General Foods Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 8, 1977

231 N.L.R.B. 1232 (N.L.R.B. 1977)

DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
General Foods Corporation and American Federation
of Grain Millers, AFL-CIO, and its Local 70. Case
38-CA-2657
September 8, 1977
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN FANNING AND MEMBERS
JENKINS AND MURPHY
On October 29, 1976, Administrative Law Judge
Walter H. Maloney, Jr., issued the attached Decision
in this proceeding. Thereafter, the General Counsel
and the Charging Party filed exceptions and support-
ing briefs, and Respondent filed a brief in reply to
those exceptions.
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 record and the
attached Decision in light of the exceptions and
briefs and has decided to affirm the rulings, findings,
and conclusions of the Administrative Law Judge
and to adopt his recommended Order.
ORDER
Pursuant to Section 10(c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor
Relations Board adopts as its Order the recommend-
ed Order of the Administrative Law Judge and
hereby orders that the complaint herein be, and it
hereby is, dismissed in its entirety.
DECISION
FINDINGS OF FACT
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
WALTER H. MALONEY, JR., Administrative Law Judge:
This case came on for hearing before me at Kankakee,
Illinois, on a complaint,' issued by the Officer-in-Charge of
Subregion 38, which alleges that Respondent General
Foods Corporation 2 violated Section 8(a)(2) of the Act.
More particularly, the complaint alleges that Respondent
unlawfully assisted, interfered with, and dominated the
administration of certain "teams" of employees who are
employed by Respondent at St. Anne, Illinois, in the
testing and research which is conducted at its Gaines
The principal docket entries in this case are as follows:
Charge filed by American Federation of Grain Millers. AFL-CIO, and
its Local 70 (herein called Unions) on February 4. 1976: complaint issued
by Officer-in-Charge on June 9, 1976; Respondent's answer filed on June
21. 1976: hearing held in Kankakee, Illinois, on August 11 1976; briefs filed
with me by the General Counsel. the Charging Party, and Respondent on or
hefore September 20. 1976. and corrected by Charging Party by its errata
letter dated September 27, 1976.
2 Respondent admits, and I find. that it is a Delaware corporation which
operates places of' business throughout the United States and abroad and it
231 NLRB No. 122
Nutrition Center. Respondent maintains that the teams of
employees so designated are merely work crews and
administrative subdivisions of the nonsupervisory employ-
ee complement at the Center, and do not constitute labor
organizations within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the
Act. Respondent also maintains that it had the legal right
to communicate with employees at team meetings in the
manner in which it did by virtue of the proviso to Section
8(aX2). Upon these contentions the issues herein are
drawn.3
A. The Unfair Labor Practices Alleged
Respondent operates a large manufacturing plant at St.
Anne, Illinois, near Kankakee, where it produces dog food
and other varieties of pet food. Its production and
maintenance unit is organized and is represented by the
Charging Party to this proceeding. Ancillary to the
production plant is a research and testing facility known as
Gaines Nutrition Center where about 25-30 nonsuperviso-
ry workers are employed. This research and testing facility
houses about 500 dogs and 250 cats which are used for
testing both the food produced by Respondent and its
competitors and for research related to the production of
new and different kinds of pet foods.
The Charging Party attempted to organize the Gaines
Nutrition Center, went to an election on August 15, 1974,
and lost by a vote of 10 to 13 (Case 38-RC-1580). Unlike
the production and maintenance unit, the employees at the
Nutrition Center are salaried and are covered by terms and
conditions of a total compensation system designed for
General Foods' Administrative and Technical Group
(ATG). The plan provides for a rather elaborate and
involved method of evaluating and compensating salaried
employees. It was designed at the Respondent's headquar-
ters in White Plains, New York, and is administered
uniformly throughout all of General Foods' plants within
the United States. It applies to all supervisory and
nonsupervisory employees who are salaried and who are
not covered by collective-bargaining agreements.
In addition to its ATG compensation plan, General
Foods has embarked upon what is called a job enrichment
program for many groups and classifications of employees.
The job enrichment program is based upon certain
premises derived from behaviorial psychology which hold
that employees desire to have a larger and more meaning-
ful role in their day-to-day work activities than is normally
assigned to them in a mechanical production line opera-
tion. The program is based upon the further assumption
that employees desire to make a recognized contribution to
the business organization of which they are a part.
Accordingly, the Respondent has, at the Gaines Nutrition
Center, made an effort to enlarge the powers and
is engaged in the processing and sale of food and food products. At its St.
Anne, Illinois, facility, Respondent is engaged in production, testing, and
research relating to dog and cat food. During the past 12 months, a
representative period, Respondent sold and shipped from its St. Anne,
Illinois, plant products valued in excess of S50,000 per year directly to points
and places outside the State of Illinois. Accordingly. it is an employer within
the meaning of Sec. 2(2), (6), and (7) of the Act. The Unions are labor
organizations within the meaning of Sec. 2(5) of the Act.
I Certain errors in the transcript have been noted and corrected.
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GENERAL FOODS CORP.
responsibilities of all its rank-and-file employees and to
give them certain powers or controls over their job
situations which are normally not assigned to manual
laborers. Employees are divided into four teams. In theory
if not always in practice, each team, acting by a concensus
of its members, makes job assignments to individual team
members, assigns job rotations, and schedules overtime
among team members. A team has no disciplinary power.
However, from time to time individuals who are drawn
from these teams have conducted job interviews with
applicants for vacancies at the Nutrition Center.
Before the ATG program and the job enrichment effort
began, there were two teams or crews employed at the
Nutrition Center called acceptability teams. Their basic
function was to provide for the feeding and sanitation of
the dogs and the maintenance of buildings and grounds.
Because animal care requires daily attention, the two
Acceptability teams, operating respectively under the
control of Foremen William Doan and Joseph Doud, work
10 straight days and are then off 4 days in a row so that a
team or crew is present every day of the year to attend the
needs of the animals. These teams employ relatively
unskilled kennelmen. In the last year or two, the work at
the kennels became such that two additional teams, called
the new methodology team and the nutrition team, were
formed to handle these functions. The new methodology
team, operating under Mrs. Amy Peters, is responsible for
testing of dogs' preference of foods. Team members use
certain specialized equipment designed for that purpose.
As a result, the Team is composed of semiskilled employ-
ees. The nutrition team, operating under the direct
supervision of Mrs. Judy Hansen, charts the growth of dogs
when fed by certain kinds of dog foods, gives grooming
and certain first aid to injured or sick animals, and is
constantly involved in testing samples of blood and feces.
The Nutrition Team is also composed of semiskilled
employees. It is these four teams which the General
Counsel contends are labor organizations. He seeks an
order requiring Respondent to cease its domination or
interference of each team, while the Charging Party goes
further, requesting an order which would disestablish the
teams as the bargaining representatives of their members.
On November 1, 1975, Respondent first put its ATG
total compensation plan into effect. In November or
December 1975, E. Curtis Mairs, personnel director of the
entire General Foods operation at St. Anne, held meetings
with members of the various teams in the Nutrition Center
for the purpose of explaining and outlining the plant and
how it would operate. He explained the basic compensa-
tion plan, the incentive or merit system, the promotion
system, the so-called Chairman's Award (an incentive
award), and the method of evaluation of employee
performance which the plan required. According to the
elements of the ATG plan, each employee covered is
supposed to discuss and arrive at a "contract" with his
supervisor in which he outlines in writing what the
supervisor expects of the employees, what the employee
expects from the supervisor, and certain job goals. These
goals amount to suggestions by the employer as to how the
employees' own performance or the operation in which he
is engaged can be improved. As a part of this process, the
employee is supposed to write out on a form provided by
the Company his own job description, in which he
catalogues the regular and recurring assignments which
have been given to him during his tenure as an employee.
Each employee's performance is peridoically measured
against the terms of the "contract" which he has agreed to
with his supervisor in order to determine whether or not he
is eligible for a merit increase. At the meetings conducted
by Mairs with employees involved in this proceeding,
discussions took place for the purpose of clarifying the
requirements and components of this new plan. Since the
initial conference, Mairs meets from time to time with the
various teams to discuss the implementation of the ATG
compensation system. Occasionally the objectives of a
team or group of employees is discussed at team meetings.
Respondent has retained Dr. Bruce Wheatley, a profes-
sor of communications at Eastern Illinois University, as a
consultant to assist in its job enrichment program. Dr.
Wheatley described his periodic meetings with the various
teams as attempts to improve the internal communications
among team members and to build "trust levels" among
them by conducting "team building" exercises. These
meetings have occurred over a period of 2 years and are
declining in frequency, since the success of Dr. Wheatley's
efforts necessarily means that his work with the teams
should diminish and ultimately terminate. Some of these
meetings have occurred away from the Company's premis-
es while other meetings have occurred at the Nutrition
Center. First line supervisors normally attend these
meetings. Dr. Wheatley expressed the opinion that his
efforts in building "trust levels" was bearing fruit as to
three teams but, in the acceptability team supervised by
William Doan, he felt that he was not making such
progress. As a result, only two or three meetings of the
Doan team were held with Dr. Wheatley after August 4,
1975, the cutoff date for the period of limitations in this
case.
Apparently Dr. Wheatley's efforts at stimulating commu-
nications had some effect, even on Doan's team. At a team
meeting in the fall of 1975, Kennelman Richard Hurst took
advantage of the occasion to outline to team members, to
Dr. Wheatley, and to Dr. Merl Parlin, the director of the
Center who was in attendance, an idea for the more
equitable rotation of overtime within a crew. Dr. Parlin
asked the opinions of the other team members about
Hurst's suggestion. As they did not all agree with him,
Parlin did not put the suggestion into effect. At one of the
team meetings, Hurst asked either Dr. Wheatley or Mairs
whether the ATG compensation plan, relating to managing
by objectives, would mean more money for employees,
since he felt it was a waste of time to prepare detailed
descriptions and related documents for persons who were
essentially manual laborers. He was informed that it would
mean more money.
Other employees besides Hurst voiced opinions at team
meetings as to what they liked or disliked about their jobs.
On one occasion, Hurst registered a complaint to the
management in attendance about a raise that had recently
been given to a female employee. He complained that
supervisors were catering to female employees and were
not assisting the other employees enough in performance of
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DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
their chores as they were supposed to do. Other and similar
complaints about lack of promotions were aired. Hurst
testified that supervisors discontinued these objectionable
practices after the matters were brought to Dr. Parlin's
attention. Employees also discussed the job expectations
which were a part of the management "contract" each
employee had to reach with his supervisor and reviewed
copies of other employees' job descriptions which they had
prepared. More recently, the practice of requiring employ-
ees to write up job descriptions was discontinued.
On occasion, Dr. Parlin designated certain employees
from each of the four teams to act as a safety committee
and to tour the Nutrition Center to observe and report
safety violations. A committee of employees drawn from
various teams was also designated to prepare a list of new
procedures for the feeding and sanitation of the dogs.
Another group collectively wrote up a job description for a
Grade 6 Kennelman since the description was a "multiple
incumbency" description, that is, it applied to more than
one employee. Either in the course of preparing his own job
objectives or through some other vehicles, Hurst has made
recommendations to management concerning snow remov-
al, collaring dogs, separation of dogs who were in the habit
of fighting, and other matters of a similar character. At a
meeting which took place in August 1975, former Kennel-
man Robert L. Hartke and other employees in attendance
asked Dr. Wheatley if they could take their vacations one
day at a time rather than on consecutive days. Dr.
Wheatley looked up the provision in the Company's
personnel handbook relating to vacations and told them
that it was permissible under the procedure set forth in the
handbook to take 5 days of vacation at different times so
long as another 5 days was taken consecutively, so
thereafter this practice was followed. At one meeting late in
October 1975, Wheatley discussed briefly at a meeting of
Doud's acceptability team a list of grievances which had
previously been submitted to the director of the Nutrition
Center and the personnel manager by employee Danny
Cross. The substance of the discussion is unclear from the
record.
B. Analysis and Conclusions
All parties agree that the nub of the issue in this case is
whether the four teams which, in their aggregate, constitute
the entirety of the nonsupervisory work force at the Gaines
Nutrition Center are labor organizations within the
meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act. This section defines
labor organization as:
Any organization of any kind, or any agency or
employee representation committee or plan, in which
employees participate and which exists for the purpose,
in whole or in part, of dealing with employers
concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of
pay, hours of employment or conditions of work.
The Charging Party correctly points out in its brief that
none of the conventional accoutrements of a labor
organization-constitution, bylaws officers, and the like -
is a prerequisite for eligibility to be a labor organization as
envisioned by the Act. If the contrary were true, these
teams would surely fall outside the definition set forth
above, since none of them have officers, constitution,
bylaws, election of delegates, regular membership meet-
ings, dues, property, charter, formal recognition by the
Employer, or formal designation by team members as a
spokesman of any kind. While these factors are not
essential in determining the existence of a labor organiza-
tion the absence of all such normal features of labor
organizations, or of organizations of any kind provides an
insight which should be considered in determining the
status of Respondent's teams within the framework of this
law.
In their essence, the teams, and each of them, are nothing
more or less than work crews established by Respondent as
administrative subdivisions of its entire employee comple-
ment at the Gaines Nutrition Center. It is virtually
uncontested that Respondent's original purpose in estab-
lishing these crews had nothing to do with labor relations,
as that term is generally understood. The teams exist and
were created for the purpose of performing the various jobs
that must be done in operating the Nutrition Center. As
new jobs and new functions arose at the Center, new teams
came into existence. Unlike many of the cases cited by the
Charging Party and the General Counsel, the teams herein
were not established to head off incipient organizing drives
by outside unions nor did they come into existence in
response to any unrest in the bargaining unit which was
sensed by Respondent. Four teams now exist at the
Nutrition Center because, in the judgment of Respondent's
management, this is the best way to organize the work
force to get the work done. Having been established for
reasons quite apart from labor relations matters, the teams,
or any of them, can only become "labor organizations"
within the meaning of the Act by virtue of some de facto
status they may have acquired by virtue of events which
have taken place at Respondent's kennels within the period
of limitations which began on August 4, 1975.
In addressing the issue in this case, a second and serious
structural question relating to the teams also exists. In
every case cited by the General Counsel or the Charging
Party in which the Board or the courts have accorded labor
organization status to an informal or loosely knit employee
group, the group or committee so designated is at least an
entity which is different and is set apart from the totality of
the bargaining unit which it has been called upon to
represent. To my knowledge an entire bargaining unit,
viewed as a "committee of the whole," has never been
accorded defacto labor organization status. T]he essence of
a labor organization, as this term has been construed by
the Board and the courts, is a group or a person which
stands in an agency relationship to a larger body on whose
behalf it is called upon to act. When this relationship does
not exist, all that can come into being is a staff meeting or
the factory equivalent thereof. The fact that, for conve-
nience sake, these staff meetings take place in four different
groupings which in their aggregate constitute the whole
unit should not change the status of the groups. Viewed in
a certain light, the teams have a "meeting" each time their
members come to work. The meetings focused upon
evidence in this case are simply occasions when Respon-
dent's management has elected to interrupt the normal
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GENERAL FOODS CORP.
daily routine of the teams to bring to the attention of its
employees certain matters of managerial concern. At these
formalized meetings, certain employees have on occasion
elected to voice their complaints individually to the
management representatives who were present, but there is
no evidence that the team as such ever acted as an agent on
behalf of any irate employee to assist him on pressing his
case.4 Indeed, a team could not do so because it lacked
sufficient internal functional cohesiveness to be regarded
as a unit or an entity separate and apart from its
membership. A team could not be a bargaining agent
because it lacked the structure and capacity to be an
organization or an agent of any kind. No team had a team
spokesman. At every team meeting, those who spoke did so
on their own behalf and in their own individual capacities.
If such a set of circumstances should give rise to the
existence of a labor organization, no employer could ever
have a staff conference without bringing forth a labor
organization in its midst. I cannot believe that the Act
intended or provided for such a result.
Thus, Hurst complained at a team meeting about
supervisory favortism toward female employees and out-
lined to management on one occasion his ideas concerning
rotation of overtime. This was Hurst speaking individually
to Respondent. Hurst did not call upon, did not receive,
and in the nature of things could not receive the
intercession of the team on his behalf in pressing these
matters. The fact that these matters constitute grievances
or involve conditions of employment does not mean that
the team took up the cudgels on Hurst's behalf in dealing
with Respondent. Hurst was dealing directly with manage-
ment, as the proviso to Section 8(a)(2) authorizes both
Respondent and its employees to do.
In all of the functions involving the implementation of
the ATG total compensation system, the employee dealt
directly with their supervisors in a one-on-one relationship.
Rather than talk individually with each employee, Mairs
explained the complicated features of the plan to employ-
ees at team meetings and fielded questions from them
concerning the operation of the plan. However, the
preparation of the so-called "contract" was an individual
affair and the rating of each employee's performance
against the provisions of the contract was likewise a matter
between the employees and his supervisor and no one else.
The team did not intervene in such questions nor did it
seek to do so on behalf of any of its members. Likewise,
when Dr. Wheatley engaged the teams in team building
exercises, he was merely giving a sophisticated training
exercise to team members. Had he been hired to put the
team through a physical fitness program, it could hardly be
argued that the exercises constituted a collective dealing
with an employer by the team in matters of labor relations.
There is no reason why mental gymnastics should find their
way into a different category.
In its job enrichment program, Respondent gave to the
employees in its Nutrition Center certain responsibilities
which were managerial in character and which it sought to
have them exercise on a team basis. Some of these
functions were to be carried out by the four operating
4 Dr. Wheatley testified that his program of improving communications
between employees and their supervisors could be viewed as an alternative
teams named in the complaint, while other functions were
to be carried out by ad hoc committees whose membership
cut across conventional team lines and who were assem-
bled for specified and limited task force functions. Thus, a
committee of employees interviewed job applicants, a
function normally reserved to supervisory employees.
Another grouping of employees inspected the plant and
reported back certain safety infractions. The employees,
acting within the team, were authorized within certain
narrow limits to set their own starting and quitting times to
correspond with the seasons of the year and the advent or
expiration of daylight savings time. These are managerial
functions being flatly delegated to employees and do not
involve any dealing with the employer on a group basis
within the meaning of Section 2(5), however expansively
that term is applied. While the employer could withdraw
the powers delegated to employees to perform these
functions on its behalf, the withdrawal of authority would
be wholly unilateral on its part just as was Respondent's
original delegation. There was no dealing between employ-
er and employee (or employee group) involved in these
matters. These functions were just other assignments of job
duties, albeit duties not normally granted to rank-and-file
personnel.
The closest evidence to team dealing with the employer
on behalf of employees to be found in this record are
hearsay statements by Mairs that Dr. Parlin, the director of
the Center, reported to him at Christmas time that the
teams had come to him ("I guess," as Mairs put it) to talk
about the work schedule over the Christmas-New Years
holiday season and had made request about changing the
schedule to provide a greater amount of free time. In
accordance with the previous custom at the Center, the
holiday schedule was changed in accordance with the
"recommendations of the teams." Mairs' information as to
what exactly transpired between Parlin and the teams was
fuzzy and his characterization that the recommendations
originated with teams rather than individual employees or
the total unit were his own. The matter is, in my judgment,
de minimis and isolated from an entire history and pattern
of events in which teams existed as unstructured assemblies
of employees, without spokesman or leadership and
without any agency relationship to its components, while
team meetings served as occasions for management to
communicate directly with its employees and vice versa.
The testimony of Mairs on these matters does not, in my
opinion, serve to transform the teams into either defacto or
dejure labor organizations.
As the General Counsel failed in his burden to prove by
a preponderance of the evidence that the teams or work
crews at Respondent's Gaines Nutrition Center were in
their intendment or operation entities which existed to deal
with management concerning labor relations on behalf of
employees, it follows that they were not labor organizations
within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act. Hence a
necessary element of a violation of Section 8(a)(2) of the
Act has not been established. Accordingly, the complaint
herein must be dismissed.
to a labor organization. The fact that his efforts may have provided an
alternative does not mean that the alternative must be a labor organization.
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DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Upon the foregoing findings of fact and upon the entire
record herein considered as a whole, I make the following:
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
I. Respondent General Foods Corporation is an
employer engaged in commerce and in operations affecting
commerce within the meaning of Section 2(2), (6), and (7)
of the Act.
2. American Federation of Grain Millers, AFL-CIO,
and its Local 70, are labor organizations within the
meaning of the Act.
I In the event no exceptions are filed as provided by Sec. 102.46 of the
Rules and Regulations of the National Labor Relations Board, the findings,
conclusions, and recommended Order herein shall, as provided in Sec.
3. The teams of employees employed by Respondent at
its Gaines Nutrition Center, located at St. Anne, Illinois,
are not labor organizations within the meaning of the Act.
4. Respondent has not violated Section 8(a)(2) of the
Act.
Upon the foregoing findings of fact and conclusions of
law, and upon the entire record herein considered as a
whole, and pursuant to Section 10(c) of the Act, I make the
following recommended:
ORDER 5
The complaint is hereby dismissed in its entirety.
102.48 of the Rules and Regulations be adopted by the Board and become
its findings, conclusions, and Order, and all objections thereto shall be
deemed waived for all purposes.
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