Stanley Aviation Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 29, 1955

114 N.L.R.B. 178 (N.L.R.B. 1955)

178 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Stanley Aviation Corporation and United Automobile, Aircraft
and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, (UAW-
CIO), Petitioner. Case No. 30-RC-1054. Beptember 29, 1955
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Claude B. Calkin, 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. That the Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning
of the Act.
2. The labor organization involved claims to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer.
3. No question affecting representation exists concerning the repre-
sentation 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, here called the UAW CIO, seeks a unit of the
quality control department employees at the Employer's Denver divi-
sion. The Employer contends that the petition should be dismissed
because: (1) The petition is not timely; (2) the persons the Petitioner
seeks to represent are supervisors; and (3) if the persons involved are
not supervisors, the unit sought is inappropriate.
A history of the recently processed Case No. 30-RC-997, which also
involved employees at the Employer's Denver division, is pertinent to
this proceeding. On December 15, 1954, the Board issued a Decision
and Direction of Election 1 in that case in which it found appropriate
for purposes of collective bargaining a unit of production and main-
tenance employees at the Employer's Denver division. Acting pur-
suant to the stipulation of the parties, the Board specifically excluded
employees of the quality control department, the employees here in-
volved, from the unit found to be appropriate. The parties' stipulation
that the quality control department employees be excluded was ar-
ranged on the premise that the personnel of that department were
supervisors. One of the parties involved in Case No. 30-RC-997 was
the UAW-CIO.
The tally of ballots in Case No. 30-RC--9 97 showed that 40 votes
were cast for the UAW-CIO ; 19 votes were cast for District Lodge
No. 86, International Association of Machinists, AFL, here called the
IAM; 20 were, against both the participating labor orgatlizatio is; and
'Stanley Aviation Corporation , notr reported in- printed- volumes of Board Decisions
and Orders.
114 NLRB No. 45.
STANLEY AVIATION CORPORATION 179'
10 ballots were challenged. Nine of the ten ballots that were chal-
lenged were cast by employees of the quality control department. As
the challenged ballots were sufficient in number to affect the results of
the election, the Regional Director investigated the challenges, and
recommended that the challenges be sustained. In exceptions filed
with the Board, the IAM urged the Board not to adopt the Regional
Director's recommendations with respect to the ballots of the nine
quality control department employees? contending that they were in-
advertently excluded from the unit due to the fact that the IAM was
not fully acquainted with the duties of the quality control employees
when the IAM stipulated to their exclusion at the hearing. The IAM
further asserted that if it had knowledge that there existed classifica-
tions of employees performing the work of those whose ballots were
challenged under the designation of quality control employees, it
would not have entered into a stipulation excluding them from the unit.
The Employer urged that a hearing be held in the matter. Ina brief,
which was rejected by the Board as untimely filed, the UAW-CIO
took the position that their stipulation bound the parties, and that the
matter should not be investigated further. • 11,
The Board adopted the Regional Director's recommendation with
respect to the challenged ballots, stating :
At'the hearing in this proceeding, none of the parties sought
the inclusion of the employees in the Quality Control Depart-
ment, nor did they adduce testimony concerning the duties of
these employees. The Board has a "well established policy of
honoring concessions made in the interest of expeditious handling
of representation cases in general" [citing case]. We therefore
consider it to be contrary to good administrative practice to reopen
the record at this post-election stage of the proceeding to afford
the parties an opportunity to be heard on the question of the in-
elusion of the Quality Control Department employees in the unit
[citing cases]. For this reason we deny the request of the Em-
ployer and the Petitioner to hold a hearing to determine the status
of the employees in the Employer's Quality Control Department.'
As the UAW-CIO thus received a majority of the valid votes cast,
and as the Board found that objections filed by the IAM to conduct
affecting the results of the election were without merit, the Board, on
April 25, 1955, certified the UAW-CIO as the bargaining representa-
2 None of the parties excepted to the Regional Director's recommendation that the
challenge to the tenth ballot be sustained, and the Board adopted this recommendation.
Stanley Aviation Corporation, 112 NLRB 461 (Supplemental Decision and Certification).
8 Stanley Aviation Corporation, supra.
387644-56--vol. 114-13
180' DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
tive. of the, production and maintenance employees at the Employer's
Denver division, excluding the quality control department employees.'
In this proceeding, begun by a petition filed on July 8, 1955, the,
UAW-CIO now is in effect seeking to add the quality control depart-.
ment employees to the unit it currently represents as the result of the
certification issued in Case No. 30-RC-997.5 In support of its posi-
tion, the UAW-CIO asserted at the hearing that "these people were
merely overlooked, mainly because . . . of their title, in the previous
election." The UAW-CIO's contention that quality control depart-
ment employees were "overlooked" is almost identical with the claim
made by the IAM after it had lost the election in Case No. 30-RC-997
that these employees were "inadvertently excluded" from the produc-
tion and maintenance unit. As the votes of the quality control depart-
ment employees could have affected the results of the election so far
as its then pending contest with the IAM was concerned, the UAW-
CIO was conceivably a beneficiary to some unknown extent of the
Board's decision not to reopen, in the postelection phase of that pro-
ceeding, a question that the, parties had themselves settled earlier.
Were we at this time to entertain the present petition, we would there-
fore be perpetrating a manifest injustice upon the IAM, which, be-
cause of its prior agreement, was denied the chance of showing that
the quality control department employees were part of the produc-
tion and maintenance unit.
We are conscious of the interest the employees in question may have
in being represented collectively for bargaining purposes. We are
also mindful of the fact that the IAM could have intervened in this
proceeding. Nevertheless, in view of the agreement the UAW-CIO
made in Case No. 30-RC-997 to exclude the quality control depart-
ment employees from the overall production and maintenance unit,
and in view of the subsequent history of that case set forth above, we
hold that it would be contrary to good administrative practice to en-
tertain, during the year following the date of its certification in Case
No. 30-RC-997, a petition by the UAW-CIO to represent the quality
control department employees.
Accordingly, without passing upon the Employer's contention that
the quality control department employees are supervisors, we shall
dismiss the petition as untimely.
[The Board dismissed the petition.]
MEMBER PETERSON took no part in the consideration of the above
Decision and Order.
`Stanley Aviation Corporation, supra.
6 The quality control department employees work in and about the production area,
inspecting parts and assemblies to determine if they are satisfactory . They are, therefore,
a residual group of unrepresented production workers.