The Paul Kimball Hospital, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 8, 1976

224 N.L.R.B. 458 (N.L.R.B. 1976)

458 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The Paul Kimball Hospital , Inc I and Local 68, Inter-
national Union of Operating Engineers , AFL-CIO,
Petitioner. Case 22-RC-6269
June 8, 1976
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
By MEMBERS FANNING, JENKINS, AND PENELLO
On December 24, 1974, the Regional Director for
Region 20 issued a Decision and Direction of Elec-
tion in the above-entitled proceeding, in which he
found appropriate and directed an election in a unit
consisting of all firemen, including relief firemen,
employed by the Employer Thereafter, in accor-
dance with Section 102 67 of the National Labor Re-
lations Board Rules and Regulations, Series 8, as
amended, the Employer filed a timely request for re-
view of the Regional Director's decision, together
with a supporting brief, asserting that the Regional
Director erred in directing an election in a unit re-
stricted to firemen
On June 3, 1975, the National Labor Relations
Board by telegraphic order granted the request for
review and stayed the election pending a decision 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 reviewed the entire record in this
case with respect to the issues under review and
makes the following findings
The Employer is a nonprofit New Jersey corpora-
tion engaged in providing health care services at its
Lakewood, New Jersey, hospital The Petitioner
sought a unit consisting of the maintenance and engi-
neering departments and, in the alternate, a unit re-
stricted to firemen The Regional Director concluded
that maintenance employees should not be in a unit
separate from housekeeping employees and directed
an election in a unit limited to firemen
The Employer's maintenance and engineering de-
partment is supervised by a department head and
consists of about 6 firemen and 10 maintenance em-
ployees The firemen tend two low-pressure boilers in
the basement, a low-pressure furnace and a small hot
air furnace in an annex building, and two high-pres-
sure boilers on the sixth floor State licenses are re-
quired for operating the high-pressure boilers One
fireman per shift is assigned to the high-pressure
boilers Firemen spend approximately 85 to 90 per-
1 The name of the Employer appears as amended at the hearing
cent of their time in the high-pressure boilerroom
The rest of their time is spent on such tasks as check-
ing the low-pressure boilers, temperatures in operat-
ing rooms, radiator valves, and air handling equip-
ment and responding to complaints about heating
With regard to the latter, firemen assist maintenance
employees in repairing fan equipment Firemen also
perform general maintenance tasks such as cleaning
and painting the boilerroom
Maintenance employees perform a variety of tasks,
which for the classifications of mechanics, helper,
and general maintenance includes spending from 1
to 3 hours per shift in the boilerroom assisting fire-
men in such duties as adapting boilers from gas to
fuel oil fired, changing filters, packing pumps, fixing
steam leaks, tending the air unit, cleaning boilers,
and purging boiler tubes The relief fireman, who is
licensed, works about 2 days per week as a fireman
and 3 days doing maintenance work He also re-
places firemen who are sick or on vacation
In view of the above, we find that firemen do not
possess a separate and distinct community of interest
from the maintenance employees Firemen and
maintenance employees share common immediate
supervision, maintenance employees regularly work
with firemen in the boilerroom, firemen work with
maintenance employees in repairing fan equipment
in hospital rooms, and one employee regularly works
during the week as both a fireman and a mainte-
nance employee The overlap in duties of firemen
and maintenance employees and the significant con-
tact between the two groups of employees in the per-
formance of their work shows that firemen and
maintenance employees share a community of inter-
est 2 Accordingly, we find that a separate firemen's
unit is inappropriate 3 As the Regional Director
found that maintenance employees share a commu-
nity of interest with housekeeping employees and in
view of our findings herein, we shall dismiss the peti-
tion
2 As pointed out by Member Fanning in his dissent the firemen perform
only fireman-related work However they are not the only employees who
perform fireman-related work Maintenance employees regularly assist fire-
men in repairing, converting, cleaning and maintaining boilers and related
equipment Thus, unlike the situation in St Vincent s Hospital 223 NLRB
638 (1976), the firemen do not `perform a function intrinsically different
from what other employees do " In St Vincent s only firemen (therein called
boiler operators) worked on boilers here other employees also work on
boilers
3In making the unit determination herein Member Penello notes that
unlike the boilerroom employees in St Vincent's Hospital supra, the firemen
here do not work in a separate and distinct location apart from other em-
ployees in the health care facility but work regularly with maintenance
employees both in the boilerroom and throughout the hospital and that the
relief fireman works regularly as a maintenance employee 3 days per week
Accordingly, he concludes that the unit sought does not satisfy the standard
set forth by him in his concurring opinion in St Vincent's for finding a craft
maintenance unit to be appropriate
224 NLRB No 48
THE PAUL KIMBALL HOSPITAL, INC 459
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition herein be, and
it hereby is, dismissed
MEMBER FANNING, dissenting
I disagree with the finding of my colleagues that
the Regional Director erred in finding appropriate
the unit of firemen In agreement with the Regional
Director, I would find that the firemen constitute a
separate functionally homogeneous group of employ-
ees who comprise a unit appropriate for collective
bargaining Accordingly, I would direct an election
in such a unit
Several factors establish that the firemen enjoy a
unique community of interest distinct from that of
the service and maintenance employees All firemen
must be licensed,4 an overwhelming majority of a
fireman's time is spent in a separate and distinct
area, the firemen experience relatively infrequent
contact with other employees, apparently there is a
total lack of interchange or transfer, the firemen 5
spend 100 percent of their time on fireman-related
work Moreover, the Board has long recognized that
units of licensed boilerroom employees may consti-
tute a separate appropriate unit 6
My colleagues seem to accord little weight to the
amount of time the firemen spend in a separate area,
85 to 90 percent of their working time is spent in the
high-pressure boilerroom Moreover, the minimal
amount of time remaining in which they work in
other areas throughout the Employer's facility is
spent in performing related functions' Not only do
the firemen spend an overwhelming majority of their
time in a separate and distinct location, but the only
employees who appear to have other than random
contact with the firemen are some of the mainte-
nance department employees 8
Obviously, these maintenance employees do not
perform the same functions routinely performed by
the firemen since only a licensed fireman can operate
a high-pressure boiler The maintenance men per-
form a variety of unskilled tasks throughout the
Employer's facility They have work-related contact
4 Before he is hired , a fireman is required to have obtained either a fire-
man-in-charge or blue seal license In order to obtain these licenses , firemen
must pass a state-conducted examination concerning the operation and
maintenance of boilers
5 Excluding the relief fireman
6 See, e g , New England Confectionery Company, 108 NLRB 728 (1954)
7 The time the firemen spend in the two low-pressure boilerrooms is part
of the remaining 10 to 15 percent of their working hours outside the high-
pressure boilerroom
8 Only the maintenance mechanic , maintenance helpers , and general
maintenance men come into contact with the firemen The refrigeration
mechanic , electrician , painter , clerk dispatcher , and building and grounds
man are all employed in the maintenance department but have absolutely
no contact with the firemen
not only with the firemen, but with housekeeping,
dietary, nursing, radiology, and laboratory employ-
ees Moreover, those maintenance men who have
some contact with the firemen have only a limited
amount The department head of the engineering
and maintenance department testified that the main-
tenance employees entered the boilerroom "almost
on a daily basis" and "when they enter the boiler room,
the average duration of their stay could be an
hour, it could be up to three hours " (Emphasis sup-
plied) Moreover, the firemen are responsible for all
painting and cleaning in the boilerroom It is clear
that the boilerroom is the domain of the firemen,
which domain is entered on an infrequent basis Ac-
cordingly, I cannot agree with the majority's conclu-
sion in footnote 3 that the firemen "do not work in a
separate and distinct location apart from other em-
ployees in the health care facility, but work regularly
with maintenance employees both in the boilerroom
and throughout the hospital " It appears to me
that the firemen do, in fact, work in a separate and
distinct location usually apart from the other em-
ployees and do not regularly work throughout the
hospital either alone or with other employees
Thus, I am unable to appreciate the distinction be-
tween the instant case and St Vincent's Hospital, 223
NLRB 638, which issued April 2, 1976, wherein a
unanimous Board (Chairman Murphy, Member Pe-
nello, and Member Walther separately concurring)
found appropriate a unit of boiler operators Therein,
as here, the employees in the unit sought were li-
censed, performed all maintenance and cleaning in
the boilerroom area, shared supervision with mainte-
nance employees, and were on duty for three shifts 9
Moreover, in St Vincent's, the operators spent ap-
proximately 90 percent of their time in the boiler-
room and spent the remainder of their time perform-
ing related work throughout the employer's facility
As my colleagues state in footnote 2, the firemen in
St Vincent's performed a function intrinsically dif-
ferent from that of the other employees In my opin-
ion, based in large part upon the requirement that a
high-pressure boiler can be operated only by a li-
censed fireman, the firemen herein similarly perform
an intrinsically different function from that per-
formed by the few maintenance employees who oc-
casionally assist them in changing filters, cleaning
boilers, etc These minor tasks are hardly the essence
of the fireman function I believe that the unanimous
Board, by finding appropriate a unit of boiler opera-
tors in St Vincent's, was correctly applying our tradi-
tional standards which have long recognized that
9 One fireman per shift on a 24-hour-a-day basis is assigned to the boiler-
room lousing the high-pressure boilers
460 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
units of licensed boilerroom employees may consti-
tute a separate appropriate unit 10
The fact that the relief fireman works about 2 days
per week as a fireman and 3 days a week doing main-
tenance work should not vitiate the unit found ap-
propriate by the Regional Director of all firemen,
including relief firemen Due to the training licensing
requirement, unique skill required for the function,
legally and logically a maintenance man is incapable
of operating a high-pressure boiler Accordingly, it
seems logical that the Employer must employ a relief
fireman It is equally logical to assume that the Em-
ployer assigned the relief fireman to perform mainte-
10 See New England Confectionery Company, supra
nance work since it would be difficult to find a li-
censed fireman who would work part time
As evidenced by the facts that all firemen must be
licensed, an overwhelming majority of their time is
spent in a separate and distinct area, they experience
relatively infrequent contact with other employees,
and there is apparently a total lack of interchange or
transfer, and particularly by the fact that firemen
spend 100 percent of their time on fireman-related
work," it is clear that the firemen possess a singular
homogeneous community of interest in and among
themselves and apart from all other employees, war-
ranting a separate unit In agreement with the Re-
gional Director, I would direct an election in the unit
sought
11 Excluding the relief fireman, of course