Wells Fargo Bank

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Nov 3, 1969

179 N.L.R.B. 465 (N.L.R.B. 1969)

WELLS FARGO BANK 465
Wells Fargo Bank and Office and Professional
Employees Local No. 3, affiliated with the Office
and Professional Employees International Union,
AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Cases 20-RC-7921 and
20-RC-7922
November 3, 1969
DECISION, ORDER, AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS
FANNING AND BROWN
Upon petitions duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before David F. Sargent, Hearing
Officer. Following the hearing, pursuant to Section
102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules
and Regulations and Statements of Procedure,
Series 8, as amended, this case was transferred to
the National Labor Relations Board for decision.
Thereafter, briefs were filed by the Employer and
the Petitioner, and an amicus curiae brief was filed
by California Bankers Association in support of the
Employer, all of which have been duly considered.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the
National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
powers in connection with this case to a
three-member panel.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds no prejudicial
error. The rulings are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board
finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act, and it will effectuate the
purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein.
2. The Petitioner is a labor organization claiming
to represent certain employees of the Employer.
3 A question affecting commerce exists
concerning the representation of certain employees
of the Employer within the meaning of Sections
9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The Employer is a corporation duly organized
and existing under the banking laws of the State of
California, and is engaged in a commercial and
general banking business in the State of California,
operating its head office in San Francisco and 233
branch offices throughout the State.
Office and Professional Employees Local No. 3,
Office and Professional Employees International
Union, AFL-CIO, herein called Petitioner or Union,
filed two separate representation petitions seeking
separate bargaining units of the Employer's
employees, in Case 20-RC-7921, the Union seeks a
single unit of employees at the Employer's
Brentwood branch bank, and in Case 20-RC-7922, a
separate unit of employees in the POD manual
department, located at the Employer's Data
Processing Center, a seven-story building, wholly
occupied by the Employer at 50 First Street, San
Francisco, California.
The Employer contends that neither of the above
units sought is an appropriate unit and asserts that
the only appropriate unit is one embracing the entire
bank, including all branch banks. Alternatively, the
Employer argues that, as to the Brentwood Branch
petition, the appropriate unit would be one
consisting of the Division in which Brentwood is
located, or the District in which it is located, or
perhaps the cluster (an operational grouping of
branch banks) of which it is a part. It is the
Employer's alternative position in Case 20-RC-7922
that the unit sought must be enlarged to include all
the office clericals in the Center, except the cash
control department, the personnel department, the
resident auditors, the American Express Unit, the
business services representatives, the stock transfer
unit, the bank payroll accounting and data
processing administration.
There is no prior bargaining history as to any
Wells Fargo Bank in the State of California.
The Employer's Operation
Wells Fargo has 233 branch banking operations in
127 cities, located in four divisions, ranging from
Bakersfield to the northernmost tier of California
counties. Bank headquarters is at 464 California
Street, in the city and county of San Francisco,
where basic corporate policy at its highest level is
formulated.
The main office on California Street contains the
marketing division, a training staff, a cashier's
department, and a personnel office. The job
classification and salary program is administered
from this headquarters. The personnel department
handles salary administration, benefit programs,
transfers, promotions, employment, and college
recruiting. Benefits like vacations, medical life
insurance, sick leave, profit sharing are uniform
throughout the system. The personnel office sets
minimum standards for hire and checks employment
applications with respect to references and
fingerprints and maintains master personnel files.
Hiring, however, is largely done at the Division level
and the Division maintains files of applications for
employment; requests for personnel from the
branches usually go to the Division personnel
officer. However, some branch banks in outlying
areas may do some of their hiring directly.
The branch banks of Wells Fargo are structured
into districts and operating divisions. The
Brentwood Branch, the subject of a petition herein,
is in the San Mateo district along with eleven other
branch banks. The San Mateo district and five other
districts are in the Peninsula Division which contains
a total of approximately 66 branch banks.
The branch banks (with some exceptions) are in
direct communication by means of a Telex
179 NLRB No. 79
466 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
communications network with the Employer's Data
Processing Center located at 50 First Street, in San
Francisco. The branch banks send in daily reports to
the Center and receive reports in return. Records
involving the status of savings and checking
accounts, loans, and Christmas Club accounts are
also maintained at the Center, and employees at the
branch banks may check the status of an account
directly with the Center. In 1966, a number of
branch banks within the Peninsula Division were
grouped together for operational purposes and
designated as a "cluster" under the direction of an
experienced operations officer who reports directly
to a vice president in the Division. The Division
monitors the operations of the branch banks,
administers the overall personnel policies of the
bank, and in general guides and supervises the
operations of the branches to insure compliance with
bank policies and procedures
petition in case 20-RC-7922
As noted earlier, in this petition seeks a unit of
approximately 126 employees in a section known as
POD manual, or Unit 792. That unit is located on
the third floor and is housed with many others in a
building at 50 First Street, San Francisco, called the
Data Processing Center or simply Center. At the
Center, there are approximately 1,000 employees,
who work on seven floors plus a basement.
The function of Unit 792 employees is to assist in
the process of verifying the status of accounts. Unit
792 receives checks, deposit slips, monthly payment
loan coupons, and other slips of paper, all called by
the bank "items," sorts them, and by means of
encoding machines imprints the "item" with a
magnetic ink. The "items" are then sent to the 7th
floor computer section where there is kept and
continuously updated, a record of 650,000 customer
checking and 750,000 savings accounts for the entire
bank, save for 13 branches. This section takes the
checks delivered to it by the receiving clerks in Unit
792, makes the necessary calculations in the
computers, stores the information, and prepares a
daily morning report showing the total overall
financial position of the bank in all accounts, as well
as that of each branch within the bank
"Items" are sent to Unit 792 from 119 branches
in the chain. The remaining branches send material
to seven other proof of deposit (POD) Manual
Sections located in other California cities which
serve as extensions of the third floor unit under
discussion. These sections forward encoded "items"
to 50 First Street daily, where they are sent directly
to the seventh floor computer center.
Work- connected with several other departments
on other floors, such as medical billing services, and
automated payroll preparation is also done in Unit
792.
Crediting of receipts for Standard Oil Company is
handled by the sixth floor "lock box" section,'
The "lock box" section is responsible for opening , sorting, editing, and
balancing customers remittances which are mailed to various post office
which also has the same machines used on the third
floor, and work for this "lock box" section is done
on both third and sixth floors. Several times per
month as many as eight persons from Unit 792 go
to work in the seventh floor POD Compute r__S-ection
and when work is heavy, people from the Manual
Proof and Transit Difference Research, General
Ledger and Savings departments come to POD
Computer section to work.
Within the last 6 months, on 8 different
occasions, 10 to 12 employees from Unit 792 have
worked 4 hours in the "lock box," 2 machine
operators have worked 3 times in the distribution
department for 4 hours, 4 to 5 machine operators
have worked 2 hours, 3 times on the seventh floor, 5
to 10 operators, for a minimum of 3 times per
month have worked on the 4th floor San Francisco
Accounts Services section, and 6 operators have
worked 15 times, 4 hours each on the fifth floor,
Monthly Payment Loans, disassembling wires from
programming boards.
The employees in Unit 792 are usually college
students working part-time from 1:30 p.m. until 8 or
8:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and until
4.30 p.m. on Friday. It is the only section which has
this work schedule. The machine operators are paid
a base salary, shift differential, overtime, and a
bonus which is determined by the average monthly
count, on a per hour basis, of the "items" which
they process through machines. The bonus begins
with production exceeding 1,125 "items" per hour.
They are the only employees paid on this basis.
Seniority is bankwide, the vacation schedule being
drawn up by departments. The third floor
department manager keeps personnel records on
each employee, showing his home address, telephone
number, date of employment, warnings given him
and information about his average production.
During the calendar year 1967, there were
approximately 22 transfers out of Unit 792, and 4
transfers into the department.
Upon review of the above circumstances, we are
of the opinion that the employees petitioned for in
Unit 792 do not have a sufficient community of
interest separate from that of other employees at 50
First Street Center, to warrant their establishment
as a separate appropriate unit. We note particularly
that there appears to be a substantial and continuing
interchange of employees between Unit 792 and
other departments in the computer center; that some
of the same machines utilized in Unit 792 are also
used by employees in other parts of the building and
that work involving several other departments
located on other floors, such as medical billing
services and automated payroll preparation, is also
performed in Unit 792. Accordingly, we shall
dismiss the petition in Case 20-RC-7922.'
boxes as a daily deposit to the customers ' accounts This is a business
service usually initiated by a branch bank of the national division which
operates out. of the head office This work is all check processing and
encoding is performed by lock box and POD Manual using encoders
At the hearing, counsel for the Union indicated that the Union might be
interested in representing employees in an alternative unit in the event Unit
WELLS FARGO BANK 467
The Brentwood Branch (Case 20-RC-7921)
The Brentwood Branch Bank is located in South
San Francisco, California, in a shopping center The
closest branch to Brentwood is South San Francisco
Industrial, about a mile distant. San Bruno is the
next branch and approximately the same distance
away, and Millbrae is approximately 6 or 7 miles
away. There are several other branches in San
Mateo County, at varying distances away from the
area serviced by the Brentwood Branch.
The unit at the Brentwood Branch requested by
the Petitioner consists of approximately 12
employees- one commercial note teller, one monthly
payment loan teller, one 30-hour monthly payment
loan teller, one electronic data processing clerk, four
commercial and savings tellers, one 30-hour
commercial and savings teller, one vault teller and
one platform secretary. There is also a manager, an
assistant manager, and a credit officer who have
been stipulated out of any unit as supervisors There
is also an operations supervisor, whose status as a
supervisor is in dispute, with the Employer
contending that she is not a supervisor and the
Petitioner contending that she is.
The work of all 12 employees is concerned
directly with the customer or paper work connected
only with the Brentwood Branch which services a
specific geographical area. Except for the centralized
accounting procedures, the employees have little
personal contact with employees of other branches.
They work directly under the branch manager and
other branch supervisors and look to these
supervisors for their direction and guidance.
The operations supervisor, Rose Dolder, whose
supervisory status is in issue, has a desk behind the
row of tellers, in one corner of the bank, where she
spends 90 percent of her working time. Her duties
are to oversee the operation of the operational
section of the branch, the tellers, loan department
and note cage. She does not have authority to hire
or fire, but it appears she can make
recommendations for discharge. She has been
consulted about an employee performance report,
and it was indicated that if she disagreed with the
report, her word would be given some weight.
Employees look to her for permission to extend
their lunch hour. She is listed on the official bank
directory as an "Authorized Signatory," a Branch
officer, which permits her to sign certain documents
brought to her by tellers, and to approve checks up
to a certain amount.
The Branch Manager is in direct charge of the
day-to-day operations of the Branch. He operates
according to the overall directives and policies
established in the Employer's main or Division
office He is the principal officer in the Branch and
792 was not found to be an appropriate unit However , in the brief it filed
with the Board, the Union did not pursue the question of what alternative
unit or units it might seek to represent In these circumstances we do not
consider it necessary to reach the question of what may constitute an
appropriate unit
In view of our dismissal of the petition , we find it unnecessary to pass
on the supervisory status- of the unit supervisors
is the liaison between the Branch and the
Employer's Division and other operations. Thus, the
Branch Manager prepares the Branch's annual
budget, which is then reviewed by the various
sections of the Division, after which it is forwarded
to the head office in San Francisco for scrutiny by a
committee, and ultimately, for approval by the
President. On loans of less than $1,000 he is given a
free hand. But on loans of $1,000 or more, he is
required to send supporting evidence to justify his
actions, and on large loans prior consultation with
and approval of the Division or headquarters office
is required Thus, he plays a key role in the
important loan functions of the Branch. Although
all personnel actions are subject to final approval by
the Division, the Branch Manager makes
recommendations in regard to hiring, replacements,
salary increases, transfers, and terminations, and it
appears that such recommendations carry weight.
The majority of the requests for additional
personnel are generally approved at the Division
level. Overtime is initially authorized at the Branch
level, subject to post audit and established
procedures. The Branch Manager schedules
vacations for his employees, and also makes
evaluations of employee performances. These
evaluations are transmitted to the head office for
inclusion in the master personnel file. The original is
lodged with the Division office, but the Branch
retains a rudimentary file, containing a history card
of each employee and copies of the employee's
periodic performance review.
While it is clear from the foregoing summary of
facts that the Employer's banking operations are
highly centralized and its procedures integrated, and
that a bankwide unit would be an appropriate unit,
we do not agree with the contentions of the
Employer that the bankwide unit is the only
appropriate unit in the circumstances here, or that
the Division, District, or "cluster" organization of
its operations so overshadow the identity of the
Brentwood Branch that this Branch could not be a
viable bargaining unit .3 For the reasons discussed
hereafter, we are persuaded, in agreement with the
request of the Petitioner, that the Brentwood Branch
has a meaningful identity as a self-contained
economic unit and that the centralized recording and
overall administrative control do not militate against
a finding that its employees are a homogeneous,
identifiable group, with sufficient community of
interest to comprise an appropriate bargaining unit.
As indicated above, although the Employer's
personnel policies are centrally controlled, the
Brentwood employees are separated both
geographically and functionally in their day-to-day
duties from employees of other branch banks, and
other operations; of the Employer. Their job
functions and their workday interests are in terms of
'in view of our findings herein, and the fact that the Petitioner seeks
only the Brentwood Branch unit , we find it unnecessary , and make no
determination , whether or not the District, Division, or "cluster" groupings
could be appropriate bargaining units
468 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
the customers of the Brentwood Branch. Other than
at the managerial level there appears to be little
personal contact with employees of other branch
banks. They look for supervision and work guidance
to the Branch Manager and other immediate
supervisors, and their progress and success on the
job, it appears, depends primarily upon the
evaluation of these immediate supervisors.
The record indicates that the Brentwood Branch
has a stable core of employees. Transfer in and out
of the Branch appears minimal. In 1966 and 1967,
there were nine transfers into the Branch, and five
transfers out of the Branch; the transfers out were
officers, nonunit employees. There is no temporary
interchange of employees with other Branch banks.
The record also suggests that the Employer treats
the Brentwood Branch as a separate economic
entity. The Branches compete against each other to
meet and exceed the quota of selling Christmas Club
accounts, and rewards for exceeding the established
quota are redistributed back to the employees of the
Branch Bank. The employees of the Brentwood
Branch also maintain a joint bank account which is
used to finance Branch social functions.
We are also satisfied on the basis of the above,
and the entire record, that the local Brentwood
Branch Manager enjoys substantial autonomy in his
direction and supervision of the Branch employees,
and that his role as Manager in the operations of
the Branch's activities is more than ministerial.
Although employees are centrally hired, the Branch
Bank has run an ad for a new job. Requests for job
openings are given respectful consideration at the
Division level. The Manager schedules vacations,
and initiates overtime, subject to post audits.
Significantly, the Branch Manager makes initial
evaluations of the performances of employees, and
this, in effect, gives the Manager, together with the
other Branch supervisors who assist in the
evaluation, major control over the direction,
retention, and promotion of employees. He initially
recommends promotions and demotions in many
cases.
As described above, the Manager is the
Employer's principal representative in the Branch,
and is responsible for carrying out its policies and
directives. He has direct contact with the customers
in the Branch and the various problems which arise
daily, and is the liaison between the Branch and
other officers of the Bank. Through his duties in
formulating the budget and loan transactions, he is
required to apply discretion and initiative, and his
job performance plays a direct part in the success of
the Branch's operations.
From these facts we find that the Employer's
Brentwood Branch functions sufficiently as a distinct
entity to constitute a separate unit for
collective-bargaining purposes. We are of the
opinion that the employees share a community of
'See Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 156 NLRB 1408 (Decision on
remand from 380 US 438) See, e g, Haag Drug Company , Inc. 169
NLRBNo 111
interest which distinguishes them from other
employees of the Employer. We conclude that the
Branch is a stable, identifiable unit with common
working interests and common direct supervision.
Thus, we conclude that the unit sought by the
Tetitioner is an appropriate unit for collective
bargaining.' Accordingly, we shall direct an election
among the employees petitioned for in Case
20-RC-7921, as provided below, with the exclusions
and inclusions discussed hereafter.
The unit at Brentwood, as noted above, consists
of commercial note tellers, monthly payment loan
tellers, an electronic data processing clerk,
commercial and savings tellers, and a secretary. The
parties stipulated that the manager, assistant
manager, and credit officer are supervisors and
should not be included in the unit. The parties
disagree as to the unit placement of Rose Dolder,
the operations supervisor. We find significant that
she responsibly directs the work of tellers, and that
she has been consulted about an employee
performance report, and it was indicated by her
superiors that if she disagreed with the report, her
opinion would be given weight; that it appears she
can make recommendations for discharge; that the
official Directory of the Wells Fargo Bank lists her
as an officer under the title "Authorized Signatory,"
which permits her to sign certain documents brought
to her by tellers and to approve checks up to a
certain amount; that she possesses the same keys as
other officers to oven locks, rather than keys
possessed by rank-and-file employees, in those cases
two keys are required to open locks; and that her
current salary is considerably higher than that of
rank-and-file employees. Accordingly, we find that
she is a supervisor under the Act and exclude her
from the unit.
We find that the following employees of the
Employer herein constitute a unit appropriate for
the purposes of collective bargaining within the
meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act:
All employees of the Employer's Brentwood
Branch Bank at South San Francisco, California,
excluding the operations supervisor, guards and
supervisors as defined in the Act.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition filed in Case
20-RC-7922 be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
[Direction of Election' omitted from publication.]
'In order to assure that all eligible voters may have the opportunity to
be informed of the issues in the exercises of their statutory iight to vote,
all parties to the election should have access to a list of voters and their
addresses which may be used to communicate with them Excelsior
Underwear Inc, 156 NLRB 1236, N L R.B v Wyman -Gordon Company,
394 U S 759 Accordingly , it is hereby directed that an election eligibility
list, containing the names and addresses of all the eligible voters, must be
filed by the Employer with the Regional Director for Region 20 within 7
days of the date of this Decision and Direction of Election The Regional
Director shall make the list available to all parties to the election No
extension of time to file this list shall be granted by the Regional Director
except in extraordinary circumstances Failure to comply with this
requirement shall be grounds for setting aside the election whenever proper
objections are filed