Arizona Public Service Company

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 5, 1981

256 N.L.R.B. 400 (N.L.R.B. 1981)

400 ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY
Arizona Public Service Company, Employer-Peti-
tioner and International Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers, AFL-CIO, Local 387
Arizona Public Service Company and International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO,
Local 387, Petitioner. Cases 28-RM-394 and
28-UC- 11
June 5, 1981
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon petitions duly filed under Section 9(c) of
the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Hearing Officer Bruce R.
Kettler. Following the hearing and pursuant to
Section 102.67 of the National Labor Relations
Board Rules and Regulations and Statements of
Procedure, Series 8, as amended, the Regional Di-
rector for Region 28 transferred this case to the
Board for decision. Thereafter, the parties filed
briefs. 1
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds that they are
free from prejudicial error. They are hereby af-
firmed.
On the entire record in this case, 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 labor organization involved claims to rep-
resent certain employees of the Employer.
3. No question affecting commerce exists con-
cerning the representation of certain employees of
the Employer within the meaning of Section
9(c)(1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act.
On December 15, 1980, the Employer filed the
instant RM petition, requesting an election among
the production and maintenance employees em-
ployed at its Palo Verde nuclear unit. On the same
day, the Union filed the instant UC petition, seek-
ing accretion of the Palo Verde employees into a
systemwide production and maintenance bargaining
unit. For the reasons stated below, we find that the
group of employees in question are an accretion to
the bargaining unit currently in existence, and we
accordingly dismiss the Employer's petition for an
election among these employees.
The Employer is a public utility engaged in the
supplying of electric power throughout the State of
Arizona. It currently owns and operates several
nonnuclear generating units, and is in the process
of building (as part owner) at Palo Verde, Arizona,
the nuclear power plant involved herein.
The Employer's request for oral argument is hereby denied, since the
record and the briefs adequately present the position of the parties
256 NLRB No. 65
The Employer's corporate headquarters are in
Phoenix, Arizona. Its nonnuclear plants are located
in Arizona and New Mexico. Relative to the other
units in the system, Palo Verde (55 miles from
Phoenix) is one of the closest to the company's
headquarters.
Administration of the Employer's electric power
generation production is centralized in the office of
vice president of electrical operations whose offices
are located in Phoenix. The plant managers at the
nonnuclear units report to this official of the com-
pany. The power produced by each of the nonnu-
clear units is mingled with the power transmitted
by the other units and thereafter dispatched
throughout the State of Arizona.
The Palo Verde plant manager, like his equals at
the other generating units, reports to the vice presi-
dent of electrical operations. The Palo Verde plant
will not service a distinct geographical area once it
commences operation. Rather, the electric power
generated by the nuclear unit will feed into the
same control system as the power transmitted by
the nonnuclear units and will be dispatched in the
same manner as the nonnuclear-generated power.
The Employer's labor relations policies appear to
be carefully determined and administered. All pro-
duction and maintenance employees employed at
the nonnuclear power generating plants are repre-
sented by the Union in a single systemwide bar-
gaining unit. Since at least 1947, the Employer and
the Union have had a bargaining relationship,
during which time the Employer has by acquisition
or construction added several generating units to
its system. The practice of the parties in these cases
has been to incorporate the production and mainte-
nance employees at the newly acquired or con-
structed facilities into the contractual systemwide
bargaining unit.2
The Employer's unrepresented employees are
classified "performance review" employees. The
performance review employees thoughout the
system are subject to salary guidelines and per-
formance review policies established by central
management. The rules described in the company
handbook of rules for performance review employ-
ees are applied uniformly throughout the system.
Transfers and job bidding for posted performance
review vacancies are available to all performance
review employees on the same basis.
Many benefits provided by the company are
common to both represented and unrepresented
employees. Thus, the performance review employ-
ees, as well as bargaining unit employees, enjoyed
the same vacation policy, holidays, pension, and
dental and medical benefits.
2 The current contract, dated April I, 1980, expires on April 1, 1982.
ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY 401
The day-to-day supervision of Palo Verde pro-
duction and maintenance employees appears to be
vested in plant management. The Palo Verde plant
manager retains significant authority in the imple-
mentation of the Company's uniform policies and
in the direction of employees.
The Employer began hiring employees for the
Palo Verde nuclear unit in 1977, for use in the pro-
duction and maintenance areas. 3 The nuclear unit
presently employs approximately 62 production
and maintenance employees, 12 or 13 of whom
transferred from other units within the Employer's
operations. These employees are now classified as
performance review employees and are accorded
benefits as described above.
Largely due to regulations imposed by the Nu-
clear Regulatory Commission, some special training
is required for the Palo Verde employees. None-
theless, the record evidences that many of the pro-
duction and maintenance classifications at Palo
Verde are common to all the Employer's plants,
and further that the functions of the Palo Verde
employees are comparable to those performed by
their counterparts elsewhere in the Employer's
system. And, as noted above, approximately 20
percent of the production and maintenance em-
ployees at Palo Verde transferred there from bar-
gaining unit positions.
The Employer urges that Board precedent re-
quires a systemwide unit as the only appropriate
unit for its employees, but that substantial differ-
ences in skills, functions, and technological knowl-
edge between the Palo Verde employees and bar-
gaining unit employees and the local autonomy of
the Palo Verde management compel refusal of the
Union's contention that the Palo Verde employees
constitute an accretion to the existing systemwide
bargaining unit. Therefore, argues the Employer,
the Palo Verde employees must be allowed the op-
portunity to decide for themselves whether to be
incorporated into the bargaining unit or to remain
unrepresented.
The Union opposes the Employer's petition,
urging instead that the Palo Verde employees are
merely an accretion to the existing production and
maintenance unit. Should the Board decline to
apply the accretion doctrine, the Union contends
that no question concerning representation exists
because the Union has made no claim to represent
a majority of the employees in question, and that
therefore the Employer's petition should be dis-
missed. In the alternative, the Union argues that, if
the Board determines an election is appropriate, the
3 The parties stipulated and we find that, although the number of em-
ployees will continue to expand, the present complement is representa-
live.
employees be given a choice between representa-
tion in a separate unit or the existing systemwide
unit. 4
Conclusion
We are persuaded by a number of factors, in-
cluding the integrated nature of the Employer's op-
erations, the community of interest that the em-
ployees in question share in common with their
counterparts elsewhere in the Employer's system,
and the bargaining history between the parties, that
the Palo Verde employees are an accretion to the
systemwide production and maintenance bargaining
unit.
We have long held that in the public utility in-
dustry, operation of which is characterized by a
high degree of integration, the optimum unit is a
systemwide one. Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., 206
NLRB 199, 201 (1973). We deviate from this
policy where the boundaries of the requested unit
conform to a well-defined administrative segment
of the utility's operation, where the requested unit
serves a distinct geographical area, and where a
separate unit can be established without involving
disturbance of the employer's ability to perform its
necessary function. United Gas, Inc., 190 NLRB
618, 618-619 (1971); Monongahela Power Company,
176 NLRB 915, 917 (1969).
Here, the electric power that will be generated
by the nuclear plant will feed into the same control
system into which the other generating units'
power flows and will be disbursed throughout the
area which the Employer services. This integration
of operations is reflected in the Employer's central-
ized administration of operations-illustrated by the
fact that each plant manager reports to the vice
president of electrical operations whose offices are
located in Phoenix. Thus, the requested unit does
not represent a unique administrative segment of
the Employer's operations, nor will the Palo Verde
generating plant service a distinct geographical
area. 5
Further, we believe that the Palo Verde employ-
ees share a community of interest with bargaining
unit employees. It is clear that the labor relations
policies for unrepresented employees are centrally
determined and uniformly applied throughout the
system. It is also clear that the Palo Verde produc-
tion and maintenace employees, although presently
classified performance review employees, occupy
' In the evenl the Board dirccts an election, the Union also argues that
certain technical employees should he included in the olting unit
5 Although the record suggests that, because of computerization, the
Emplo)er's ability to perform its functions would not necessarily be cur-
tailed by a cessation of work at Palo Verde, we find that this factor does
not outweigh the abose-recited factors indicating a high degree of cen-
tralizallon in the Employer's operations and administration
402 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
many of the same classifications and perform the
same functions as bargaining unit employees. In ad-
dition, we note that a not insignificant number of
former bargaining unit employees now work in
production and maintenance positions at Palo
Verde. Finally, the record indicates that the Palo
Verde employees enjoy many of the same terms
and conditions of employment accorded bargaining
unit employees. Accordingly, based on the Em-
ployer's centralized labor relations policies, the
similarity of classifications, functions, and terms
and conditions of employment of Palo Verde em-
ployees and bargaining unit employees, and the
transfers from unit positions to Palo Verde produc-
tion and maintenance positions, we find that the
Palo Verde employees share a community of inter-
est with the Employer's represented production
and maintenance employees.
We also find significant that bargaining between
the parties has historically been on a systemwide
basis. The Employer in the past has extended rec-
ognition to the Union as representative of employ-
ees at facilities added to the utility system.6 We are
reluctant to grant a less than systemwide unit
where to do so would be contrary to extensive bar-
gaininig history on a systemwide basis. Baltimore
Gas, supra at 201.
3 Since we utilize this fact merely as evidence that the parties have
historically favored systemwide bargaining, we do not believe its rel-
evance is nullified because the parties disagree as to the exact circum-
stances surrounding the Litlployer's extension of recognition.
Therefore, based on the above factors, we find
that the Palo Verde production and maintenance
employees are accretions to,7 and should be includ-
ed in,8 the systemwide production and maintenace
unit represented by the Union.
In view of the foregoing, we find that no ques-
tion concerning representation of the Palo Verde
production and maintenance employees exists, and
we shall dismiss the petition in Case 28-RM-394.9
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case
28-RM-394 be, and it hereby is, dismissed in its
entirety.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the existing system-
wide bargaining unit for the Employer's produc-
tion and maintenance employees, currently repre-
sented by International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, Local 387, AFL-CIO, be, and it hereby
is, clarified to include those production and mainte-
nance employees located at the Employer's Palo
Verde, Arizona, facility.
I It is well established that employees accreted to an existing unit are
not accorded a self-determination election. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber
Company (Apple Grove, Wesr Virginia Plant), 147 NLRB 1233, 1234, fn. 6
(1974), and case cited therein.
8 The apparent local autonomy of Palo Verde management is a factor
that favors nonaccretion. However, in considering an accretion issue, we
examine a number of factors. We find in this case that local autonomy
alone is insufficient to overcome the many factors supporting a system-
wide unit
9 Because of our disposition of this case, we need not address the other
contentions urged by the parties