The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 23, 1975

220 N.L.R.B. 516 (N.L.R.B. 1975)

516 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Com-
pany and Communications Workers of America, Pe-
titioner. Case 28-RC-2669
September 23, 1975
DECISION ON REVIEW AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
BY CHAIRMAN MURPHY AND MEMBERS FANNING
AND PENELLO
On May 30, 1974, the Regional Director for Re-
gion 28 issued his Decision and Order in the above-
entitled proceeding in which he dismissed the peti-
tion filed herein, finding inappropriate Petitioner's
requested unit of nonsalaried employees in the
Employer's commercial offices in El Paso County,
Texas. Thereafter, in accordance with Section 102.67
of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and
Regulations and Statements of Procedure , Series 8,
as amended, the Petitioner filed a timely request for
review of the Regional Director's decision on the
ground, inter alia, that the Regional Director depart-
ed from officially reported precedent. The Employer
filed a statement in opposition thereto.
The National Labor Relations Board, by tele-
graphic order dated April 16, 1975, granted the re-
quest for review. Thereafter, the Petitioner and the
Employer filed briefs on review.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its au-
thority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.
The Board has considered the entire record in this
case, including the briefs on review, and makes the
following findings:
Petitioner contends that the unit it seeks, limited to
the 105 employees at the Employer's El Paso County,
Texas, commercial office, is appropriate under the
Board's decision in Michigan Bell Telephone Compa-
ny, 192 NLRB 1212 (1971), affd. in 216 NLRB No.
145 (1975), and other Board precedent. The Employ-
er contends that the minimal appropriate unit is an
employerwide unit of its commercial office employ-
ees. We find merit in the Petitioner's contentions.
The Employer, part of the Bell Telephone System,
is engaged in business as a public utility providing
telephone service to a large part of the Western Unit-
ed States. The Employer's operations extend over a
territory consisting of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho,
Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and El
Paso County, Texas. The Employer maintains its
general headquarters at Denver, Colorado, where its
activities are coordinated and controlled. The head-
quarters staff for the Employer's commercial depart-
ment is located at Denver and, along with the plant,
traffic, and engineering departments, is headed by
the Employer's vice president of operations who re-
ports to the Employer's president. There are 3,200
employees in the entire commercial department,
which is comprised of 51 commercial offices in the
8-state area in which the Employer operates.
The Employer is organized along administrative
and operational lines on a state basis. Thus, each of
the state operations, including El Paso County, Tex-
as, which is the only area serviced in that State, is
headed by a vice president and general manager.
These heads of the various state operations report to
the vice president of operations in Denver. The rec-
ord discloses that while general policies and proce-
dures are set by the corporate executives at Denver
and the Employer strives for uniformity throughout
its operations by issuing publications and training
handbooks, conducting periodic audits of field of-
fices , and centrally administering labor relations and
other personnel programs, each state operation, in-
cluding the El Paso County operation, is significantly
autonomous with respect to the day-to-day function-
ing of the respective facilities.
The record demonstrates that the El Paso County
general manager has authority to hire personnel for
the commercial office involved herein and that inter-
viewing, testing, training of personnel, and proficien-
cy evaluations are performed on the local level. In
addition, certain disciplinary matters are handled by
local supervision and are reviewed by higher levels
only if referred there. The general manager may ter-
minate employees unable to complete initial training
without further review; however, disciplinary prob-
lems involving employees of long service, or situa-
tions involving EEOC matters, are referred to the
Denver office. Vacation schedules are determined lo-
cally and overtime as necessary is scheduled by local
supervision. Personal leave, with or without pay, may
be granted locally. The El Paso County commercial
employees receive the same wages as other commer-
cial department employees in Employer's wage zone
2 which includes Tucson, Arizona; Albuquerque,
New Mexico; and Colorado Springs; however, the
initial rate for newly hired employees is determined
locally, based on educational background and gener-
al capabilities.
All of the Employer's employees receive the same
benefits which are administered by a General Benefit
Committee located in Denver. However, orientation
of employees concerning these benefits is conducted
locally for the El Paso employees, and there is a Tex-
as State Benefit Committee which reviews local bene-
fit cases and makes recommendations to the General
220 NLRB No. 79
MOUNTAIN STATES TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH
Benefit Committee. A local incentive award system
also exists for the El Paso County employees.
Like the Employer's other commercial employees,
the El Paso County employees process orders for
telephone service, adjust peculiar problems of cus-
tomers, and see that customer billing is accurate.
They have no significant work contact with commer-
cial employees at other locations 1 except to inter-
change credit information by telephone with employ-
ees throughout Mountain States' operations and with
other offices in the Bell System. They service directly
only the customers residing in El Paso County, in-
cluding two communities which are partially in New
Mexico. The commercial employees here sought have
five local levels of supervision, viz, business office
supervisors, unit managers, the Texas commercial su-
pervisor, the Texas commercial marketing manager,
and finally the general manager.
Regarding interchange of employees, the record
shows that there have been no temporary or emer-
gency transfers into or out of the El Paso commercial
office and there appears to be little significant inter-
change between El Paso commercial employees and
commercial employees of the Employer's other com-
mercial offices. Thus, with respect to permanent
transfers during 1972 and 1973, 19 employees trans-
ferred into the El Paso commercial office from other
commercial offices of the Employer and 14 commer-
cial employees transferred from El Paso to other lo-
cations. However, only 3 of these latter employees
went to commercial offices of the Employer; the
other 11 employees transferred to offices outside
Mountain States. It appears from the record that
these transfers were voluntary and were made pur-
suant to a company program whereby an employee
may transfer, upon request, to the Employer's other
business offices or to other locations in the Bell Sys-
tem. Employees transferred to the El Paso office
must undergo a period of retraining because of the
unique procedures and practices at that office.
There is no bargaining history with respect to the
employees in the unit requested herein 2 and no
union is presently seeking representation on a broad-
er basis . The record shows, however, that the Peti-
tioner and the International Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers (IBEW) represent other classifications
of the Employer's employees.' Thus, the Petitioner
1 The El Paso commercial office is 700 miles from Denver and 40 miles
from the Employer 's nearest commercial office.
2 The Regional Director dismissed a petition for essentially the same unit
as that herein in Case 28 -RC-1281 and no review was sought . We find no
ment to the Employer 's contention that that case is controlling in the instant
matter . The finding in that case is not consistent with the finding in Michi-
gan Bell, supra, which we find to be controlling herein.
3 While the Employer 's bargaining history in other units is not controlling
herein , we think such history is relevant to demonstrate that units exist on
517
represents separate units of the Employer's plant and
traffic employees in employerwide units , except
Montana. It represents a statewide unit of the
Employer's traffic employees in Montana, except for
two metropolitan areas . Among others, IBEW repre-
sents separate statewide units of Employer's plant
and plant clerical employees in Montana; metropoli-
tan area units of Employer's traffic employees in
Butte and Missoula, Montana; and a metropolitan
area unit of janitors in Billings , Montana. The nego-
tiations for its statewide and metropolitan units in
Montana are conducted locally, with guidance and
participation from headquarters. These negotiations
are subject to review by headquarters.
Like most public utilities, the Employer maintains
a highly integrated and centrally controlled opera-
tion. As indicated, to assure uniformity the Denver
headquarters formulates and administers labor rela-
tions , establishes common personnel policies on an
employerwide basis, and determines uniform wage
rates for each zone, among other matters. Also, as
noted above, the Employer administers a company-
wide benefit plan, as well as other programs. In addi-
tion to the foregoing, each vice president and general
manager attends periodic review conferences in Den-
ver to make sure that his operations are uniform with
those of the other States. While these factors tend to
support the appropriateness of an employerwide
commercial department unit, as urged by the Em-
ployer, we are of the opinion that there are sufficient
other factors to warrant finding that the requested
unit, which is coextensive with an administrative and
operational subdivision of the Employer, is also ap-
propriate.4
In cases involving public utilities, the Board has
long held that the optimum unit is one that is system-
wide in scope. However, as we stated in Michigan
Bell Telephone, supra, which we find is controlling
herein, a commercial office in a telephone utility
which is engaged, as here, in soliciting and servicing
telephone subscriptions in a well-defined geographic
area may be compared with an outlet or territory in a
selling operation. Viewed in this light, a requested
unit limited to the commercial department employ-
ees in the El Paso County area is presumptively ap-
propriate. Contrary to the Regional Director, we find
that the record evidence regarding the autonomy of
the El Paso County supervision in controlling the
day-to-day operations of those facilities, the lack of
temporary interchange, the geographic separation
from other commercial facilities, the lack of a bar-
gaining history for the requested employees, and the
less than employerwide bases. Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company,
173 NLRB 1441 ( 1968).
° Iroquois Telephone Corporation, 169 NLRB 344 (1968); Pacific Northwest
Telephone Company, supra.
518 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
fact that no labor organization seeks representation
on a broader basis, among other factors, sufficiently
demonstrates that the commercial department em-
ployees in the El Paso County office share a suffi-
cient community of interest, apart from other com-
mercial department employees, to support a finding
that they constitute a separate unit appropriate for
bargaining.
Accordingly, we find that the following employ-
ees s of the Employer have a sufficient community of
s The Regional Director found it unnecessary to resolve the eligibility of
employees classified as cashier , service bureau clerks , coin box collector,
mail attendant , and commercial representative.
The Petitioner would include the cashier , while the Employer would ex-
clude her as a supervisor. Although the record shows that she substitutes for
an admitted supervisor absent due to illness or while on vacation and that
she apparently directs the work of unit employees, we are unable to de-
termine from the record the extent of such direction or whether she exercis-
es any of the indicia of supervisory authority . Accordingly , we shall permit
the cashier to vote subject to challenge.
interest to constitute a unit appropriate for the pur-
pose of collective bargaining within the meaning of
9(b) of the Act:
All nonsalaried employees of the Employer in its
commercial offices in El Paso County, Texas,
excluding security employees, commercial ser-
vice analysts, confidential employees, guards,
and supervisors as defined in the Act.
[Direction of Election and Excelsior footnote omit-
ted from publication.]
Petitioner would include , and the Employer would exclude, the service
bureau clerks . The record shows that these employees maintain a stock of
forms and handle copy machines , such as multilith and Zerox , in the base-
ment of the building where the commercial employees are located and are
supervised by business office supervisors Accordingly, we shall include
them in the unit.
Regarding the coin box collector, mail attendant , and commercial repre-
sentative , the Employer would exclude these employees , while the Peti-
tioner, although agreeing that as salaried employees they are apparently not
in the unit, refused to concede that they be excluded . Accordingly, as there
is insufficient evidence in the record to enable us to determine their eligibili-
ty status, we shall allow them to vote subject to challenge.