Anaheim Memorial Hospital

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 9, 1976

227 N.L.R.B. 161 (N.L.R.B. 1976)

ANAHEIM MEMORIAL HOSPITAL 161
Anaheim Memorial Hospital Association , d/b/a Ana-
heim Memorial Hospital and International Union
of Operating Engineers, Local No. 501, AFL-CIO,
Petitioner . Case 21-RC-14388
December 9, 1976
DECISION AND ORDER
By CHAIRMAN MURPHY AND MEMBERS
JENKINS AND PENELLO
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing
was held before Hearing Officer Joseph M. Connors
of the National Labor Relations Board. Following
the close of the hearing, the Regional Director for
Region 21 transferred this case to the Board for
decision. Thereafter, the Employer filed a brief.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the
National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
authority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.
The Board, having duly considered the Hearing
Officer's rulings made at the hearing, finds they are
free of prejudicial error. They are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, and the beef
filed herein, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act, and it will effectuate the
purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein.
2. The Petitioner is a labor organization claiming
to represent certain employees of the Employer.
3. No question affecting commerce exists con-
cerning the representation of employees within the
meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the
Act, for the following reason:
The Employer is a nonprofit corporation engaged
in the operation of an acute, general care hospital in
Anaheim, California. The hospital complex consists
of two connected buildings housing the patient-care
and related areas, a separate building housing the
hospital's administrative offices, gift shop, pharmacy,
laboratory, and private doctors' offices, and a fourth
structure, designated as the service building, housing
the boilers and the offices and major equipment of
the maintenance, or engineering, department. There
are 240 beds and 12 bassinets. The hospital employs
approximately 725 employees, approximately 400 to
450 of whom are service, maintenance, and technical
employees.
Petitioner seeks to represent the approximately 19
employees of the engineering department, excluding
all other employees. The Employer argues that a
separate unit consisting of such employees is inappro-
priate, a position with which we agree.
227 NLRB No. 25
The maintenance-engineering department operates
under a department head and three "coordinators"
whose supervisory status is in dispute but which
status we need not determine. Each of the coordina-
tors is in charge of a different aspect of the depart-
ment's overall function, which is, as described by the
department head, the repair and maintenance of
mechanical and electrical equipment and of the
building and grounds and security.
A landscape coordinator is responsible for three
"maintenance groundspersons" who maintain the
lawns, trees, shrubs, parking lots, and other outdoor
areas and the necessary equipment. Another coordi-
nator is a biomedical equipment technician (BMET),
who directs two other BMET's whose chief function
is the maintenance and repair of the hospital's
electronic medical equipment. The third coordinator
is in charge of a general maintenance pool which
takes care of all the department's functions not
covered by the other two groups and shares with
them some security functions. This coordinator has
working under him approximately nine "mainte-
nance persons," two maintenance helpers, and two
unlicensed engineers. The "maintenance persons"
include two employees whose specialty is painting
and two carpenters, all of whom are sometimes called
on to perform other work. Among the other mainte-
nance persons, some have acquired skills which make
them "favored" for assignments on electrical work,
some on air-conditioning, but all serve as rotating
general maintenance men on evening and night shifts.
The unlicensed engineers have different specialties,
too, one working principally on plumbing and
boilers, and the other on air-conditioning, refrigera-
tion, and electrical work. Finally, there is a mainte-
nance clerk.
Minor maintenance work is requested by other
departments through the use- of work orders, which
are either phoned in to the maintenance clerk or left
in pickup boxes throughout the hospital to be picked
up by a member of the maintenance pool designated
as the "duty man," who makes rounds about every 2
hours. He performs the smaller jobs on the spot, but
takes the work orders for the more difficult jobs back
to the service building for assignment by the coordi-
nator.
Except for the maintenance clerk and the unli-
censed engineer who works on boilers, the employees
in the department apparently spend 20 percent or less
of their time in the service building, the balance
performing maintenance jobs throughout the hospital
premises. Some of their work involves moving furni-
ture and equipment in conjunction with employees of
the housekeeping department and the departments in
which the maintenance jobs are located. Although
they are supervised principally within the- mainte-
162 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
nance department, there is some evidence of limited
direction by, and in some cases temporary assign-
ment to, supervisors outside the department.
The maintenance department employees have lock-
ers in the service building and apparently report there
at the beginning of the workday, at least on the first
shift when the coordinators are on duty. But they are
required to punch in and out on the same timeclocks
used by all other employees, located in one of the
main patient-care buildings. Their first shift corres-
ponds to the regular shift for most of the service and
technical employees of the hospital. Since the mainte-
nance function must be manned 24 hours a day,
however, members of the maintenance pool (though
usually not the other employees in the department)
regularly rotate to the evening and night shifts, one
employee at a time.
The hospital's wage rate system, into which the
maintenance department is integrated, has 33 grades.
The BMET's and the unlicensed engineers are in
grade 18, along with X-ray technicians and medical
photographer. The maintenance persons and mainte-
nance helpers occupy grade 13, which grade currently
contains no employees outside of the maintenance
department.' The maintenance groundspersons share
grade 7 with PBX operator, medical records clerk,
and unit secretary. The maintenance clerk occupies
grade 6, as do assistant EKG technician and duplicat-
ing machine operator.
The employees in question receive the same fringe
benefits as other employees, use the same cafeteria
and parking lot, and their personnel matters are
administered centrally. With respect to hiring, firing,
promotions, and transfers, there is a sharing of
responsibility among the department head, the per-
sonnel department, and the assistant administrator of
the hospital, although the department head appears
to have the operative authority with regard to hiring,
firing, and transfers. Several employees have gone
into the maintenance department by the transfer
route, pursuant to an overall hospital policy of giving
preference to current employees for interdepartmen-
tal transfers. .
All the department employees except the clerk are
issued uniforms, one type for the maintenance
persons, helpers, and unlicensed engineers, a slightly
different type for the BMET's, and a color variation
for the groundspersons. The BMET's rarely if ever
wear their uniforms, and the groundspersons often
wear cutoff jeans and tee shirts or no shirts in hot
weather. The hospital provides wearing apparel to
service and technical employees in other depart-
ments. There is evidence that some of the - mainte-
nance department employees, apparently the mem-
bers of the general maintenance crew, were told that
it was preferred or they were required to have their
own pouches of basic handtools.
None of the jobs in the maintenance department
require a certification, license, or formal apprentice-
ship. Although the formal job descriptions of both the
unlicensed engineers and the maintenance persons
mention journeyman status in a trade as a prerequi-
site, the testimony is to the effect that this was
interpreted to mean merely sufficient skill to perform
the jobs required of them. In fact, the unlicensed
engineers and the painting and carpentry mainte-
nance persons are experienced and skilled in their
specialties. The unlicensed engineer, who specializes
in electrical work, air-conditioning, and refrigeration,
has completed a basic course in these trades, but such
formal training is not required. On the other hand, a
document issued by the department head indicates
certain course requirements for promotion from
maintenance person to unlicensed engineer.
The nonspecialist maintenance persons are consid-
ered to be skilled in general maintenance, and the
maintenance helpers, who are in the same pay grade,
are considered semiskilled. Within each grade, how-
ever, there are wage steps earned through experience,
and the helpers apparently become maintenance
persons as they advance their skills through on-the-
job training.
The BMET's are both skilled and heavily schooled
in electronics and- occupy, with the unlicensed
engineers, the highest grade in the department.
Neither the groundsperson nor the clerk position has
any particular skill or educational status requirement,
although the formal job descriptions mention some
generalized knowledge and ability, and some high
school work or experience equivalence.
A number of collective-bargaining agreements
introduced into evidence failed to establish any
consistent area pattern of bargaining with respect to
maintenance department units. The number of con-
tracts in which the recognized bargaining unit includ-
ed both service and maintenance employees predomi-
nated, but there were also a number of instances
where the unit was limited to engineering or mainte-
nance employees or where such employees were
excluded from a larger unit. There were few if any
agreements,2 however, where a maintenance depart-
I In between grades 13 and 18 are various technicians , executive technician , dietitian , RN II, physical therapist (experienced), clinician,
secretaries, and instructor , accountant, and social worker classifications coordinating RN, medical technologist, and pharmacist.
Above grade 18, only 6 of the possible 15 grades are currently occupied by 2 Not all the agreements are self-explanatory as to the functions
job classifications. These include , in ascending order, cytologist, staff RN, performed by the employees in the unit , and no testimony was adduced
nuclear medicine technician , ultrasound technician, special procedure which filled in the gaps
ANAHEIM MEMORIAL HOSPITAL 163
ment of the scope under consideration here was
recognized as a separate unit.
We are not persuaded that the employees in this
maintenance department have a strong enough
separate community of interest to warrant finding, in
the face of the general congressional admonitions
against proliferation of units, that they constitute a
separate appropriate unit.3 These employees are
diverse in their types as well as their levels of skills.
Their rates of pay encompass a broad spectrum
within the overall wage system of the hospital. Their
contact with other employees is probably at least as
significant as those of most hospital employees with
other employees outside their immediate depart-
ments . These factors, considered in light of the record
as a whole, are not counterbalanced by any factors of
sufficient weight to justify granting to these employ-
ees the privilege, denied to skilled employees in other
departments, of separate bargaining status.4 As the
Petitioner has indicated that it does not wish to
participate in an election in a different or larger unit,
we shall dismiss the petition herein.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case 21-
RC-14388 be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
CHAIRMAN MURPHY, dissenting:
I disagree with my colleagues' finding that the unit
requested by the Petitioner is inappropriate. In my
view, the record amply establishes that the Employ-
er's maintenance-engineering department employees
possess a sufficiently strong separate community of
interest to warrant a finding that they constitute an
appropriate unit for purposes of collective bargaining
within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act.
The unit sought by the Petitioner includes all
employees in all job classifications in the Employer's
maintenance department. This department currently
consists of two biomedical equipment technicians
(BMET), two unlicensed engineers, nine hospital
maintenance persons, two maintenance helpers, three
maintenance groundspersons, and one maintenance
clerk. The maintenance department is generally
responsible for the Employer's heating, cooling,
grounds, and electrical systems and for the perfor-
mance of minor maintenance and preventive mainte-
nance throughout the entire hospital. It operates
under the overall direction of a department head who
has the authority to hire, fire, and discipline the
department's employees. Reporting to the depart-
3 See The Jewish Hospital Association ofCincinnatt d/b/a Jewish Hospital
of Cincinnati. 223 NLRB 614,616 (1976)
4 /d at 617
5 The fact that some of the maintenance workers, such as the groundsper-
sons and BMET's, frequently do not wear their uniforms itself distinguishes
them from other hospital service employees who regularly wear uniforms.
ment head are three "coordinators," each in charge of
a different aspect of the department's overall func-
tions. Thus, there is a BMET coordinator who
oversees the maintenance and repair of the Employ-
er's electronic medical equipment; a landscape coor-
dinator who oversees the maintenance of the outdoor
grounds, including lawns, trees, shrubs, and parking
lots; and a general maintenance coordinator who is
responsible for the general maintenance pool which
takes care of the heating, cooling, and electrical
systems and provides other repair and maintenance
functions not provided by the other two groups.
The maintenance department is located in a sepa-
rate building, designated as the service building,
which is not used by any other employees. This
building houses the boilers and other major mainte-
nance equipment, the lockers for the maintenance
department employees, and the offices of the mainte-
nance supervisors. Although the maintenance depart-
ment employees punch a common clock at one of the
Employer's other facilities, they report to the service
building to obtain their work assignments and their
tools and to change their clothes. In this regard, the
maintenance department employees are issued uni-
forms which are distinctly different from the uni-
forms issued to other hospital personnel.5
Although the Employer encourages permanent
transfers into the department, there is no evidence of
transfers out of the unit, nor of interchange between
employees in that department and employees in any
other department. There also is no significant evi-
dence that supervisors outside the department direct
the work of the maintenance department employees.
In my judgment, the foregoing factors establish that
the maintenance department employees enjoy a
sufficiently separate community of interest to warrant
their recognition as a separate bargaining unit. The
fact that there are also similarities between these
employees and other service employees of the Em-
ployer does not justify a finding that the maintenance
department here is an inappropriate unit. Indeed, in
finding the unit inappropriate the majority relies
primarily on "the general congressional admonitions
against proliferation of units" in the health care
industry. I have previously expressed my disagree-
ment with the premise that the legislative history of
the health care amendments precludes us from
finding a maintenance department unit appropriate
where the facts show that the employees in such
department enjoy a separate community of interest.6
I adhere to that position and would find, therefore,
8 Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children, 217 NLRB 806 (1975) And see
Riverside Methodist Hospital, 223 NLRB 1084 (1976), and Jewish Hospital
Association of Cincinnati d/b/a Jewish Hospital ofCincinnatt, 223 NLRB 614
(1976)
164 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
that the maintenance-engineenng department unit unit for purposes of collective bargaining within the
requested by the Petitioner constitutes an appropriate meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act.