Fidelity Telephone Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jan 2, 1976

221 N.L.R.B. 1335 (N.L.R.B. 1976)

FIDELITY TELEPHONE COMPANY 1335
Fidelity Telephone Company and Communications
Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case
14-RC-7940
January 2, 1976
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MURPHY AND MEMBERS
FANNING AND PENELLO
On August 29, 1975, the Regional Director for
Region 14 issued a Decision and Direction of
Election in the above-entitled proceeding in which he
found appropriate the Petitioner's requested unit of
all traffic department employees of the Employer.
Thereafter, in.accordance with Section 102.67 of the
National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regula-
tions, Series 8, as amended, the Employer filed with
the National Labor Relations Board a timely request
for review of the Regional Director's Decision on the
grounds that he departed from officially reported
Board precedent and made erroneous findings as to
substantial factual issues.
By telegraphic order dated October 6, 1975, the
National Labor Relations Board granted the request
for review and stayed the election pending decision
on review. No party has filed a brief on review.
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 has considered the entire record in this
case with respect to the issue under review and
makes the following findings:
The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit comprised
of all traffic department employees of the Employer,
excluding, inter alia, employees within the Employ-
er's commercial and plant departments. The Employ-
er, in its request for review, contends that only a
systemwide unit of all employees in all departments
is appropriate herein. We find merit in this conten-
tion.
The Employer is a telephone utility servicing four
counties within Missouri with facilities located in
Sullivan, Owensville, and New Haven, Missouri.'
The Employer's operations, although not formally
organized on the basis of separate administrative
divisions, consists of three - departments: traffic,
commercial, and plant. The primary duties of the
traffic department employees, all of whom are
assigned to the Sullivan location, include the opera-
tion of the only switchboard for all the Employer's
facilities and the assembling of toll call tickets. The
primary duties of the commercial department per-
sonnel include processing automatically handled toll
call tickets and operator handled tickets, billing
subscribers, answering subscriber inquiries and
complaints, and taking subscriber requests for
changes in service. The plant department is primarily
responsible for installing, maintaining, and removing
equipment, including the microwave systems, auto-
matic toll ticket equipment, keypunch equipment,
and operating switchboard within the Sullivan
facility, as well as for the installation of telephones
for subscribers and construction work throughout the
Employer's system.
Of its total complement of 58 employees, approxi-
mately 50 are stationed at the Sullivan facility. Of these
latter employees, 25 are assigned to the traffic
department, 17 to the plant department, and 8 to the
commercial department. Of the other personnel, a
total of six employees, four of whom are assigned to
the plant department and two to the commercial
department, are stationed at the Owensville facility.
The remaining two employees, both of whom are
assigned to the plant department, are located at the
New Haven facility.
The record discloses that the Employer's opera-
tions are functionally integrated. Thus, it is undisput-
ed, and the Regional Director specifically found, that
the Employer's three departments are dependent
upon each other to maintain service to the public and
that a work stoppage in one department would
impair the operations of the other departments. The
record also reveals that, in order to provide its
services to the public, personnel in all departments
have working contact with each other on a daily
basis. In this regard, traffic department employees
often handle service complaints and dispatch plant
employees to correct such situations and refer
inquiries from subscribers to the commercial depart-
ment. Traffic department employees also assist in
assembling traffic toll tickets for further processing
by the commercial department employees 'and are
frequently contacted by the latter with respect to
questions they may have concerning such tickets.
Plant department employees additionally come into
contact with personnel in other departments in
maintaining and repairing the Employer's office
equipment, and, occasionally, will handle telephone
calls when performing repair work on the switch-
board.
The record also discloses a degree of interchange
among employees in the various departments. Thus,
traffic department employees have in the past been
transferred to the commercial department, both on a
permanent and temporary basis, and employees
stationed at the Owensville and New Haven loca-
221 NLRB No. 221
1 It appears that the average distance between any two of the Employers
facilities is 15-20 miles
1336 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
tions have regularly been assigned on a temporary
basis to perform duties at the Sullivan facility.
All employees are subject to centralized labor
relations policies established by the Employer's
president and general manager who has overall
supervisory authority with respect to the Employer's
operations and directly supervises the commercial
department. The Employer maintains centralized
payroll, personnel, and purchasing records at its
Sullivan facility. The record does not indicate the
wage rate for each job classification, but the wage
rate for each classification is the same at all three
locations and all the Employer's employees receive
identical fringe benefits and are paid on the same
payroll. All employees stationed at the Sullivan
location share common restroom, breakroom, and
parking facilities. Although the training of employees
for the performance of their primary duties varies
with each department, all employees receive common
training in dealing with the public. The respective
departments are operated on separate shifts. There is
no history of collective bargaining.
The Regional Director concluded that the Petition-
er's requested unit of all traffic department employ-
ees constituted an appropriate unit inasmuch as it
comprised a companywide or systemwide depart-
mental unit . Contrary to the Regional Director,
however, we conclude that the factors present in the
instant case , particularly the relative small size of the
employee complement, the small geographical area
involved, the degree of functional overlap within the
Erployer's operations, and the evidence of signifi-
cant contacts among employees in all departments,
militate against a finding that the employees in the
Employer's traffic department have such a separate
identity as to constitute an appropriate unit standing
alone . Rather, in view of the above factors, we
conclude that the only appropriate unit herein for the
purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning
of Section 9(b) of the Act is a companywide unit of
all of, the Employer's employees.2 Accordingly, as the
unit we have found appropriate herein is broader
than that requested by the Petitioner, and in view of
2 Red Hook Telephone Company, 168 NLRB 260 (1967). Our dissenting
colleague implies that the decision in Red Hook may have been influenced
by the union 's expressed willingness to go to an election in a larger unit than
it sought . We disagree In that decision the Board reversed the Acting
Regional Director's Decision and Direction of Election which ' found the
sought after departmental P & M unit appropriate . The Board found instead
that only a systemwide unit of employees in all departments was
appropriate , based wholly on the functional overlap of all the departments,
the smallness of the Employer 's complement of employees, and the small
geographic area involved The reference to Petitioner 's willingness to
represent the overall unit was connected only to the procedural question of
whether the petition should be dismissed outright or the matter should be
the fact that the Petitioner has not indicated its
willingness to proceed to an election in a broader
unit, we shall dismiss the instant petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition herein be, and
it hereby is, dismissed.
MEMBER FANNING, dissenting:
I would direct an election , as did the Regional
Director. I do not agree with my colleagues that this
unit of traffic department employees, standing alone,
is not an appropriate unit. Every utility is necessarily
characterized by some degree of functional integra-
tion and the Board recognizes a systemwide unit of
all employees as the most appropriate unit for a
utility. As the Regional Director found, however, it
has also recognized lesser units in the utility field
and, in my opinion, should do so here.
The employees sought, who make up the traffic
department of the Employer, are all located at
Sullivan, Missouri. They constitute half of the 50
employees located at Sullivan. Their function is
distinct: to operate the sole switchboard for the
Employer's four-county system of telephones. Traffic
alone , of the company's three departments, operates
24 hours a day. It is separately supervised., Thus the
unit sought constitutes a complete, departmental
group which in this case is systemwide.3
My colleagues rely on Red Hook Telephone, 168
NLRB 260 (1967), in which I participated. They
overlook the fact that there the union expressed
willingness to go to an election in the most
appropriate unit., 4 A union is not obligated to seek
the most appropriate unit but only an appropriate
unit . The fact that this union has previously sought
an all-employee, unit of the employees of this
Employer does not convert this request for an
appropriate departmental unit into extent of organi-
zation within the meaning of Section 9(c)(5).
In my view this request for an obviously appropri-
ate unit in the utility field should not be dismissed.
remanded to the Regional Director for the purpose of conducting an
election in the unit found by the, Board to be appropriate.
3 See New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, 90 NLRB 639,
640-641 (1950), where the Board found appropriate a systemwide unit of
traffic department employees . See also The Chesapeake and Potomac
Telephone Company, 82 NLRB 810, 818 (1949), where the Board confirmed
the appropriateness of "company-wide or systemwide departmental " units.
4 The majority finds it significant that the Red Hook decision does not
specifically rely on the union's willingness to go to election in a systemwide
unit. As a member of that panel I decline to interpret the case as if the stated
desires of the parties were irrelevant to my conclusion.