arising out of the n l r b these unprecedented terminations that maintenance employees from three shops of course wagons chattanooga tennessee facility had a community of interest amongst themselves sufficient to be included in one group for purposes of quite the bargain the board in the regional director in their determinations want to gather the body well the maintenance shop employees the pain maintenance shock employees and the assembly main shop employees to construct its own version of the department or shop where one does not exist i like to call your orders attention to join exhibit or join appendix for twenty two because it just graphically interest indicates appropriate but the common feature of all of those cases is a centralized maintenance operation in a particular plant under common supervision as opposed to separate maintenance departments question i'm sorry but are three shops is that those employees had separate supervision or separately retrained to work in those respective shots they only work in the equipment and technology in those shops they do not need or change between those shops and there is no functional construction is a good example sun door is a good example that when the board evaluates a community of interest question it is to look and consider all the circumstances and apply the factors that are under all circumstances to the grouping of employees and do a comparison of the employees that are in the petition for a group to see if they have a community of interest the flaw in with the regional director did here was was essentially she did not compare the manus employees with one another rather she compared them with the production employees and that's that's evident from the face of the regional directors decision when she talked about the common supervision of wacking because they didn't share supervision with the production employees or the common wages between the maintenance employees because it was different than the production employees but when you net it out the only thing the regional director came up with is they have a common job title they're called main in some ways they have a common function their repair machinery but there was no consideration of all the other things that factor into the determination is part and parcel being set separately supervised at their own p t o i'm off policies your own vacation policies and those are not decided on a common or overall basis those are decided on a shop only basis and as to the to the question that you've raised about you know essentially was this in the decision if if you look at the regional directors determination under the heading application of board a lot of the facts of this so if if i could continue that each of the points made is while they do work on different machines once they are signed to do part apartment they all shared initial hiring criteria that's true but that was three years before they used to sion but then go on they say well maybe its employees work a different schedule they still provide coverage around the clock only when supply is work at a time when production employees are not working but would like you to notice is there's no comparison of the maintenance employees shop to shops and using schedule as an example the schedule is different from shop to shop she knows that there's no interchange of mai amongst the maid in some ploys shop shop and if i could just summarize a few and they're essentially uncontroverted is the physical location of each shop separate separated by walls separate supervision there's no overall maintenance department there's no common supervision the because the technology of the equipment in each shop is different the requirements to work in each shop is different the  in your honor we would because that would promote industrial stability and is consistent with the prayer practice of these parties there was an election in twenty four team there's an internal policy where the company gauges with the on behalf of all employees and if there was parity of reasoning if all the things that make harmony between separate shops are applicable then the maintenance of po shops share all those things in common with the production employees in those shops you know with their four follow that in overall production in mainland china would be appropriate there is a problem here though your honor because the union is unwilling to go into an election in a i don't understand how that can be a barrier that shop lines can be a barrier here to a plant my unit but are not a barrier to the planned idea that as long as it's both production and maintenance the one paragraph or the regional directors decision but there's another paragraph concluding paragraph that you make a comparison there then that goes to the second branch of specialty boards traditional criteria and she lists and i agree she doesn't compare shop one shop to shop three she said this is true of all of the maids and work in the three shops that re recognizing that the analytical requirement is so look at the petition for group of employees right and that's the comparison that needs to be drawn in a weekly there is a different issue than all maintenance employees asked to go through a three year apprenticeship program for their hired as a maintenance employee that's not a requirement of the production employees so they have that initial three year shared training shared skills shar hiring criteria before they go and regardless of what shop they go to there is no interchanges as was discussed earlier between the production and maintenance employees and the fact that there's also no interchange between the maintenance or there's no evidence of interchange between the maintenance employees well that did not that was also the case in the boom in vegas case there was no interchange between the various departments that worked within a unit that this court found to be appropriate and it's a possibility that main its employees can transfer from shop to shop but there is not i don't believe evidence that that has occurred the other common factors that unite these maintenance employees and have them community in interest they are shared as we talked about skills in training there's a shared function where they all repair machinery both on an as needed basis and schedule preventive maintenance and those are factors that are pointed out in the board's order on day six eighty five we were just discussing the regional directors opinion but there's also the board's order and they say they discuss shared skills qualifications training those are things that are shared within the unit of maintenance employees all made and some ploys also have the same wage structure and it is significantly higher than that given to the production employees  you have a unit that consists of maine and some plays in the union comes in and negotiates for their wages to be increased important thing for unions to do isn't bad and we have sort of a tail wagging the dog problem here because it's either going to necessarily haul up the way it's production employees if they want to keep that same lockstep differential which they may want for all kinds of employment management or business philosophy reasons and so you're going to have the main wages of production or are you going to increase going to break up that linkage that the employer has put in place and cause problems in that way so isn't it when you have sort of same benefits and whether they would continue to have that seven dollar differential it's possible that folks mag and might not care they might negotiate separately with the maintenance units and come up with some new wage rate that doesn't affect the production in place but certainly not so that would change the way they their wage system but are there but there's a yes but the second point is that the fact that there are some other employees who might be impacted by bargaining between the main needs unit and both swag and follows from the idea that this court has recognized that there smaller group might impact the other employees who are not included because they might share a community your interest would be included in those places so that doesn't mean that the smaller unit is not appropriate because of that idea  very important consideration and then that is in this scenario in the situation where you've got this lockstep system in place and i can imagine all kinds of reasons a business might want that and so the end result of simply organizing the smallest portion of that you've got sort of a very small percent number of maintenance employees versus a large number of production employees and we're going to negotiate their wages and we're going to force the employer to choose between either march and those production employees wages right up behind them if it wishes to keep that wage organizational system in place or abandon that which is apparently  feature of how they've organized their business and so you've got this small group of maintenance employees and you're using them to essentially force employment decisions not mine not that they could have an impact are going to force an employment decision one way or the other involving production which is going to have to make a decision one way or the other but i think there is a a minor premise that follows from the major premise that there could be there was to those two groups production minutes and minutes only both could be an appropriate bet is they two groups whether recognizing a small group as a unit knowing that it's going to pull everything along with it pull a very large group along with it or force the employer to change its entire system well isn't that something that the board should grapple with in deciding whether it's a proper unit there are certainly many factors that the board considers and needs unit to terminate at the board grapple with that lock step the impact a certain impact on other employees not that there could there always could be but that it's in the very design of the workplace and in the design of the business one has to follow from the other there are many ways in which includes for example lines based on job classification both work and decided to classify in production and maintenance or does it also calls their team members and skilled team members separately you advertise for them separately it tracks them separately in internal it's been held that it's a proper unit to have a small group of employees when you have these locked in connections to a larger group of employees that will force the employer will have no choice but to make the significant it's also it's not unprecedented for more than one employees for more than one to department to be included within the same unit that was the case in blue and vegas where they were employees from six different departments who are in the same unit there's also actually a line of many units were found appropriate even though in those cases as the maintenance employees were split into groups and were assigned to different parts of the plant it often correlated with different production areas so that they were working on different types of machines and that did not preclude a finding of community of interest i see them my time is up  on behalf of the union local forty two just to respond to a few questions already raised first it i just don't think it's an accurate representation of the record to say that it's a lockstep wage scale there is a scale where there are levels which bullies can go from one level the next based under their terms of service and certainly it may well be that the union would negotiate to continue that but within that scale there is a there's wage variation from level the level five eighteen reproduces the wage scale as a regional director found it ranges around seven dollars but it's not seven dollars precisely and it does fluctuate from wage level wage level and it could well be that the union and the employer bargained to have it fluctuates slightly differently but there's nothing to say that you know if it's important to the employer that something might fight very hard for in part so i just don't think it's it is accurate to state that further the player has never argued before the board before this court that the wage differential supports its claim that the production made in some way should be put together in fact they've acknowledged that the wage differential here is so great that it supports the difference and as i understood  concern question he actually accepted that there's enough of a differential that they may have seen it and one of the shops and believe was the body will shop would be appropriate again i would just say you know the board has a along on press and i would say almost a categorical rule that when you have main some poise and a production facility like this one who would show much more highly skilled remember to refer to a skilled team members by the employer itself and so much more highly there's a strong enough community interest in these sorts of ways in the morning have to find something in the net needs different people from these different shops together somehow so that i would say that there is a light burden for the employer for the work to find that made his employees of this work who all share the same job classification and job title who share the same pay scale as we've already discussed and in who are required to have the same sort of highly technical training to be appropriate within the unit i mean this the employer did argue this obviously for the regional director relying very heavily on the bergdorf goodman case and both the regional director and the board made very clear that they did that correctly as we believe that they viewed this case is very different because in the bergdorf goodman case which was about selling shoes which is a great occupation that does not require anywhere near the sort of skill that's required here there the board said anybody this issue salespeople were fired off the street with no prior very long experience one was a journeyman electrician the other was a pipefitter in a production facility for many years in contrast the production employees who testified one had been a customer service agent and sold insurance again you know it's just not a common even said that when you speak or you just speaking for your members or yes are you the only for your mats only for those production remains in place who are already members of the union that bad that's how the process works but again it is not a bargaining process thank you your honor's first with this case boils down to is the n o r b's position at the same job title in the same generic function is strong enough to overcome the employer's specific organizational structure which translates into significant differences amongst and between the maintenance employees the second point i would make regarding judgeable ask questions i call the tail way being the steps between it and the percentage differences between each steps are the same i believe there are eleven steps that are equally shared by the production and maintenance employees with the variable being the dollar difference but the process is the same but  else you are concerned you are the meat on the bone of that argument is that the more strongly the parties insidious one way or another on particular changes for things that affect everyone the greater the not a problem from the point of view of the n r a well we respect we've argued this is a problem here because part of defining the bargaining unit in the first place requires a consideration of that but what we've done is we've created an apartment where one does not exist we want to get other three different groups of employees for bargaining purposes and no place that home in a position to bargain in ways that can affect one hundred sixty people the board of hell that the common job title of shoe salesperson in the common function of selling shoes was not sufficient to overcome the importers departmental organizational structure and that's what we have here  on that we got in one question that is union says that the company's documents recognize that there could be transfers between shots by maintenance employees do you agree this in fact is occurring third with the evidence has indicated very strongly because of the different equipment and technology at each point the ability to freely move from one shop to another is very limited it would require considerable training for someone to move from one plant to the next thank you we'll take a case