Opinion ID: 702601
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Henry's Section 8(b)(1)(B) Status as Grievance Adjustor

Text: 19 The Board urges in the alternative that Henry was engaged in the adjustment of grievances. This assertion is also incorrect in light of the undisputed facts. 20 The Board identifies as grievance adjustment Henry's role in correcting travel pay for one worker, a Mr. Sabbatino. 4 Substantively, the travel pay problem in question is not a grievance. Both the employer and Union agreed that workers traveling outside their respective twenty mile free zones were entitled to travel pay for the days they so traveled. The employer fully expected to dispense travel pay whenever it was due, as evidenced by Henry's past conduct in issuing immediate correction notes to the payroll office when approached by a worker with a payroll discrepancy. In each case that occurred before the Union filed the charge against Henry, travel pay mistakes apparently were corrected without confrontation or any notice of the employer's intent to oppose the pay adjustment. The errors that the Board identifies no more create grievances than does the erroneous dispatch of a work crew to an incorrect address. There is a qualitative difference between adjustment of grievances and corrections of mere mistakes when an employee calls attention to them. 21 Nor did the pay problem rise procedurally to the level of a grievance. As the ALJ correctly found, everyday responses to employee problems and corrections of what are admitted payroll errors are simply too premature to be so classified. No formal or even semi-formal grievance had been filed. Certainly, Henry had no dealing with the union or its representative in simply noting a correction to payroll. Most important, Henry was not authorized to deal with the Union on behalf of Simpson. In sum, Henry was acting as would any other supervisor in directing his crew and seeing to their individual needs. Were we to classify the travel pay problem as a grievance and Henry's correction of that problem as grievance adjustment, once again every line supervisor would be converted by his or her routine activities into a section 8(b)(1)(B) representative for purposes of protection from union discipline. As we have said, Congress did not intend to cast its net that widely in enacting the section.