Westinghouse Electric Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 6, 1990

300 N.L.R.B. 834 (N.L.R.B. 1990)

834
300 NLRB No. 107
DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
1 The Acting Regional Director also included chemistry technicians in the
unit.
2 The Employer subsequently filed with the Board a motion to submit new
evidence. The Petitioner filed no objection to the Employer’s motion. Accord-
ingly, we grant the Employer’s motion.
3 The positions we find appropriate for inclusion in the unit are inspector,
instrument specialist and instrument technician, irradiated components exam-
ination technician and irradiated components controller, radiological control
technician, chemistry technician, operations technician, technical designer, re-
fueling equipment technician, reactor test technician, and technical specialist.
4 We adopt the Acting Regional Director’s findings of fact unless stated oth-
erwise in this decision.
5 S1W is in the process of being decommissioned.
6 The Acting Regional Director also attempted to distinguish Westinghouse
on the grounds that the Employer reorganized its supervisory structure, and
now the radiological control technicians and the chemistry technicians share
a line of supervision different from that of other technicians.
Although the Acting Regional Director is factually correct that the Employer
has restructured the supervisory hierarchy since 1962, we do not agree, given
the overall circumstances, that this difference is legally significant. The Board
in Westinghouse relied on many factors in rejecting the petitioner’s attempt to
represent portions of the employer’s technical employees. Supervisory struc-
ture was not one of the factors on which the Board relied. The Acting Re-
gional Director failed to explain how this change affects the nature of the
technicals’ work or alters the Employer’s operation.
Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Oil, Chem-
ical & Atomic Workers International Union
and its Local 2-652, Petitioner. Case 27–RC–
7089
December 6, 1990
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN STEPHENS AND MEMBERS
CRACRAFT AND OVIATT
On July 10, 1990, the Acting Regional Director for
Region 27 issued a Decision and Direction of Election
in which he found appropriate a unit of the Employer’s
radiological control technicians, excluding other tech-
nical employees,1 on the basis that radiological control
technicians ‘‘constitute a functionally distinct or homo-
geneous group of employees or administrative or de-
partmental unit.’’ The Employer filed a timely request
for review alleging the Acting Regional Director erred
in excluding from the unit other technical employees.
On August 8, 1990, the Board granted the Employer’s
request for review.2
The National Labor Relations Board has delegated
its authority in this proceeding to a three-member
panel.
The Board has considered the entire record in this
case and finds that a unit of radiological control tech-
nicians and chemistry technicians is not appropriate.
For the reasons that follow, we find appropriate a unit
of all technical employees employed by the Employer.3
The Employer operates the Naval Reactor Facility
(NRF) for the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S.
Navy.4 The NRF, located on a 75-acre government
preserve, operates nuclear reactor plants and a material
handling facility. The Expended Core Facility (ECF)
receives expended nuclear fuel from naval ships and
other material that is processed for disposal. The NRF
also operates three prototype nuclear reactor plants:
Aircraft Carrier 1 Westinghouse (A1W), Submarine
Fifth Generation (S5G), and Submarine First Genera-
tion Westinghouse (S1W).5 The prototype reactor
plants are used to train civilian and Navy personnel
and to test machinery.
In Westinghouse Electric Corp., 137 NLRB 332
(1962), the Board dismissed election petitions seeking
two units of technical employees at the same NRF in-
volved in this proceeding. In that case, the Board
found:
The technical functions of NRF are thoroughly
integrated and interdependent, and all the [tech-
nical] employees . . . must be taken together as
constituting an appropriate unit. The interests and
skills of all those employees are quite similar
. . . . All are salaried, are on the same payroll,
are subject to the same personnel policies, are
under the same progression program, have com-
mon facilities for eating, receive the same training
course in criticality, and have identical employee
benefits. Petitioner seeks arbitrary and artificial
groups of these employees. The units petitioned
for do not constitute functionally distinct or ho-
mogeneous groups of employees, nor administra-
tive or departmental units, such as the Board
might recognize.
Id. at 337.
The Acting Regional Director found that radio-
logical control technicians monitor radioactivity and
radiation levels to enable other employees to accom-
plish safely the NRF’s major function. The Acting Re-
gional Director described the radiological control tech-
nicians’ tasks as ancillary and concluded that they are
a functionally distinct group.6
We disagree with the Acting Regional Director’s
characterization of the radiological control technicians’
tasks as ancillary. In Westinghouse, the Board found
that the technicians’ jobs ‘‘are thoroughly integrated
and interdependent.’’ The record in this proceeding es-
tablishes that radiological control technicians (referred
to as industrial hygiene technicians in Westinghouse)
work with other technicians at many locations to en-
sure the safety of the employees and the worksite. The
radiological control technicians’ tasks are essential to
enable other technicians to perform their work and to
fulfill the Employer’s mission.
In 1962, the Board in refusing to exclude industrial
hygienists from an appropriate unit observed:
Their main function is to check on contamination
levels in the different facilities, and to prescribe
interim correction of hazardous conditions, and
the proper repair of defective equipment. In car-
rying out this function, these technicians work
835WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP.
7 We also observe that there has been no change in the basic requirements
for a technician job. All technical employees are salaried, share the same bene-
fits, and work under the same personnel policies.
alongside the various technicians in ECF, A1W,
and S1W, observing and instructing them as to
proper safety techniques. Their presence is an ab-
solute necessity at all stages of some functions of
these facilities.
Westinghouse, supra at 336. The record concerning ra-
diological control technicians 30 years later is strik-
ingly similar.7 Thus, the record provides no support for
departing from the Board’s 1962 finding that the func-
tions of the Employer’s technical employees, including
radiological control technicians, ‘‘are thoroughly inte-
grated and interdependent.’’
The Acting Regional Director’s reliance on New Or-
leans Public Service, 215 NLRB 834 (1974), is mis-
placed. In that case, the Board included in one unit
technical employees from several departments who
performed closely related functions, but excluded tech-
nical employees from the employer’s transit, marketing
services, and community relations departments. The
excluded technicals had little contact with unit employ-
ees and provided discrete services for the employer. In
this case, the radiological control technicians provide
direct support services for other technicals and have
close contact with other technical employees. Further,
as previously found, the radiological control techni-
cians’ tasks are not discrete from the Employer’s major
service. We find that the radiological control techni-
cians are more comparable to the technicals who were
included in the New Orleans unit than to the technicals
who were excluded.
The Union has indicated that it wishes to proceed to
an election in any unit found appropriate. Accordingly,
we shall remand this proceeding for further appropriate
action.
ORDER
This case is remanded to the Regional Director for
Region 27 for further appropriate action consistent
with this Decision on Review and Order.