Massachusetts Institute of Technology

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

May 13, 1965

152 N.L.R.B. 598 (N.L.R.B. 1965)

598 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
excluded employees in the Service Building and other locations. More-
over, they work in close proximity occasionally with many, and regu-
larly with a substantial number of, other employees who are engaged
in similar duties. Therefore, in all the circumstances, particularly the
functional integration of the work of the employees in the unit sought
with that of other employees, we find that the unit is not appropriate,
and we shall dismiss the petition."
[The Board dismissed the petition.]
a Sears, Roebuck k Co., 149 NLRB 1525.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Research , Develop-
ment and Technical Employees Union , Petitioner . Case No.
1-RC-8166. May 13,1965
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, as amended, a hearing in this case was held before
Hearing Officer Orlando Rodio. 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 National
Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers in connection with
this case to a three-member panel [Chairman McCulloch and Members
Brown and Jenkins].
Upon the entire record in this case, including the briefs of the par-
ties, the Board makes the following findings :
The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit consisting of certain employ-
ees working at the Computation Center of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. The Employer, hereinafter also referred to as the
Institute, concedes that it is engaged in commerce within the meaning
of the Act, but contends that since the activities of the Computation
Center are educational rather than commercial in nature, the Board, in
the exercise of its discretion, should not assert jurisdiction in this
proceeding.
The Employer is an independent, nonprofit, educational institution
located at Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is organized into five aca-
demic schools; namely, Architecture and Planning, Engineering,
Humanities and Social Sciences, Management, and Science. There
are about 7,000 students at the Institute, more than 3,500 of whom are
studying for undergraduate degrees. There are also about 800 mem-
bers of the faculty and a supporting teaching staff of 600. The Insti-
tute is located on a residential campus of 120 acres fronting the Charles
152 NLRB No. 64.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 599
River in Cambridge, opposite Boston. In addition to the Institute's
teaching and research laboratories, there are also a number of inter-
departmental laboratories which were established to facilitate research
in fields crossing the lines of traditional disciplines. One of these
interdepartmental laboratories is the Computation Center, the facility
involved herein.
The Computation Center was established in 1956 as a joint under-
taking of the Institute and the International Business Machines Cor-
poration, herein referred to as IBM. The operating agreement between
the Institute and IBM provides that the Computation Center shall be
devoted to "education, research and problem solution in the field of
machine methods of data processing." In order further to encourage
the broad goals of the Center, the operating agreement provides that
other institutions of higher learning in the New England area shall be
invited to participate in its program without charge; at the present
time, about 50 colleges and universities utilize the facilities of the Cen-
ter.'- The Center occupies part of the basement, most of the first floor,
and a part of the second floor of Building 26, which is located in the
middle of the campus. The Center was constructed by the Institute
with funds received from IBM, and IBM is the largest financial con-
tributor to the Center. Thus, IBM provides the basic 7094 computer
and its auxiliary equipment, assumes responsibility for the ma;nte-
nance of these machines, provides funds to cover a large part of the
Center's operating expenses, and provides approximately $60,000 per
year to support the IBM Research Appointment Program.2 On the
other hand, the Institute is alone responsible for the operation and
administration of the Center. The director of the Center, Professor
Philip M. Morse, is responsible to the vice president for research
administration of the Institute.
The Computation Center is available to employees of the Institute
for 7 hours per day and to the participating colleges and universities
for a like period. IBM has exclusive use of the Center for its own pur-
poses, namely program and language development, for 7 hours per
day. However, IBM's employees, whom the Petitioner does not seek
to represent, have little, if any, contact with Institute personnel. The
Center is utilized for research primarily by faculty members and by
graduate and undergraduate students working under the supervision
of faculty members. Thus, for example during the period between
July 1 and December 31, 1963, the computers at the Center were used
in connection with 696 problems; 37 percent of these problems were
initiated by members of the faculty of the Institute and participating
'In the 6-month period July through December 1963, the Institute utilized the com-
puters at the Center in connection with 551 problems and for a total of 1,316 hours ; other
universities made such use in connection with 145 problems and for a total of 205 hours.
2 During fiscal 1965 , the Center budgeted $948,000 for operating expenses , of which sum
IBM contributed $ 688,000.
600 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
institutions, and 49 percent were initiated by graduate students; fur-
ther, 41 percent of these problems were related to theses; 6 percent were
related to classroom work; and the remainder to various forms of
research activity. Additionally, during the month of November 1964,
81 applications for use of the Center were approved by the Institute; of
the applicants, 70 were graduate students of the Institute and 11 were
faculty and graduate students of the participating educational
institutions.
In order to make use of the Center, the faculty member or student
must first obtain the approval of the head of his department and then
must file an application with the Center; if a committee of the Center
approves the application, the applicant's material is processed at the
Center, and the applicant receives the results in printed form. The
applicant then makes a report which is submitted to the Center .3 The
faculty member may publish the results or use them in connection with
this teaching; the student may base his thesis on the results of the
research. A portion of the work done at the Center is sponsored,
through the Institute's division of sponsored research, in whole or in
part by Government agencies and commercial firms. Thus, a faculty
member who wishes to obtain financial aid for his research project
consults with the division of sponsored research which submits the
faculty member's proposal to prospective sponsors, including govern-
mental and commercial firms. The division of sponsored research,
which is purely an administrative agency of the Institute, is respon-
sible for negotiating any contracts which may result and for the admin-
istration of all such contracts except those at the Lincoln Laboratory .4
During the period between July 1 and December 31, 1963, 43 percent
of the problems originating at the Institute for which computers at the
center were used were supported through the division of sponsored
research. The Institute pays the salary of faculty members engaged
in sponsored research, and these faculty members may be released from
such teaching duties to allow them more time to work on the projects.
The sponsors receive a copy of the final report prepared by the faculty
member who headed the project, and in many cases scientific reports
based on the research are disseminated. IBM also provides funds for
training for members of the faculty and graduate students who are
known as IBM research associates or assistants.
Between July and December 1963, the computers located at the Cen-
ter were being used in connection with approximately 43 courses at the
S As indicated below, where the project is sponsored by the Government or a commercial
firm, it will also receive a copy of the report; copies of the report are apparently also
given to the department of the university involved.
'Lincoln Laboratory is a project which was undertaken by the Institute exclusively
for the Defense Department. See Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Lincoln
Laboratory), 110 NLRB 1611.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 601
Institute and the other participating institutions, and approximately
half of these courses were concerned directly with the teaching of com-
putation processes and programing methods. The Center also sponsors
a series of seminars which are held during the academic year at which
leading researchers in the fields of machine computation and computer
technology are invited to speak.
Also under the management and operation of the Center are two
other facilities, the so-called project MAC 5 and the cooperative com-
puter laboratory, herein referred to as CCL. Project MAC is located
on Technology Square, adjoining the campus, and contains equipment
similar to that in the Center. It is sponsored by the Office of Naval
Research on behalf of the Advanced Research Project Agency of the
Department of Defense and was established for a specific research
function, namely, the compatible time-sharing system (CTSS).6 The
Center furnishes the personnel who operate project MAC's large IBM
709 computer, its auxiliary equipment, and several other computers
and card-punching equipment. CCL is used primarily by the Insti-
tute's research groups in nuclear science and houses a 709 computer
purchased from IBM. CCL was, however, due to be terminated as of
March 1, 1965.
Section 2 (2) of the Act, which defines the term "employer," does not
expressly exclude educational or research institutions. However, the
legislative history of that section shows clearly that when the 1947
amendments were enacted, Congress was aware of the Board's policy
that "only in exceptional circumstances and in connection with purely
commercial activity of such [nonprofit] organizations have any of the
activities of such organizations or of their employees been considered
as affecting commerce so as to bring them within the National Labor
Relations Act." 7 In the Columbia University case, the Board reem-
phasized its intention not to assert jurisdiction over nonprofit educa-
tional institutions "where the activities involved are non-commercial
in nature and intimately connected with the charitable purposes and
educational activities of the institution." 8 There, the Board decided
that the operation of the Columbia University library was both non-
commercial and intimately connected with the university's educational
purposes, and accordingly declined to assert jurisdiction. On the
6 MAC is an acronym derived from two titles: "Machine-Aided Cognition," which ex-
presses the broad project objective , and "Multiple -Access Computers ," which describes its
major tool.
6 This is a system whereby several problems may be fed into the machine at one time
for solution without having to wait for the computer to solve one problem before another
may be fed into it
7 Rept. No. 510 , 80th Cong , 1st sess. p. 32; 1 Leg. Hist . of the Labor -Management
Relations Act of 1947, 505, 536 See also, Office Employees International Union, Local 11
v. N.L.R.B., 353 U S 313, 318, 319.
6 Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York , 97 NLRB 424, 427.
602 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
other hand, where the activities involved were commercial in the gen-
erally accepted sense of the term, the Board has not exempted the non-
profit institution from the operation of the Act.'
The Petitioner contends that the activities of the Center are of a
commercial character and warrant the assertion of jurisdiction over its
operations. However, as the Center's research program is in our view
an integral part of the Institute's educational function, it would not
effectuate the purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein. Thus;
the Center is owned and operated by the Institute; its purpose is to
provide the Institute and other educational institutions with a facility
for "education, research and problem solution"; the Center is utilized
in connection with courses at the Institute and its operations are other-
wise closely linked with those of the Institute; the Center is utilized
for research primarily by faculty members and students at the Insti-
tute and at other participating universities; the results of research at
the Center contribute directly to the educational function of these insti-
tutions; and while the Center is in large measure supported by IBM,
the employees sought perform no activity directly for the benefit of
IBM or any commercial firms.'°
The Petitioner, in urging that we should assert jurisdiction over the
Center, relies particularly on our decisions in Woods Hole Oceano-
graphic Institution 11 and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Lincoln Laboratory) ." However, the oceanographic institution in
Woods Hole was neither itself a degree-conferring institution nor was
it connected with such institution; virtually its sole function was the
performance of research for the Federal Government. In those cir-
cumstances, the Board found in Woods Hole that the institution was
u See, for example , The Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 92
NLRB 801 (a corporation editing and publishing religious literature ) ; Port Arthur Col-
lege, 92 NLRB 152 (a college operating a commercial radio station).
10 Although IBM employees utilize the Center during one 7-hour shift , as noted, the
Petitioner does not seek these IBM employees and they have virtually no contact with
Institute employees at the Center . Under the operating agreement between IBM and the
Institute , if an employee of the Institute makes or conceives any invention in connection
with the Center ' s machines , IBM receives a nonexclusive , paid-up, royalty-free license
throughout the world to practice such invention ; and, in the event the Institute elects not
to file a patent application on the invention , IBM may file on behalf of the Institute an
appropriate patent application . While under these contract provisions , IBM would
obtain certain benefits from the operations of the Center , we believe that this factor is
outweighed by the educational aspects of the Center ' s operations . In this latter respect,
this case differs materially from California Institute of Technology, 102 NLRB 1402,
where the Board asserted jurisdiction over a wind tunnel operated by the Institute.
There , the tunnel was sponsored , financed , and owned by five aircraft firms, these firms
used the tunnel to test model aircraft ; the staff of the tunnel consulted with the aircraft
companies to determine how to use the tests ; employees of the aircraft companies par-
ticipated in the testing of models ; and the Institute issued an individual report to the
participating companies . It is apparent that there , unlike here , the wind tunnel was oper-
ated substantially for the direct benefit of commercial firms.
11 143 NLRB 568.
'l Supra, footnote 4
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 603
"literally in the business of doing business with the Federal Govern-
ment" in much the same fashion as a profit-making concern, and that
its activity was beneficial to private industry and exerted a substantial
impact upon commerce. Here, however, the Center's research activities
are, as noted, intimately connected with, and an integral part of, the
educational program of the Institute and other concededly nonprofit
educational institutions. In Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Lincoln Laboratory), supra, the Board, relying on the facts that the
Institute undertook the Lincoln Laboratory project exclusively for the
Defense Department, the project was wholly financed by the Federal
Government and was classified, and the research was performed in a
laboratory situated 18 miles from the Institute's campus and was not
intimately associated with the Institute's educational programs, found
that the Lincoln Laboratory met the Board's standards for assertion
of jurisdiction over establishments affecting national defense. Here,
however, it is not contended, and the record does not show, the Center
has any impact on national defense.
More apposite, we believe, is the Board's recent decision in Univer-
sity of Miami, Institute of Marine Science Division,13 where the Board
refused to assert jurisdiction over a vessel operated for research pur-
poses by the University's Institute of Marine Science. Distinguishing
the Woods Hole case, the Board found that although the Institute was
substantially supported by the Federal Government, its research activ-
ities "contribute directly to its curriculum and program for the prac-
tical training of scientists," and therefore, the research program was
"an integral aspect of the Institute's overall educational function."
In reaching this conclusion, the Board relied, among other things, on
the facts, also present here, that the operations of the Institute were
controlled by the university; all research projects were integrated with
the university's educational program and had an "educational connota-
tion"; ideas for research projects originated with the professional staff;
and research at the Institute was frequently used as a basis for sem-
inars and for use in dissertations.
On the basis of the foregoing and the entire record, we conclude that
the activities of the Center are primarily educational rather than com-
mercial in character. We find, accordingly, that it would not effectuate
the purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein, and we shall there-
fore dismiss the petition.14
[The Board dismissed the petition.]
13 146 NLRB 1448.
14 University of Miami, Institute of Marine Science , supra; Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation of Portland, Oregon, 146 NLRB 20.