General Electric Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 6, 1953

103 N.L.R.B. 403 (N.L.R.B. 1953)

GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 403
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY and JASON L. MOSER , PETITIONER and
INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL RADIO AND MACHINE WORK-
ERS, CIO
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY and ARTHUR H. BENIEN, PETITIONER and
LOCAL 901, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL , RADIO AND MA-
CHINE WORKERS, CIO
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY and GLENN D. SEABOLD, PETITIONER and
LOCAL 901, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL , RADIO AND MA-
CHINE WORKERS, CIO
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY and WENDELL A. MILLER, PETITIONER and
LOCAL 901, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL , RADIO AND MA-
CHINE WORKERS, CIO . Cases Nos. 13-RD-151, 13-RD-144, 13-
RD-119, and 13-RD-150. March 6, 1953
Decision and Direction of Elections
Upon petitions for 1 decertification duly filed under Section 9 (c)
of the National Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Vir-
ginia M. McElroy, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made
at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with these cases to a three-
member panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Styles and Peterson].
Upon the entire record in these cases, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The Petitioners, employees of the Employer, assert that the Union
is no longer the representative, as defined in Section 9 (a) of the
amended Act, of the employees designated in the petitions.
International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers,
CIO, and its Local 901, herein jointly called IUE-CIO, are labor
organizations currently recognized by the Employer as the exclusive
bargaining representatives of employees designated in the petitions?
3. IUE-CIO urges its contract with the Employer as a bar to this
proceeding. The Employer takes no position. On October 11, 1951,
the Employer and IUE-CIO executed a national agreement covering
employees in all of the Employer's plants for whom IUE-CIO and
its locals have been certified as collective-bargaining representatives.
The agreement was made effective from September 15, 1951, to Sep-
tember 15, 1952, subject to automatic renewal in the absence of notice
x Upon direction of the Regional Director, the petitions in this matter were consolidated.
2IUE-CIO is the labor organization sought to be decertified in Case No. 13-RD-151.
Local 911. IUE-CIO, is the labor organization sought to be decertified in Cases Nos.
13-RD-144, 13.-RD-149, and 13-RD-150.
103 NLRB No. 44.
404 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
to terminate or modify served by either party not more than 60 days
and not less than 30 days prior to September 15, 1952, or prior to Sep-
tember 15 of any subsequent year. The agreement further provided
that if the negotiations did not result in a "settlement" by September
15, 1952, it should continue in effect until the tenth day following
notice given by either party of its intention to terminate.
On July 15, 1952, IUE-CIO gave timely notice of its desire to nego-
tiate modifications in the national agreement. The decertification
petitions herein were filed on September 4, October 3, 10, and 20,
1952, respectively. On October 28, 1952, the Employer and IUE-
CIO executed an amended contract. As automatic renewal of the
national agreement executed October 11, 1951, was forestalled by
the Intervenor's timely notice to modify the agreement, and as the
petitions herein were filed before the execution of the amended con-
tract, neither the original contract nor the amended contract serves
as a bar to this proceeding.3 Accordingly, we find that no bar exists
to a present determination of representatives.
We find that a question affecting commerce exists concerning the
representation of employees of the Employer within the meaning of
Section 9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act .4
4. The appropriate unit :
The Petitioner in Case No. 13-RD-151 seeks to decertify a unit
of salaried clerical employees at the Employer's Decatur, Indiana,
plant. The parties stipulated at the hearing to the appropriateness
of this unit.
The Petitioners in Cases Nos. 13-RD-144, 13-RD-149, and
13-RD-150, are seeking, for the purpose of decertification, to sever
the technical employees from the existing unit of salaried office, cleri-
cal, and technical employees of the Employer's Fort Wayne, Indiana,
plant. They would effect such severance in 3 separate units of (1)
engineering assistants, (2) laboratory assistants, and (3) drafts-
men, respectively, or, in the alternative, in a single unit of all tech-
nical employees, or in 2 units, with engineering and laboratory assist-
ants in one and draftsmen in the other. The Union, IUE-CIO,
contends that because of their past inclusion in the overall unit, the
technical employees may not be severed. The Employer takes no
position on this issue. If, however, the Board finds that the techni-
cal employees are severable, both IUE-CIO and the Employer agree
with the Petitioners that the Board direct an election in separate
8 Worthy Paper Company Association, 80 NLRB 19, 20.
4 At the hearing the Intervenor moved for dismissal on the grounds ( 1) that Petitioners
are in fact seeking recognition as bargaining representatives of rival labor organizations;
and (2 ) that the Employer has assisted the Petitioners in the filing of these petitions.
Inasmuch as there is no evidence in the record supporting either of these allegations of
the Intervenor , we shall deny the motions.
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 405
groups of (1) engineering assistants, (2) laboratory assistants, and
(3) draftsmen.
The Employer is engaged in the general manufacture of electrical
products. The Fort Wayne and Decatur plants are part of the Em-
ployer's nationwide system of operations. In 1950, IUE-CIO was
certified as exclusive bargaining representative of a unit of office,
clerical, and technical employees at the Employer's Decatur plant,
and IUE-CIO, Local 901, was certified as exclusive bargaining rep-
resentative of a unit of office, clerical, and technical employees at the
Employer's Fort Wayne plant.
Case No. 13-RD-151 (Decatur)
We find, in agreement with the parties, that the following employees
constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining
within the meaning of Section 9 (b) of the Act:
All office, clerical, and technical employees of the Employer at its
Decatur apparatus department plant, 500 North 9th Street, Decatur,
Indiana, excluding commission and sales employees, auditors, and
accountants, test engineers, confidential secretaries, stenographers,
and employees who work on confidential payrolls, employee inter-
viewers, placement personnel, medical technicians, a chief receptionist,
cashiers, telephone switchboard operators, planning, wage rate,
methods and time-study employees, professional employees, guards,
and supervisors as defined in the Act.
Cases Nos. 13-RD-144, 13-RD-149, and 13-RD-150 (Fort Wayne)
There are 10 major departments at the Fort Wayne plant, 6 of
which have employees involved in this proceeding. The 6 depart-
ments are : Specialty transformer and ballast department, general
AC fractional horsepower motor department, specialty and defense
fractional horsepower department, electric sink and home laundry
department, hermetic fractional department, and small interval motor
department. Each of these is generally divided into 4 lesser depart-
ments : Market, finance, manufacturing, and engineering. A manager
is in charge of each of the lesser departments, and a general manager
directs the major departmental operation. In the engineering de-
partment, there are, among other classifications not involved here,
an engineering section, a drafting section, and a laboratory section.
There are approximately 1,300 salaried employees in the existing
office, clerical, and technical unit represented by IUE-CIO. Of these
45 are engineering assistants, 43 are laboratory assistants, and 200 are
draftsme â–º i.
257965-54-vol. 103-27
406 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Engineering assistants: The engineering section handles the re-
search, development, and design of the products for each department.
A manager of engineering directs the design engineers, and the en-
gineering assistants, whose duties range from highly complex, spe-
cialized, technical work involving scientific analysis and requiring an
extensive knowledge of diversified technical procedures to work of a
semitechnical nature requiring a working knowledge of the equip-
ment and materials involved. There is no interchange with the
draftsmen or laboratory assistants. Moreover, the uncontradicted
testimony of the Employer was that the assignments and duties of
the engineering assistants require technical knowledge separate from
those required of the draftsmen or laboratory assistants.
Laboratory assistants: The laboratory assistants are engaged in
research and testing duties requiring the application of higher mathe-
matics through the utilization of specialized training. They work in
conjunction with the laboratory chemists and metallurgists in two
special laboratory sections. These sections are separate from the
rest of the plant and are under the supervision of laboratory man-
agers. Although the Employer prefers to hire college graduates for
its laboratory positions, clerical employees with aptitude for the lab-
oratory work are also promoted to these special sections. The labo-
ratory assistants thus secured are trained on the job for their spe-
cialized duties.
Draftsmen: The draftsmen are responsible for the drafting of new
equipment and variations of previous designs. Both the detail and
design draftsmen are trained for 31/2 years in the Employer's ap-
prentice course for draftsmanship. There is no interchange with
laboratory assistants or engineering assistants. Whereas many of
the engineering and laboratory assistants are promoted from other
clerical positions, the draftsmen are hired from without the plant,
have usually had some previous drafting experience, and are subject
to a different classification scale of evaluation. They are under sep-
arate immediate supervision and are usually physically segregated
from the other employees included in the salaried unit now repre-
sented by the Intervenor.
The Board in the past has included technical employees within a
unit containing office and clerical employees where, as in the earlier
Board decision 5 which established the unit of office, clerical, and tech-
nical employees now represented by the Intervenor, no objection was
raised to the establishment of a single combined unit. Where, how-
ever, as here, objection is in fact made, the Board recognizes the dif-
ferences in the interests, background, and functions of technical
5 General Electric Company, 89 NLRB 726, 760.
BONDED FREIGHTWAYS, INC. 407
employees and those of clerical employees, and establishes such groups
in separate units.
As the Board applies the same unit principles in decertification pro-
ceedings as in all other representation proceedings, the fact that such
issue was raised by means of a decertification petition will not affect the
result."
As all the parties agree to an election in the three separate units in
the event severance is permitted, we shall direct that separate elections
by secret ballot be held among the following groups of employees at
the Employer's Fort Wayne, Indiana, plant, excluding from each
group all other employees, professional employees, guards, and super-
visors as defined by the Act.
1. All engineering assistants.
2. All laboratory assistants.
3. All draftsmen and trainees.?
If the employees in any of the foregoing voting groups do not select
the Union, the Union will be decertified as to them; if, on the other
hand, they select the Union, they will be taken to have indicated their
desire to remain in the existing salaried unit now represented by the
Union.
[Text of Direction of Elections omitted from publication in this
volume.]
E American Smelting and Refining Company, 80, NLRB 68.
7 Inasmuch as the "trainee draftsmen " are schooled in the Employer 's draftsmen course
and graduate into regular drafting duties, we find that they have interests and working
conditions in common with the detail and design draftsmen , and we shall , therefore,
Include them in the unit.
BONDED FREIGHTWAYS, INC. and BONDED DRIVERS AND MECHANICS IN-
DEPENDENT UNION7 PETITIONER . Case No. 3-RC-1110 . March 6,
1953
Decision and Direction of Elections
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Leonard Leventhal, hearing
officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from
prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member
panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Styles and Peterson].
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the
Act.
103 NLRB No. 50.