Canal Carting, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Aug 8, 2003

339 N.L.R.B. 969 (N.L.R.B. 2003)

CANAL CARTING, INC. 969
Canal Carting, Inc. and Canal Sanitation, Inc., A
Single Employer and Local 813 International
Brotherhood of Teamsters, AFL–CIO, Peti-
tioner and Local 890, League of International
Federated Employees, Intervenor. Case 29–RC–
10043.
August 8, 2003
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY MEMBERS LIEBMAN, SCHAUMBER, AND ACOSTA
On June 25, 2003, the Regional Director for Region 29
issued a Decision and Direction of Election, in which he
found that there was no contract bar to the petition. The
Employer filed a timely request for review, and the Peti-
tioner filed an opposition to that request.
The National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
authority to a three-member panel. Having carefully
considered the matter and the record, we grant review,
reverse the Regional Director, and dismiss the petition.
Both Canal Carting, Inc. (Carting) and Canal Sanita-
tion, Inc. (Sanitation) are engaged in waste removal and
recycling. They operate out of a facility in Brooklyn,
New York. Carting performs services only in Manhat-
tan, while Sanitation conducts business primarily in
Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and New
Jersey. Carting and Sanitation drivers do not interchange
routes, and Carting and Sanitation do not interchange
their trucks or other equipment. The Employer’s me-
chanics and truck washer work on vehicles owned by
both Carting and Sanitation. The parties do not dispute
that Carting and Sanitation are a single employer under
the Act.
The Petitioner, Local 813, International Brotherhood
of Teamsters, AFL–CIO, has represented drivers and
helpers at Carting since at least the 1970s. The most
recent agreement between the Petitioner and Carting ex-
pired on November 30, 2002. The Employer continues
to pay wages and fund contributions pursuant to the ex-
pired contract.
From 1996 to 2000, Sanitation’s drivers were repre-
sented by Laborers International Union Local 958/108.
From mid-1997 through mid-2000, the unit consisted of
just one driver. Local 958/108 ceased to represent the
unit when Sanitation terminated the unit’s sole employee
in June 2000.
Sanitation subsequently hired other employees as driv-
ers, helpers, mechanics, and truck washers. On Novem-
ber 1, 2001, Sanitation signed a collective-bargaining
agreement with the Intervenor, League of International
Federated Employees, Local 890. The contract, which
expires on October 19, 2004, covers a unit of drivers,
helpers, mechanics, welders, utility, and laborers. The
Employer is honoring the terms of the contract.
The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit that encom-
passes employees at both Carting and Sanitation, and that
includes “[a]ll full-time and regular part-time chauffeurs,
helpers, mechanics, welders, utility, laborers and truck
washers, exclusive of all other employees, guards, man-
agers and supervisors.” The petitioned-for unit currently
consists of 6 drivers employed by Carting, and 12 driv-
ers, 10 helpers, 2 mechanics, and 1 truck washer em-
ployed by Sanitation.1
The Regional Director found that the petitioned-for
unit is appropriate, and that the employees represented
by the Intervenor do not constitute an appropriate unit.
Therefore, according to the Regional Director, the cur-
rent collective-bargaining agreement between Sanitation
and the Intervenor does not bar the election petition.
The Employer contends that the Regional Director
erred in finding that the bargaining unit represented by
the Intervenor is inappropriate, and in finding that
Sanitation’s collective-bargaining agreement with the
Intervenor does not bar the Petitioner’s election petition.
We find merit in the Employer’s contentions.

In determining whether the Intervenor’s collective-
bargaining agreement bars the Petitioner’s election peti-
tion, the Regional Director engaged in a community-of-
interest analysis, in which he considered skills and func-
tions of employees, supervision, employee interchange,
working conditions, and bargaining history.
In our view, the Regional Director failed properly to
consider the importance of bargaining history in making
his determination on the appropriateness of Sanitation’s
unit and on the contract bar issue. As one court has
noted, “the Board usually applies the community-of-
interest and plant-wide unit tests only when delineating
units of previously unrepresented employees, not, as
here, when it is assessing historical units that have had
long periods of successful collective bargaining.” Tri-
dent Seafoods, Inc. v. NLRB, 101 F.3d 111, 118 (D.C.
Cir. 1996). Rather than pursue solely a community-of-
interest analysis, the Regional Director should have con-
sidered whether compelling circumstances warranted
disturbing the historical bargaining units that developed
at Carting and Sanitation.
Contrary to the Regional Director, we find that the unit
of employees represented by the Intervenor is appropri-
ate, and that the existing contract between Sanitation and
the Intervenor acts as a bar to the Petitioner’s election
1 The Regional Director found that some of Carting’s routes require
helpers. It is not known whether Carting employs any helpers. Thus,
as the Regional Director found, helpers employed by Sanitation may be
working for both companies.
339 NLRB No. 121
DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD 970
petition. It is well settled that the existence of significant
bargaining history weighs heavily in favor of a finding
that a historical unit is appropriate, and that the party
challenging the historical unit bears the burden of show-
ing that the unit is no longer appropriate. See Children’s
Hospital of San Francisco, 312 NLRB 920, 929 (1993)
(“Both the Board and the courts have long recognized
not only that the traditional factors, which tend to support
the finding of a larger or single unit as being appropriate,
are of lesser cogency where a history of meaningful bar-
gaining has developed, but also that this fact alone sug-
gests the appropriateness of a separate bargaining unit
and that compelling circumstances are required to over-
come the significance of bargaining history.”) (internal
quotation marks omitted), enfd. sub nom. California Pa-
cific Medical Center v. NLRB, 87 F.3d 304 (9th Cir.
1996). See also Fisher Broadcasting, Inc., 324 NLRB
256, 262–263 (1997); Buffalo Broadcasting Co., 242
NLRB 1105, 1105 fn. 2 (1979) (“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.”); Columbia Broadcasting
System, Inc., 214 NLRB 637, 643 (1974); Great Atlantic
& Pacific Tea Co., 153 NLRB 1549, 1550 (1965)
(“[T]he Board has long held that it will not disturb an
established bargaining relationship unless required to do
so by the dictates of the Act or other compelling circum-
stances.”).
The bargaining history between Sanitation and repre-
sentatives of its employees from 1996 to 2000, and from
2001 to the present, along with the existing collective-
bargaining agreement between Sanitation and the Inter-
venor, weigh heavily in favor of respecting the historical
bargaining units of both Sanitation employees and Cart-
ing employees, as does the lengthy bargaining history
between Carting and the Petitioner in a separate unit.
There is nothing intrinsically inappropriate about the
existing units: employees in those units work on routes
in locations that are geographically distinct from each
other, and the units each have a distinct bargaining his-
tory. The existing units are not repugnant to the Act, and
neither the Petitioner nor the Regional Director has es-
tablished sufficiently compelling circumstances that
would warrant disturbing the established unit currently
represented by the Intervenor. See Met Electrical Test-
ing Co., 331 NLRB 872 (2000); Banknote Corp. of
America, 315 NLRB 1041, 1041, 1043 (1994), enfd. 84
F.3d 637 (2d Cir. 1996).
Accordingly, we grant the Employer’s request for re-
view, reverse the Regional Director’s finding that the
bargaining unit represented by the Intervenor is inappro-
priate, find that the collective-bargaining agreement be-
tween the Employer and the Intervenor bars the Peti-
tioner’s petition, and dismiss the petition.2

2 The Petitioner is, of course, free to file an election petition during
the window period preceding the expiration of the collective-bargaining
agreement between the Employer and the Intervenor in 2004, seeking
to represent Sanitation’s employees.