Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jul 2, 1946

69 N.L.R.B. 258 (N.L.R.B. 1946)

In the Matter Of PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY, EMPLOYER and
UTILITY WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA, LOCAL 134, CIO, PETI-
TIONER
Case No. 20-R-1,549-Decided July ,`., 19446
Mr. Robert H. Gerdes, Mrs. Anne McDonald Christenson, and Mr.
J. Paul St. Sure, of San Francisco, Calif., for the Employer.
Gladstein, Andersen, Resner, Sawyer & Edjses, by Mr. Bertram
Edises, of Oakland, Calif., for the Petitioner.
Mrs. Augusta Spaulding, of counsel to the Board.
DECISION
AND
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
Upon a petition duly filed, hearing in this case was held at San
Francisco, California, on May 10, 1946, before Robert E. Tillman,
Trial Examiner. The Trial Examiner's rulings made at the hearing
are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in the case, the National Labor Relations
Board makes the following :
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. THE BUSINESS OF THE EMPLOYER
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a public utility corporation
organized under the laws of California, is engaged in the generation,
buying, transmitting, selling and distribution of electrical energy,
natural gas, and manufactured gas in the central and northern por-
tion of the State of California. It sells gas and electric power to a
large number of manufacturing industries engaged in interstate and
foreign commerce and to the United States Government, which oper-
utes post offices and military installations located in the area served.
The Employer also supplies power to the San Francisco and Oakland
airports,.ship building and repair concerns, steamship lines, railroads,
telephone and telegraph companies, and radio broadcasting stations.
We find that the Employer is engaged in commerce within the
meaning of the National Labor Relations Act.'
1 See Matter of Pacaec Gas and Eleetrw Company, 61 N L R B 564, 61 N. L R B.
468, 57 N. L R B. 1129, 55 N. L R. B 427.
69 N. L. R. B., No. 29.
258
PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY 259
II. THE ORGANIZATION INVOLVED
The Petitioner is a labor organization affiliated with the Congress
of Industrial Organizations, claiming to represent employees of the
Employer.
III. THE QUESTION CONCERNING REPRESENTATION
The Employer refuses to recognize the Petitioner as the exclusive
bargaining representative of the employees concerned, contending
that the unit proposed by the Petitioner is not all appropriate bar-
gaining unit.
We find that a question affecting commerce has arisen concerning
the representation of employees of the Employer, within the meaning
of Section 9 (c) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
IV. THE APPROPRIATE UNIT
The Petitioner contends that system dispatchers in the Employer's
central load dispatching office at Oakland, California, excluding the
chief system dispatcher and the assistant chief system dispatcher,
constitute an appropriate bargaining group, either to be joined with
the already existing unit established for physical employees in the
East Bay Division 2 or to be set up as a separate unit apart from other
employees of the Employer. Reiterating its general contention that
a system-wide unit is the only appropriate unit for its employees, the
Employer urges (1) that system dispatchers are managerial employ-
ees and therefore should not be included in any bargaining unit; (2)
that the inclusion of system dispatchers in the unit already estab-
lished for physical forces in the East Bay Division would be contrary
to the unit pattern established for its employees in prior representa-
tion cases ; and (3) that the system-wide duties of system dispatchers
makes it inadvisable that they be represented by either of the two
labor organizations 3 which presently represents employees in the Em-
ployer's several divisions and departments with whom system dis-
patchers necessarily have work contacts.
The Employer is a public utility serving the central and northern
portions of California with gas and electricity. For administrative
purposes the Employer's electric operations are divided among 13
geographical areas known as divisions, each with an administrative
head. In addition to the operations carried on locally, through these
geographical areas, the Employer maintains certain over-all facili-
ties through its General Offices, which have their headquarters for
2 Matter of Pacific Gas and Electric Company , 40 N. L. R B 591 , 41 N L R B 1182
3 The Petitioner and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, herein called the
I. B E. W , have been certified bN the Boaid as bargaining representative of employees in
the several respective divisions and departments of the Employer s extensive utility system
260 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD)
the most part in San Francisco and render services throughout the
Employer's system.
The Department of Electrical Operations and Maintenance is a
general or over-all department of the General Offices, functioning on
behalf of all the geographical divisions and operating departments,
of the Employer under the supervision and management of the engi-
neer of electrical operations. The department is subdivided into
two parts, one dealing with operations and one with production, with
a head man in immediate charge of each part of the work . The oper-
ations subdivision is broken down into three sections, known as load
statistics, analysis of operating equipment, and system dispatching.
Load statistics is chiefly concerned with the accumulation , correc-
tion, and posting of production records of the Employer's power
plants, the keeping of daily reports which show the load growth and
demand upon the plants, and the setting of patterns for estimating
the amount of water release at the hydroelectric plants. Analysis
of operating equipment is chiefly concerned with the designing, check-
ing, and testing of protective devices on transmission lines and the
operating efficiency of the telephone communications system, on which
dispatchers necessarily depend for their operations. The system dis-
patching section, employees of which are particularly concerned in
this proceeding, is the nerve center of the entire system of the Em-
ployer. This section determines the electrical output of all power
plants, governs the water supplies of hydro-electric plants. and con-
trols the flow of current over the transmission lines.
System dispatchers, or load dispatchers as they were formerly
called, occupy a room in the Employer's East Bay office building at
Oakland. California. There are nine regular dispatchers and two
relief dispatchers. Regular dispatchers work in three rotating shifts
with two to three operators on a shift. They wear head phones during
the greater part of their working hours and, by telephonic contact with
power plants and substations throughout the system, they control
the production of electric energy at the power plants and the flow of
current over the transmission lines. They are notified of trouble oc-
curring throughout the system and receive requests to clear lines.
In response to these requests , they issue the necessary instructions.
They direct the routing of power over the various circuits and the re-
routing of loads . Their directions are carried out by operators in
power houses and dispatchers in the switching centers over the Em-
ployer's entire system. System dispatchers type a running account
of all telephone conversations held during the course of the day, which
thus provides for their Employer a written record showing the nature
of the trouble reported to them, the instruction given by them to
PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY 261
whom, where, and when. System dispatchers base the instructions
which they issue other employees upon written operating instructions
which are prepared for their use under the guidance of the head of
their department . They are trained specialists . No other employees
of the Employer do comparable work.
The two relief dispatchers serve during sick and vacation leave
of the regular operators . The relief work does not occupy their
entire time and they are given clerical work to be performed in either
the Oakland or the San Francisco office of their Employer.'
System dispatchers are not supervisory employees and make no
recommendations affecting the status of any other employees. The
daily operating report which they type in the course of their work
necessarily records errors made by other employees in carrying out
their instructions, of the employee's explanations of the error, and
the results that the error may have caused in the Employer' s opera-
tions. The records of errors so made are the basis of an independent
investigation which may result in the transfer or discharge of the
employee -responsible for the error. The nature of the Employer's
operations and the importance of the work done requires the utmost
reliance upon the dependability of employees.
It is clear that system dispatchers perform specialized technical
functions which are in a sense administrative in nature. The in-
structions which they transmit, however, are based upon an elaborate
set of rules meticulously compiled. System dispatchers serve as con-
duits through which these instructions are relayed to employees in
the field. They exercise skill. They do not determine policies. The
duties which system dispatchers perform with respect to reporting
errors are monitorial in kind, comparable to those performed by
guards and watchmen, whom the Board has found properly constitute
appropriate bargaining units. For this reason we reject the Em-
ployer's contention that system dispatchers are allied with manage-
ment and may not be included in any bargaining unit.°
The Petitioner would add system dispatchers to the unit already
established for employees of the East Bay Division, on the theory
that these employees are physically within this geographical division
of the Employers operations and work in the building which houses
these divisional employees While it is true that system dispatchers
work physically within the East Bay Division, they are administra-
tively independent of the East Bay Division and serve the Employer's
° Certain employees in load statistics and in the analysis sections ale available as relief
dispatchers in emergencies , but there is no policy of inter-transfer among the three sections
of the operating division
5 Matter of West Penn Power Company , 53 N L R B 1356 Matter of Union Electric
Ciampany of Missouri . 59 N L R B 276
262 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
system as a whole. In accordance with the scheme which we have
adopted in establishing separate units for homogeneous groups of
employees in separate administrative sectors of the Employer's opera-
tions, we will place system dispatchers in a unit apart from employees
in the East Bay Division."
The Employer contends that strife and contention among its em-
ployees will necessarily result if system dispatchers are represented by
either the Petitioner or the I. B. E. W., since these two organizations,
vying with each other in gaining recognition as bargaining repre-
sentatives of employees in the several sectors of its operations, vari-
ously represent the physical employees, with whom system dispatchers
necessarily have most frequent contacts. In the instant case, how-
ever, we do not believe that this would justify excluding system dis-
patchers from the provisions of Section 9 (c) of the Act.
The Employer and the Petitioner agree that the chief system dis-
patcher and the assistant chief system dispatcher are supervisory
employees and should be excluded from the bargaining unit. We shall
exclude them. _
We find that all system dispatchers in the central load dispatching
office of the Employer at Oakland, California, excluding the chief
system dispatcher, assistant chief system dispatcher, and all other
supervisory employees with authority to hire, promote, discharge,
discipline, or otherwise effect changes in the status of employees, or
effectively recommend such action, constitute a unit appropriate for
the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section
9 (b) of the Act.
V. THE DETERMINATION OF REPRESENTATIVES
The I. B. E. W.. the labor organization presently representing other
employees in units heretofore found to be appropriate for bargain-
ing, as noted in footnote 3, supra, submitted proof of its interest
among employees in the appropriate unit. Although served with
notice of hearing in this proceeding, it did not appear. For this rea-
son, we will make no provision that the I. B. E. W. participate in the
election which we will now direct. If, however, the I. B. E. W. notify
the Regional Director, within 5 days of the date of the issuance of
this Decision and Direction of Election, that it desires to participate
with the Petitioner in the election, it may appear upon the ballot.
We shall direct that the question concerning representation which
has arisen be resolved by an election by secret ballot, subject to the
limitations and additions set forth in the Direction.
"Matter of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, 44 N . L. R. B. 665.
PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
263
As part of the investigation to ascertain representatives for the
purposes of collective bargaining with Pacific Gas and Electric Com-
pany, San Francisco. California, an election by secret ballot shall be
conducted as early as possible, but not later than thirty (30) days
from the date of this Direction, under the direction and supervision
of the Regional Director for the Twentieth Region, acting in this
matter as agent for the National Labor Relations Board, and subject
to Article III, Sections 10 and 11, of National Labor Relations Board
Rules and Regulations-Series 3, as amended, among the employees
in the unit found appropriate in Section IV, above, who were em-
ployed during the pay-period immediately preceding the date of this
Direction, including employees who did not work during said pay-roll
period because they were ill or on vacation or temporarily laid off,
and including employees in the armed forces of the United States who
present themselves in person at the polls, but excluding those employ-
ees who have since quit or been discharged for cause and have not been
rehired or reinstated prior to the date of the election, to determine
whether or hot they desire to be represented by Utility Workers Union
of America, Local 1347, CIO, for the purposes of collective bargaining.