Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Co., Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jul 30, 1948

78 N.L.R.B. 814 (N.L.R.B. 1948)

In the Matter of SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE , AND TELEGRAPH COM-
PANY, INC., EMPLOYER and CHARLES G. HOLDITCH, ET AL., PETI-
TIONERS and COMMUNICATION WORKERS OF AMERICA , SOUTHERN
DIVISION, No. 49, UNION
Case No. 10-RD-13.-Decided July, 30, 1948
DECISION
AND
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
Upon an amended petition for decertification duly filed, hearing in
this case was held at Atlanta, Georgia, on March 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8,
1948, before M. A. Prowell, 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 the case,2 the National Labor Relations
Board 3 makes the following :
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. THE BUSINESS OF THE EMPLOYER
The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the
National Labor Relations Act.
1 The Union moved to dismiss the petition on the ground that the Board does not have
authority to entertain a petition for decertification of a "splinter" group unless the Board
has under consideration questions relating to the over-all unit previously certified. In
Matter of Illinois Bell Telephone Company, 77 N L. R. B 1073, decided June 8, 1948,
the Board entertained a similar petition and directed an election in a group of engineers
who had previously been a part of a recognized unit, holding that in determining the
propriety of the proposed smaller unit , the same principles of severance apply as in certifi-
cation cases . The principles are equally applicable to the instant case involving a group of
employees in a larger unit previously certified by the Board and we accordingly overrule
the union ' s motion to dismiss the petition.
2 Requests by the Employer and the Union for oral argument are denied inasmuch as the
record , in our opinion , adequately presents the issues and positions of the parties.
3 Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the National Labor Relations Act, the
Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-man panel consisting
of the undersigned Board Members [ Houston, Reynolds , and Gray].
78 N. L. R. B., No. 100.
814
SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY 815
II. THE PARTIES INVOLVED
The Petitioners are employees of the Employer and assert that the
Union is no longer the representative, as defined in Section 9 (a) of
the amended Act, of the Employer's employees designated in the
amended petition.
The Union, an unaffiliated labor organization, is recognized by the
Employer as the exclusive bargaining representative of the employees
designated in the petition, among others.
III. THE QUESTION CONCERNING REPRESENTATION
- A question of representation exists concerning the representation
of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9 (c) (1)
and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
IV. THE APPROPRIATE UNIT; DETERMINATION OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Petitioners request that a decertification election be held among
the engineers, junior engineers, student engineers, and engineering
fieldmen, throughout the Company, contending that these employees
are professional employees and together constitute an appropriate unit
separate from the unit established by Board decision 4 and covered by
a series of collective bargaining contracts. The Union denies that
these employees are professional employees and contends that they
do not constitute an appropriate unit. The Employer takes a position
substantially in accord with that of the Petitioners.
The Employer is engaged in the business of furnishing telephone
service throughout nine States. There are approximately 49,000
persons employed by the Company, of whom approximately 550 are
engineers and engineering fieldmen comprising the unit requested by
the Petitioners.
Following the Board certification in 1944, in which the Board found
appropriate an industrial unit including, among others, the engineers
in question, the Employer negotiated a contract 5 with the Southern
Federation of Telephone Workers, the predecessor to the Union in
this case. The unit has remained unchanged in character to the pres-
ent time and the engineers have participated fully in the bargaining
activities.
All the engineering forces are responsible to the chief engineer, who
in turn is responsible to the operating vice president. The Engineer-
ing Department is divided according to the functions to be performed
4 Matter of Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, 55 N L R B 1058.
5 None of the parties asserts that any contract is a bar to a present election.
816 - DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD -
as follows : general engineering, traffic engineering, and plant engi-
neering.
Engineers in the general engineering department are charged with
the responsibility of designing plans from an over-all `standpoint so
that the facilities of the Employer will- meet the requirements for tele-
phone service with respect to existing and future installations.
Engineers in the traffic department are responsible for the engineer-
ing plans and studies relating to volume and distribution and related
fundamental plans for the lay-out of existing facilities and new facili-
ties. Some of these engineers are assigned periodically to various
district offices.
Engineers in the traffic department are responsible for the engineer-
of plans and for the installation of equipment as applied in the field.
The four categories requested .by the Petitioners are employed in
the three departments mentioned above. There are no sharp lines,
of distinction between the positions of the four categories of engineers
as to responsibilities or pay. In general the most difficult work is done
by the engineers and the least difficult by the engineering fieldmen. In
the group of engineers, junior engineers, and fieldmen, approximately
69 percent are either college graduates or have had some college edu-
cation. All of the student engineers are college graduates and hold
engineering degrees. Some of the engineers belong to professional
engineering societies and a few are licensed by the various- States in
which the Employer operates. Such licenses are not required by the
Employer. Because communication engineering as such is taught in
very few colleges, the Employer expects to, and does, provide inten-
sive classroom and on-the-job training for its engineering employees.
The record establishes that the work of the engineers, junior en-
gineers, and student engineers is predominantly intellectual and varied,
and that their output cannot be standardized in relation to a given
period of time. The projects on which they are engaged require sub-
stantial portions of the type of knowledge usually acquired in scientific
courses in institutions of higher education, principally in the field of
electrical engineering. To a lesser extent, the work requires some
knowledge of civil and mechanical engineering, higher mathematics,
and economics. Because of the magnitude of the Employer's opera-
tions, the engineering work has been organized on an assembly-line
basis by departments and smaller groups within departments, each
group performing a specific task on each engineering plan. Student
engineers and newly hired junior engineers are assigned to an experi-
enced engineer until they are sufficiently trained by class-room study
and experience to work more independently. Based on research, infor-
mation supplied from other sources, and personal investigation of con-
SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY 817
-ditions at the site of the project, the engineers must exercise inde-
pendent judgment and discretion in working out their part of a proj-
ect. Their decisions are necessarily limited to the extent that they
must conform wherever possible to tested and proved requirements as
set forth in the extensive Bell System Practices. Any substantial
variation or innovation must be approved by the engineer's supervisor.
The Bell System Practices, consisting of many volumes, represent a
codification of yeas` of experience, experimentation, and research on
the part of telephone engineers. They are as indispensable to the Em-
ployer's telephone engineers as are the standard textbooks and man-
uals to the civil or mechanical engineer. Only engineers having a
thorough knowledge of the Employer's equipment, its capabilities and
limitations, and an understanding of the over-all engineering problems
in the communications industry, could make intelligent use of these
practices.
The engineering fieldman works on only the simplest of engineering
problems, serving more as a fact-finder for the engineer or junior
,engineer. He is frequently recruited from a highly skilled craft job
but is not generally considered to be as promising engineering material
as a student engineer.. His work is more manual and routine than that
of the engineers and does not require the advanced scientific type of
knowledge in any field of engineering. If a fieldman demonstrates
outstanding ability in the direction of engineering, the Employer gives
him an opportunity to study and frequently promotes him to the posi-
tion of junior engineer. The Petitioners concede that this category is
a borderline case and may not meet the requirements of the Act's
definition of a professional employee, as set forth in Section 2 (12).
From the entire record in this case, it appears that the work required
of the engineers, junior engineers, and student engineers in this case
is of the same caliber as that required of the plant engineers in Matter
of Illinois Bell Telephone Company, supra. In that case, we found
the four categories of plant engineers to be professional employees
within the meaning of Section 2 (12) of the amended Act. It does not
appear, however, that the engineering fieldmen in the instant case meet
such requirements and therefore would not properly come within a
unit of professional employees. Accordingly, we find that engineers,
junior engineers, and student engineers throughout the Employer's
system, excluding engineering fieldmen and supervisors, may consti-
tute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within
the meaning of Section 9 (b) of the Act.
We shall direct that an election by secret ballot be held among the
engineers, junior engineers, and student engineers employed by the
818 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Employer. If the employees in this voting group do not select the
Union, the Union will be decertified as to them ; if, on the other hand,
they select the Union, they will be taken to have indicated their desire
to be included in the unit with the other non-supervisory employees of
the Employer now represented by the Union.
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
As part of the investigation to ascertain representatives for the
purposes of collective bargaining with Southern Bell Telephone and
Telegraph Company, Inc., an election by secret ballot shall be con-
ducted 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 Tenth Region, and subject to Sections 203.61
and 203.62 of National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regula-
tions-Series 5, among the employees in the voting group described in
Section IV, above, who were employed during the pay-roll 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, but excluding those employees
who have since quit or been discharged for cause and have not been
rehired or reinstated prior to the date of the election , and also exclud-
ing employees on strike who are not entitled to reinstatement , to deter-
mine whether or not they desire to be represented by Communication
Workers of America, Southern Division, No. 49, for the purposes of
collective bargaining.