Opinion ID: 2974119
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Guardian Corporate Structure and Activities

Text: Guardian provides a wide range of security services to its clients, including alarms, security guards, medical monitoring, and armored car transportation of valuables. It employs approximately 1700 people and has its corporate offices in Southfield, Michigan. The case involves the Guardian armored car division, which employs approximately 370 people, including about 50 managers and other non-guard personnel. Non-supervisory guard personnel include 10 types of guards, specialists, vault associates, security officers, dispatchers, and tellers. The business of the armored car division is conducted out of three branch offices; the Highland Park office, which has approximately 250 employees; and the Mt. Morris and Comstock Park offices, which have approximately 60 employees each. The three branch offices are strategically located to serve Guardian’s customers in Michigan and northwest Ohio, though none of them has a geographically defined territory. Highland Park and Mount Morris are approximately 75 miles apart; Highland Park and Comstock Park are approximately 190 miles apart; and Comstock 2 Park and Mt. Morris are approximately 100 miles apart. Guardian determines which branch to work from in providing service to a customer based on that customer’s needs and security considerations. Jeffrey Prough (“Prough”), the President of Guardian Security Services, and Jeff Kipp (“Kipp”), the Vice President, oversee all of Guardian’s operations – including the labor relations policies – of all divisions, including the armored car division. Both officers are in regular contact with all divisions and branches. Hugh Adams (“Adams”) is the general manager of Guardian’s armored car division, and has an office at each branch location. He rotates around to the branches and oversees employee scheduling, customer accounts, and weekly management training meetings. The branches are controlled by the same human resources and business departments as the company at large, and the centralized functions include purchasing; billing; promulgation of employment policies, handbooks, and the like; payroll; hiring, firing, layoffs, transfers, and promotions; and orientation training. At the Highland Park branch, Guardian’s general manager is in charge of the armored car division as well as other divisions housed in the same facility, and an assistant branch manager and a customer service manager are in charge of most of the armored car division’s day-to-day operations. Two assistant branch managers oversee daily operations at the Mt. Morris facility, and a branch manager oversees daily operations at Comstock Park. The managers in charge of the three facilities communicate with each other regularly on the phone. Each day there is a shuttle run among Highland Park and the other two branches in which one armored car picks up and delivers currency and paperwork; generally the same employees work this route every day. Additional runs between facilities are less frequent. Employees transfer among branches on occasion to cover a particular facility’s operations when it is temporarily short-handed, 3 although Guardian does not keep track of how often this occurs or how many employees are involved when it does occur. Guardian presented testimony that there had been a few instances of temporary transfers in the two years preceding this case, one of which involved 6 or 7 guards over the course of three days, and that there have been roughly 11 permanent transfers among the three facilities over that same two-year period. Adams decides which employees will be going to the other branches when temporary transfers are needed, although the transfers are usually on a voluntary basis.