Westinghouse Electric Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 11, 1959

123 N.L.R.B. 133 (N.L.R.B. 1959)

WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORPORATION 133
Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Buffalo Section, West-
.inghouse Engineers Association , Engineers and Scientists of
America, Petitioner . Case No. 3-RC-1634. March 11, 1959
SUPPLEMENTAL DECISION, ORDER, AND AMENDED
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
On May 28, 1956, the National Labor Relations Board issued a
Decision and Direction of Election in this case,' in which it directed
an election in a unit comprised of 233 professional and 9 nonpro-
fessional employees. Thereafter, an election was held, and the
Petitioner was certified as the collective-bargaining representative
of the employees in said unit.
The Petitioner, however, brought a suit in the United States Dis-
trict Court for the District of Columbia,2 in which it maintained
that the Board had exceeded its statutory power by including the
professional employees, without their consent, in a unit with non-
professional employees, and prayed that the Board's action be set
:aside. On December 18, 1956, the District Court granted the motion
and issued an order which provided in part as follows :
3. Defendants, their officers, agents, servants, employees and
attorneys, and all persons in active concert or participation
with them who receive actual notice of this order, shall: (a)
set aside and vacate the Decision and Direction of Election in
Case No. 3-RC-1634, dated May 28, 1956, to the extent that
it determines that a unit for collective bargaining purposes
may include both professional and non-professional employees
in the same unit without affording the professional employees
an opportunity to vote on whether or not they desire to be
included in the same unit with non-professional employees;
(b) set aside and vacate the election conducted on June 14,
1956, in Case No. 3-RC-1634; (c) set aside and vacate the cer-
tification of representatives issued on June 21, 1956, in Case
No. 3-RC-1634; and (d) further process the petition filed in
Case No. 3-RC-1634 in accordance with customary procedures,
provided that a unit including both the professional employees
in that case and non-professional employees shall not be found
appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining, unless the
professional employees are afforded an opportunity to vote
on whether or not they desire to be included in the same unit
with non-professional employees.
Thereafter, this judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia 3 and the Supreme Court of the United
1115 NLRB 1420.
' William Dyne, etc. v . Boyd S . Leedom, 148 F. Supp. 597.
' Boyd S. Leedom v. William Kyne, etc., 249 F. 2d 490.
123 NLRB No. 22.
134 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
States.4 We shall, therefore, set aside and vacate the original
direction of election, the election, and the certification in this case,
and reconsider the matter in accord with these rulings.
As the Board stated in the original Decision and Direction of
Election, none of the parties disputed the appropriateness of a unit
of professional employees, nor the professional status of the em-
ployees in all the categories named in the Petitioner's amended
petition. Dispute arose, however, over the unit placement of the
employees in five additional categories : the Intervenor maintained
that they all had professional status and should be included; the
Petitioner maintained that none of them were professional employees
as defined in Section 2(12) of the Act, and, therefore, they should
all be excluded; and the Employer sought the inclusion of four
of the five categories on the basis of their close integration in the.
plant's engineering operations. The Board found that the employ-
ees in all five disputed categories failed to meet the standards for
professional status established by Section 2(12) of the Act.
While the Board included certain of the nonprofessionals in the-
same unit with the professionals, a prerequisite for our doing so,
now would be first to conduct separate elections among the profes-
sionals and the nonprofessionals in the unit heretofore found appro-
priate, which could be done only on the basis of a finding that the
nonprofessionals could themselves constitute a separate appropriate.
unit. However, we cannot make such a finding because neither
the Petitioner nor the Intervenor seeks establishment of a separate
unit comprised of any or all of these nonprofessional categories,.
and the issue of the appropriateness of a separate nonprofessional
unit was not fully litigated. Accordingly, we shall direct an elec-
tion in a unit of the professional employees only, which unit we
find to be appropriate.
We find that the following employees at the Employer's Cheek-
towaga, New York, plant constitute an appropriate unit for the
purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section.
9(b) of the Act: All professional employees, including the cate-
gories of engineer assistant, engineer associate, engineer, engineer
senior, engineer fellow, manufacturing engineer, manufacturing engi-
neer senior, plant layout engineer, methods engineer (formerly time
and motion analyst), and purchasing engineer, but excluding all
other employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act.
[The Board set aside and vacated the direction of election dated
May 28, 1956, the election conducted on June 14, 1956, and the cer-
tification of representatives issued on June 21, 1956.]
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication.]
4Boyd S. Leedom v. William Kyue, etc., 358 U.S. 184.