National Telecommunications, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Nov 29, 1974

215 N.L.R.B. 184 (N.L.R.B. 1974)

184 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
National Telecommunications , Inc. and Communica-
tions Workers of America , AFL-CIO, Petitioner.
Case 3-RC-5855
November 29, 1974
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS FANNING, KENNEDY,
AND PENELLO
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing
was held before Hearing Officer Bruce D. Rosenstein
of the National Labor Relations Board. Following the
close of the hearing the Regional Director for Region
3 transferred this case to the Board for decision.
Thereafter, the Employer filed a brief.
The Board has reviewed the rulings of the Hearing
Officer made at the hearing and find that they are free
from prejudicial error. The rulings 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 Act and it will effectuate the purposes
of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein. The parties
stipulated that the Employer is a Connecticut corpora-
tion and is a wholly owned subsidiary of National Tele-
phone Company. The record discloses that the Em-
ployer is engaged in the business of leasing, installing,
and maintaining commercial telephone equipment
from facilities located in Buffalo, New York, and other
locations and the parties stipulated that during the past
year the Employer derived gross revenue in excess of
$50,000 in the course and conduct of its business, and
purchased and received goods valued in excess of $50,-
000 directly from points located outside the State of
New York.
2. The parties further stipulated that the Petitioner,
which claims to represent certain employees of the Em-
ployer, is a labor organization as defined in the Act.
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning
the representation of certain employees of the Em-
ployer within the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6)
and (7) of the Act.
4. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of all
employees including installation and service employees
at the Employer's Buffalo, New York, branch, but ex-
cluding all office clerical employees, salesmen, profes-
sional employees, guards, watchmen, and supervisors
as defined in the Act.
The Employer disagrees with the scope and the com-
position of the requested unit. The Employer contends
that the smallest appropriate unit must include all the
branches in its eastern division and that such a unit
should not include servicemen. The Employer further
contends that the installation and service managers and
the installation and service foremen should be excluded
from the unit, while the Petitioner takes no position
regarding these categories of employees.
As noted above, the Employer is a wholy owned
subsidiary of National Telephone Company. It is also
engaged in the same business as National Telephone
Company, and in fact functions as a single company
with the same administrative organization. The record
reveals that the only reason for the existence of a sepa-
rate corporate name for Employer was the unavailabil-
ity of the name National Telephone Company in New
York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey at the time of
Employer's incorporation.
We therefore find that the factual considerations
with regard to the appropriateness of the unit in Na-
tional Telephone Company, Inc., 215 NLRB No. 17,
issued today, are equally applicable here. Thus, in
agreement with the Employer, we find, for the reasons
set forth in the National Telephone Company decision,
that any unit less than divisionwide in scope would be
inappropriate. In so concluding, we predicate our
determination in this case and in the related National
Telephone Company, Inc., case on the particular facts
in these cases. We make no determination generally as
to what would constitute an appropriate unit of another
employer's employees in what is described as the inter-
connect industry. In view of our unit determination, we
do not reach the unit composition question concerning
the inclusion or exclusion of servicemen. Nor do we
find it necessary to decide whether any of the categories
of employees mentioned above are supervisors within
the meaning of the Act.
Accordingly, we find the unit requested herein inap-
propriate. As the Petitioner has not indicated a desire
to proceed to an election in a broader unit, we shall
dismiss its petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be,
and it hereby is, dismissed.
MEMBER FANNING, dissenting:
In view of the facts in this case, it is not difficult to
discern why the majority wrote its opinion in the com-
panion case, National Telephone Compnay, Inc., 215
NLRB No. 17, issued today, in which it found only a
divisionwide unit appropriate and then cited that case
to dismiss the petition herein. In my dissent in the
companion case, I pointed out that the majority's opin-
ion therein will deprive the employees in Hartford of
any opportunity to exercise the rights guaranteed under
Section 7 of the Act. Here the result reached by the
majority is even more absurd.
215 NLRB No. 18
NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Thus, as in the companion case, the branch manager
has local autonomy or control over the employees and
their day-to-day problems. In addition, however, here,
unlike in the companion case where there is some evi-
dence of interchange, although minimal, there is no
evidence whatsoever of temporary transfers to or from
the Buffalo branch. Moreover, the geographical separa-
tion of the other branches from Buffalo is even greater
than in the companion case for Buffalo is 149 miles
from Syracuse, the nearest branch; 391 miles from
Hartford, the division headquarters; 356 miles from
Philadelphia; 356 miles from Camden; 396 miles from
Bridgeport; 434 miles from Manchester, New Hamp-
shire; and 441 miles from Providence, Rhode Island.
These distances can hardly be considered the type of
geographical proximity which would be a bar to finding
a single-branch unit inappropriate. As in the compan-
ion case, there is no history of collective bargaining and
no union seeks a broader unit.
In conclusion , all the factors , including local au-
185
tonomy vested in the branch manager, lack of inter-
change , and geographical separation that usually make
a single-location unit appropriate are present. Given
these factors, I fail to see how it can be said that the
Buffalo employees have any community of interest, as
normally defined by the Board, with the employees of
the other branches unless that community of interest is
determined solely by the fact that they work for the
same company. If the Buffalo unit sought herein does
not constitute an appropriate single-location unit of a
multilocation enterprise, I frankly do not see how the
majority will ever again find a single -location unit ap-
propriate. In my opinion, the majority's opinion not
only deprives the Buffalo employees of any opportunity
to exercise their Section 7 rights, but makes a mockery
of Board precedent and the statute's direction to frame
units to "assure to employees the fullest freedom in
exercising the rights guaranteed by the Act." I would
find the Buffalo unit appropriate.