White Motor Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

May 2, 1967

164 N.L.R.B. 295 (N.L.R.B. 1967)

WHITE MOTOR CORPORATION 295
White Motor Corporation and International
Union , United Automobile , Aerospace and
Agricultural Implement Workers of
America and its Local32 , AFL-CIO,
Petitioner . Case 8-UC-8.
May 2,1967
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS BROWN
AND JENKINS
Upon a petition for clarification duly filed under
Section 9(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as
amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer
Frank Motil, of the National Labor Relations Board.
The Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing
are free from prejudicial error and are hereby
affirmed. Briefs were filed by the Petitioner and the
Employer.
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.
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. The Petitioner has moved to add approximately
12 office clerical employees at the Employer's new
general corporate offices, located in a downtown
Cleveland building, to an existing unit of production,
maintenance, and office clerical employees which it
represents at the Employer's White Truck Division.
The Petitioner asserts that the employees it seeks to
add are an accretion to the existing unit.
The White Truck Division is in Cleveland. It
occupies a three-block area from 76th to 79th Streets
on the city's east side. Its manufacturing facilities
enclose on three flanks a six-story building which
now houses the office personnel of the division. Until
January 1965 the building was also the site of the
Employer's general corporate offices. At that time,
however, the Employer moved these offices to
Erieview Towers, a large office building in
Cleveland's central business district, between 3 and
4 miles from the East 79th Street plants.
Since 1936, the White Truck Division has
recognized the Petitioner as collective-bargaining
representative of its production, maintenance, and
office clerical employees. Although the existing unit
embraces production and maintenance employees
as well as office clericals, the parties have always
negotiated separate agreements for the latter group.
All the contracts covering office clerical employees
which the parties have negotiated since 1961 are
between the Petitioner and the "White Truck
Division of the White Motor Company,"t and refer to
the unit as existing "in the Cleveland Plants."
Additional agreements embodying pension and
supplemental unemployment benefit plans have also
designated the Petitioner and the White Truck
Division as the contracting parties and cover only
the Petitioner's unit employees at the East 79th
Street plant complex.
Over the last 14 years the Employer has expanded
and diversified its business. Until 1953 it was
primarily a manufacturer of heavy-duty trucks in the
Cleveland area. Since then, however, it has acquired
truck manufacturing facilities at Exton,
Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; and Lansing,
Michigan; and has purchased the farm equipment
interests of Oliver Corporation, Minneapolis-Moline,
and Cockshutt Farm Equipment Company. As a
result of its purchases in the farm equipment field,
the Employer now also operates plants at Charles
City, Iowa; South Bend and Shelbyville, Indiana;
Brantford, Ontario; and Hopkins, Minnesota. In
1965, the Employer turned to the production of large
industrial engines. It presently operates a factory for
this purpose in Springfield, Ohio. Paralleling this
overall growth has been the development of the
Employer's White Truck Division. At this time, the
Division employs over 6,000 persons, 4,000 of whom
work in its Cleveland plants. Eight hundred of the
latter are assigned to clerical tasks in the Division's
headquarters at East 79th Street, Cleveland.
Responding to the expansion described above, the
Employer, as indicated previously, in January 1965
transferred its general offices, which had been
within the East 79th Street plant complex, to
Erieview Towers. On two floors of this multistoried
office building, the Employer's corporate staff
provides consultative and supervisory services for
all operating divisions of the company, including the
White Truck Division at East 79th Street. The work
at Erieview is specialized by task and embraces,
inter alia, personnel, marketing, legal, and
engineering functions.
None of the employees who moved to the Erieview
offices were bargaining unit personnel. The group
consisted of high-ranking executives and their
administrative staffs. After the transfer, the
Employer created a number of new executive
positions at Erieview and organized, at the same
location, a subsidiary, White Motor International, to
handle the export activities of the company. The
office clerical employees claimed by Petitioner have
I At the hearing the parties stipulated that the White Motor
Corporation is the proper name for the White Motor Company
The White Truck Division is one of the former's operating
divisions
164 NLRB No. 34
296 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
been hired by the Employer since its move to
Erieview.2 Some of them perform job duties in the
Employer's general offices, others work for the new
subsidiary, White Motor International . There has
been no transfer of office clerical employees from
Erieview to the East 79th plant complex.
The working conditions of the Erieview office
clericals are significantly different from those of the
office clericals at the East 79th Street site. Hiring
and supervision are separate, as is the maintenance
of personnel records. The salary rate ranges for
those clerical job classifications common to both
Erieview and East 79th Street differ. For the
classifications involved herein the starting salary is
higher at the East 79th Street complex but, except
for the position of receptionist, Erieview clerical
personnel can attain , ultimately, higher salaries. At
Erieview, salary adjustments are made after a job
performance evaluation, whereas at East 79th Street
the adjustments are automatic as well as on merit.
At Erieview, office clerical employees are paid by
the month, at East 79th Street they are. paid
bimonthly. Overtime begins after 37-1/2 hours at
Erieview, and after 40 hours at East 79th Street.
With respect to such important fringe benefits as
holidays, group insurance, pension programs,
The office clericals at Erieview occupy the following
positions : bookkeeper , financial planning clerk , bookkeeping
machine operator , receptionist , office services representative,
comptometer operator , mail clerk , expediter , stenographer, clerk-
typist, and documentation clerk
severance pay, and educational assistance, there
exist substantial differences between the two
locations either as to the extent of the benefit
provided, or the way in which the benefit or the plan
of which it is a part is administered.
In light of all the foregoing facts, and bearing in
mind particularly that: the downtown location is
geographically separated from the East 79th Street
site;3 the move to the new location involved no
transfer of unit personnel from 79th Street; there has
been no subsequent interchange of office clericals
between the two locations; the Erieview office
serves a broader function than the office at East 79th
Street in that it provides staff services for the entire
corporation;4 and there are substantial differences
between the working conditions5 of office employees
at the two locations, we find that the Erieview office
clericals are not an accretion to the unit existing at
the East 79th Street site. Accordingly, we shall
dismiss the petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition to clarify the
unit be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
3 Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co , 132 NLRB 682
4 Swift & Company, 119 NLRB 1556
5 Comptometer Corporation, 135 NLRB 74, see also Houck
Transport Company, 130 NLRB 270, 271; Food Fair Stores, Inc ,
138 NLRB 1, 4, Pullman Industries , Inc., 159 NLRB 580.