Montgomery Ward & Co, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Feb 10, 1950

88 N.L.R.B. 615 (N.L.R.B. 1950)

In the Matter Of MONTGOMERY WARD & COMPANY, INCORPORATED,
EMPLOYER and INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL
WORKERS, LOCAL 49, AFL , PETITIONER
Case No. 36-RC-266.-Decided February 10, 1950
DECISION
AND
ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before Patrick H.
Walker, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the
hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the National Labor Relations Act.
2. The labor organization involved claims to represent employees of
the Employer.'
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9 (c)
(1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons :
The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit limited to certain repairmen
employed at the Employer's Portland, Oregon, mail order branch.
The Employer contends that such a unit is inappropriate.
The Employer's building in Portland houses both its retail store
and its mail order branch. The repair service department, which is
part of the mail order branch, is devoted to the repair of appliances
for the retail store and for the mail order branch. Of the approxi-
mately 40 employees in the repair service department, the Petitioner
,seeks to represent only the appliance repairmen, 14 in number; the
remainder are watch repairmen, craters, stock clerks, and other clerical
employees.
The appliance repairmen repair every type of mechanical item sold
by the Employer, including radios, washing machines, garden tractors,
1 Warehousemen's Union, Local No. 206, International Brotherhood of Teamsters , Chauf-
feurs, Stablemen & Helpers of America, AFL, herein called the Teamsters, and International
Jewelry Workers , Local 41, AFL, herein called the Jewelry workers, both of which represent
employees of the Employer, were notified of the hearing in this case but did not intervene.
88 NLRB No. 111.
615
616 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
typewriters, bicycles, furniture, guns, percolators, and a great variety
of other small electrical and mechanical appliances. Although much
of their work requires merely the use of a screw driver or a wrench,
some of it necessitates the use of more complex equipment, such as
voltage and continuity meters, lathes, grinders and drill presses. It
does not appear that the Employer follows any apprenticeship pro-
gram.2 The head of the department said that he requires applicants
for repairmen jobs to have had experience in the work, and two repair-
men testified that they had had some specialized schooling in repair
work as well as several years' previous experience. Two other repair-
men have been promoted from jobs as packer and correspondence
adjustor, respectively, and another was transferred from a selling job.
Most of this repair work is done in the main repair shop, which is
located on the ninth floor of the building; the repairmen who work
outside report to, and receive their assignments from, an office on the
first floor. There is also a shop on the second floor where customers
bring equipment which needs repair; some repair work is also done
by these repairmen in the Employer's various warehouses. The repair
department stocks 5,500 items in its parts service unit, and repairs
approximately 2,500 pieces of merchandise each month. Equipment
requiring a complete overhaul is usually returned to the manufacturer.
There is no interchange of personnel between the repair department
and other departments. All employees of the Employer share the
same employee benefits, such as purchase discounts, insurance plans,
and vacations.
In 1940, the Board found appropriate a unit of all the employees
engaged in handling merchandise and doing warehouse work in the
Employer's mail order branch,3 and, following an election, certified
the Teamsters as the bargaining representative of such employees .4
The Employer has signed contracts with the Teamsters since 1941 cov-
ering these employees, including the repairmen here in question.
However, these repairmen have never processed grievances through
the Teamsters, and, in 1948, they negotiated a wage increase for them-
selves in excess of that obtained by the Teamsters. The Teamsters
'The Assistant Director of the Oregon State Apprentice Council testified that in 1944
an apprenticeship program was established for appliance repairmen and for radio repair-
men. He said that this program required 2 years' training for a man to qualify as a
journeyman appliance repairman in one manufacturer ' s line of goods and 4 for a journeyman
radio repairman , and that some of the department stores and appliance stores in the area
had adopted and were following these apprenticeship programs . This Council is a division
of the Oregon Bureau of Labor which , in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Appren-
ticeship of the United States Department of Labor , develops and formulates standards of
apprenticeship for the training of skilled workers in industry.
8 Montgomery Ward d Company , 24 NLIIB 967.
4Id., 26 NLRB 489.
MONTGOMERY WARD & COMPANY, INCORPORATED 617
did not intervene in this proceeding to advance a claim to represent
these repairmen. In 1947, the Board found a unit of porters and ma-
trons in the mail order branch to be appropriate upon a petition by
Building Service Employees International Union, Local 49, AFL, the
Teamsters having relinquished their claim to represent the porters."
Watch repairmen were excluded from the 1940 unit determination, and
have since been represented by the Jewelry Workers.
Contrary to the Petitioner's assertion, we do not believe that the
skill possessed and exercised by these appliance repairmen points to
such a strong community of interests within the proposed unit as to
warrant its severance from the established more inclusive bargaining
unit. While it is true that a few of the 14 appliance repairmen are
highly skilled, it is equally clear that others regularly perform work
requiring very little training and experience. We have twice passed
on the alleged craft status of appliance repairmen having comparable
skills and have concluded in each instance that they were not suffi-
ciently skilled to constitute a separate craft unit.6 Nor does establish-
ment by the State of Oregon of an apprenticeship program for
appliance and radio repairmen confer craft status on these repairmen
in the absence of any evidence that the Employer has adopted the
program or that they otherwise meet the usual high skill requirements
of a regular training program. It is not widespread recognition of the
high skill incident to a particular occupation which ordinarily proves
(although it does indicate) the craft status of a particular group of
employees, but rather the fact that the employees involved do possess,
and in their work exercise, that high skill. Because the appliance
repairmen here involved are not craftsmen, they should not now be
severed as a separate craft unit.
Nor do the appliance repairmen constitute a functionally distinct
departmental unit, for the Repair Service Department also includes
other repairmen, as well as craters and clerks, categories which the
Petitioner does not wish to represent.
Accordingly, as the proposed unit is neither a craft group nor a
functionally distinct departmental group, we conclude that it is inap-
propriate for collective bargaining purposes. We shall, therefore,
dismiss the petition.
ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition herein be, and it hereby is,
dismissed.
° Montgomery Ward & Co., Incorporated, 72 NLRB 1418.
° Retail Employee Relations Commission , 80 NLRB 1473; Montgomery Ward & Company,
Inc., 82 NLRB 1059.
,618 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
MEMBER HOUSTON, dissenting :
I do not agree with the majority's determination that the unit
,sought by the Petitioner is inappropriate. "Appliance repairman"
is a recently developed job classification in the department store in-
dustry, and the Board's unit determinations as to such employees have
not been entirely consistent. In the unit established by the Board in
1940 at the Employer's mail order branch herein involved appliance
repairmen were included with warehousemen, checkers, receiving
clerks, freight elevator operators, packers, porters, stock clerks, and
other employees handling merchandise.' In later cases, where no
other labor organization sought to represent such repairmen, the Board
has included them in units of sales employees of department stores."
Recently the Board refused to sever appliance repairmen in two de-
partment stores from an association-wide unit for sales and other em-
ployees.9 Moreover, in two recent cases, one of which involved the
Employer's Phoenix, Arizona, store, where the unions proposed the
inclusion of appliance repairmen with warehousemen, the Board ex-
eluded such repairmen, stating that "their duties and interests are
different from those of warehouse employees." 10 Thus, by these re-
cent standards, repairmen are inappropriately included in the cur-
rently recognized unit, which was established largely on the basis of
the extent of organization and union membership eligibility, factors
which we can no longer consider controlling in making unit deter-
minations.- Yet my colleagues refuse to grant this group the op-
portunity to separate from the established unit even though the Team-
sters did not intervene in this proceeding with a claim to represent the
.group.
The majority deems itself bound by the Board's decision in the
case involving the Employer's Kansas City, Kansas, store .12 How-
ever, the Petitioner in the present case has proved a distinction be-
tween the cases. In the Kansas City case the Board emphasized the
fact that appliance repairmen, though skilled, belonged to no recog-
nized craft. Here the Petitioner has established that these* appliance
repairmen have achieved formal recognition by the State as an ap-
prenticeable craft.
' Montgomery Ward & Company, 24 NLRB 967.
8 The P. B. Magrane Store, Inc., 84 NLRB 345; Phelps Dodge Mercantile Company, 78
NLRB 179; Louis Pizitz Dry Goods Company, 71 NLRB 579; Sears, Roebuck and Company,
66 NLRB 285.
° Retail Employee Relations Commission , 80 NLRB 1473.
10 Montgomery Ward & Company, 85 NLRB 976; Miller and Rhoads, Incorporated, 86
NLRB 625.
11 Section 9 (c) (5).
12 Montgomery Ward & Company, Inc., 82 NLRB 1059.
MONTGOMERY WARD & COMPANY, INCORPORATED 619
It is not requisite, however, that we find these men to be craftsmen
in order to grant them separate representation. We customarily con-
cede the right to select a separate bargaining representative to a group
of employees who are identifiable as a group, are skilled workmen, and
perform a separate group function, as is true of the repairmen herein,
and where no other union is contending for inclusion of the group in
a more comprehensive unit. Only recently we have granted separate
representation to "Ediphone" servicemen, apart from the sales per-
sonnel in a retail establishment; 13 to radio, phonograph, and televi-
sion repairmen in a wholesale appliance store; 14 and to window trim-
mers in a large department store Y5 It is difficult to see why the unit
sought by the Petitioner herein is any less appropriate than these.
Confirming the propriety of granting an opportunity for separate
representation to the repairmen in this case is the fact that the Em-
ployer has bargained separately with these repairmen, settling griev-
ances with them, and granting them wage increases higher than those
negotiated by the Teamsters. To hold that, despite this recognition
by the Employer, the bargaining history of the Teamsters requires
the dismissal of the present petition is, in my opinion, unreasonable.
To deny these men who, as a group, meet our tests of identifiability,
homogeneity of skills and working conditions, and severability of func-
tion, of their right to designate a separate bargaining representative
because they belong to no traditional craft, is even less reasonable.
Upon the entire record, I would find that the unit sought by the Peti-
tioner is appropriate for collective bargaining purposes, and that an
election should be directed.
13 Edwin C. Barnes and Bros ., 87 NLRB 1317.
14 General Electric Supply Corporation , 83 NLRB 1135.
15 Goldblatt Brothers , Inc., 86 NLRB 914.