Opinion ID: 301058
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Inconsistency With Other Board Decisions.

Text: 25 Of equal significance is the fact that the board's decision in the instant case was wholly inconsistent with its prior, and subsequent, decisions in cases involving retail department store service buildings under comparable facts. In May Department Stores Company d/b/a Famous Barr Company, 176 NLRB No. 14 (1969), the board held appropriate a bargaining unit which included all employees employed at the petitioner's St. Louis facility, including approximately 225 employees who performed traditional warehouse functions and approximately 90 who were employed in the furniture, carpet, appliance, and radio and television workrooms and in the fur storage vault. 26 In R. H. Macy Co., Inc., 180 NLRB No. 59 (1969), the board included employees working in the furniture, television and lawnmower repair workrooms in a unit of warehouse employees at the employer's service building in Atlanta. The board there said: 27 [I]t is clear that the service building is essentially a place where goods are received, stored, processed, and then shipped to the retail stores or directly to customers, and that the employees located there are engaged in such activities or closely related work. Though some of the work of the workshop employees is concerned with repairing goods after they have reached the customer, others of the workshop employees, like the warehouse employees, process goods before they are delivered. For example, employees in the furniture shop may repair damaged furniture before sale or shipment, and the rug workshop performs cutting and installation. Also, as indicated, the Service Building Manager is the top supervisor for all service building workers, including those whom the Employer would exclude from the unit. The service building involves basically a single, separate operation, much like a single plant which is, under the Act, an inherently appropriate unit. In these circumstances, the fact that workshop employees are more skilled than warehousing employees no more suggests the inappropriateness of the building wide unit than does the fact that a plant may have employees of varying skills suggest the inappropriateness of a plantwide unit. (footnote omitted) 180 NLRB at p. 3 of slip opinion. 28 And in H. P. Wasson & Co., 153 NLRB No. 1499 (1969), the board included a rug cutter in a unit of employees performing traditional warehouse functions. 29 The decision of the board in the case before us is totlly inconsistent with those which it made in Famous Barr, Macy and Wasson. 30 Subsequent inconsistent decisions include Sears, Roebuck & Co., 191 NLRB No. 84 (1971); Sears, Roebuck & Co., 191 NLRB No. 85 (1971); and Sears, Roebuck & Co., 182 NLRB No. 121 (1970). 31 In view of this total lack of consistency, we cannot enforce the board's order. N.L.R.B. v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 380 U.S. 438, 85 S.Ct. 1061, 13 L.Ed.2d 951 (1965); Westward-Ho, supra, Carnation Company v. N.L.R.B., 429 F.2d 1130 (9th Cir. 1970). 32