees.
Based on the common divisional supervision, the
administrative and geographic separation from all
other Rocky Mountain District operating centers,
and the absence of both interchange and bargaining
history among operating center clerks, the Region-
al Director found that the eight operating centers
at Commerce City and the two centers at Lake-
wood, which comprise the Metro Division, consti-
tute an appropriate unit. We agree with the Re-
gional Director's finding and, accordingly, affirm
his determination as to the scope of the unit. We
also agree with the Regional Director that the cler-
icals who work in district department offices at
Commerce City performing dissimilar functions in
separate work areas under different supervision
from operating clericals are office clericals and,
224
UNITED PARCEL SERVICE. INC.
therefore, should be excluded from the unit of op-
erating clerical employees. We note further that
such tasks as are performed by customer service
clericals and industrial engineering clericals-ac-
cepting packages at the customer counter and sam-
pling package labels in the hub area, respectively-
are only incidental to their primary work functions
and, therefore, are insufficient to alter their shared
community of interests with the other office cleri-
cals with whom they work. Accordingly, we shall
exclude them along with the other office clerical
employees.
The Employer questions whether the unit found
appropriate by the Regional Director includes the
operating clerks in the feeder and package areas of
the hub in Commerce City inasmuch as they are
not specified in his unit description. 6 Inasmuch as
the record evidence shows that the unrepresented
clerks who work in the various areas of the hub
perform duties identical to those of the operating
6 The Regional Director's unit description is as follows:
All full-time and regular part-time operating center clerks employed
by the Employer in its Metro Division operating centers located at
Lakewood and Commerce City. Colorado; Excluding all office cleri-
cal employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act, and all
other employees.
clerks included herein, we shall modify the Region-
al Director's unit description to include the operat-
ing clerks in the Commerce City hub, feeder, and
package operations.
Accordingly, we shall order the Regional Direc-
tor for Region 27 to open and count the impound-
ed ballots of the employees in the unit described
below, and to issue the appropriate certification:
All full-time and part-time operating center
clerks employed by the Employer in its Metro
Division operating centers located at Lake-
wood and Commerce City, Colorado, includ-
ing all operating clerks in the hub, feeder, and
package operations in the Commerce City hub
area; Excluding all office clerical employees
and all other employees, guards, and supervi-
sors as defined in the Act.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that this case be remanded
to the Regional Director for Region 27 and that
the Regional Director open and count the ballots
of the employees in the appropriate unit and issue
the appropriate certification.
225