Court Opinion

ID: 9454317
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:43:10.396086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:04.346517
License: Public Domain

*981WINTER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I agree with the majority that in a case of this nature our limited function is to determine whether substantial evidence in the record as a whole supports the Board’s determination that a designated bargaining unit is an appropriate unit. Certainly, we need not determine the appropriate unit; nor need we determine a more appropriate unit than that designated by the Board.1 In performing that function, I cannot conclude that the Board’s designation of the calcite employees as an appropriate unit “was ill-advised, arbitrary and capricious.” 2 I think the designation is supported by the requisite quantum of evidence and was well within the Board’s wide discretion in such matters. I would enforce the Board’s order.
I
Lest the record seem completely one-sided, I recite the evidence which supports the Board’s designation:
1. In important respects, the calcite operation is physically separated from the other operations. While it is true that the calcite operation is carried on at Texas, Maryland, where other activities are also conducted, and the raw material for the calcite operation is extracted from the same quarry as the raw material for other operations, the extent of integration between the calcite operation and other operations is extremely limited.
As described by the Board, the accuracy of whose statement is not questioned:
“At its Texas location, the Employer, as heretofore noted, operates a quarry containing a calcium carbonate deposit, a white stone. The Employer hires an outside contractor to drill holes in the face of the quarry wall. These holes are loaded with dynamite by Campbell employees working under the supervision of a blasting superintendent supplied by the dynamite company. After the stone is shot a power shovel loads the stone on a truck. A driver transports all the stone to the primary crusher. The stone is then crushed and the larger pieces are transported and dumped into a hopper at the calcite plant. The flow of the material to the hopper is controlled by the calcite plant foreman and by visual observation made by the truck driver. The smaller stone is transported by another driver to the calcite plant or to a stockpile for future use at calcite. Up to this point the tvork has been performed by Texas quarry personnel and equipment and there has been little, if any, contact between Texas quarry personnel and calcite personnel. The dumped stone is then conveyed by belt past pickers who are on the calcite plant payroll. These employees pick out the bluestone which is then conveyed on another belt to a tank. A calcite plant driver trucks the blue-*982stone and dumps it in an area near the primary crushers or at the west side of the quarry. The white stone (calcite) which has remained proceeds through crushers, up an elevator, is separated into various sizes and stored in eight or nine tanks. Some of the material is then taken out of the tanks and treated with a wet process. After treatment the material is dewatered and bagged. Some of the material is bagged without the necessity of going through the wet process. Sections of the plant are used for the warehousing of the bagged material. From the time that the material is dropped into the hopper until the time it is stored in the warehouse areas of the calcite plant or loaded on common carriers only calcite production employees are involved. However, some of the material, especially reflectolite used for roofing, is not stored at the calcite plant, but is stored in an area somewhat removed from the plant, but still at the Texas location. This material is hauled to that location by a calcite plant employee in a calcite truck. On occasions a calcite plant employee will accompany a truck driver to the reflectolite storage area where a Texas quarry front loader operated by a Texas quarry employee will load the truck. The loading operator takes approximately three or four minutes. In general only about eight to ten percent of the calcite plant employees have on-the-job contact with Texas quarry employees. If rip rap, large stone not used by the calcite plant, but set aside by calcite pickers for return to the Texas quarry for sale, is considered a calcite product, 20 percent of the calcite plant products are utilized by other Employer operations. If rip rap is not included as a calcite plant product not more than five percent of calcite’s products are used at other Employer facilities. The balance of calcite’s products are sold to the Employer’s customers.” (emphasis supplied).
Manifestly, the calcite operation is very much self-contained; the mechanics of its functioning are little different than they would be if it were located several miles from the quarry.
2. Management, while heavily centralized, does divide primary responsibility. Again as stated by the Board, and not disputed:
“The Employer’s operations are under the overall supervision of President Robert B. Hamill, and Vice-Presidents S. James Campbell, Bruce S. Campbell, Jr. and Harry G. Campbell, Jr. These officers act as a management committee in deciding all basic Employer policies, including those in the area of industrial relations. However, each vice-president is responsible for certain phases of the Employer’s operations. Thus, Bruce S. Campbell, Jr. is responsible for all quarry, stone, ready-mix cement operations, ready-mix trucks and the shops which maintain this equipment. Harry G. Campbell, Jr. is responsible for road construction, which is divided into private and public road construction, road equipment and blacktop operations. S. James Campbell is responsible for the sakrete and calcite operations.”
3. The number of transfers of employees to and from the calcite operation is insubstantial. Over all, there are 280 to 290 employees at the entire operation at Texas, Maryland; 80 to 90 work in the calcite operation. For the period 1950 through 1964, there were only 30 permanent transfers either into or out of the calcite operation. These involved approximately 22 employees. In the next succeeding 18-month period, there were 8 transfers in 1965 and none in the first six months of 1966.
4. Hiring, promotion, firing and disciplinary actions are largely self-contained. The employer maintains general uniform labor relations policies and maintains a personnel department at its general offices at Towson, Maryland. However, all calcite personnel are hired at the calcite operation premises, subject to a physical examination and an investigation of the employment application. Promotions of calcite personnel are normally *983made from employees within the unit upon recommendation by calcite supervisors. Disciplinary action and discharge are recommended or made by calcite supervisors. Their actions can be appealed to top company officials, but their actions have never been reversed. No layoffs have occurred at the calcite operation, but the employer’s policy concerning layoffs is to restrict them to the plant or operation involved. A junior calcite employee would thus not be laid off to avoid a layoff of another non-calcite employee having greater seniority. As a related matter, vacations are scheduled on the basis of seniority within each operating unit.
5. There are separate payroll and separate wage rates for calcite employees. For each operation conducted at Texas, Maryland, a separate payroll is maintained; the calcite operation constitutes one such payroll. Calcite employees punch a separate time clock. Although the employer uses company-wide job classifications, wage rates and job descriptions, the functions and duties of the employees within a given classification at its numerous operations vary. For example, two-thirds or more of the employees at the calcite operation áre designated laborers but they do not perform the pick and shovel work performed by laborers on road construction gangs, nor do they receive the same rate of pay as laborers at the sakrete plant. The calcite operation is the only one which works, in part, on a regularly-scheduled two-shift basis, and, in part, on a regularly-scheduled 7-day three-shift basis. Employees involved in the shift operation receive a shift bonus. Laborers at the calcite operation are not paid on an incentive basis, as are laborers at the sakrete plant. Individual merit increases in wages are reviewed by the calcite operation supervisor and vice-president in charge of the calcite operation.
II
In short, there is substantial evidence that calcite employees form a readily identifiable and distinct unit within the employer’s operations, appropriate for the purpose of collective bargaining. Concededly, there is some degree of geographic proximity, centralized control of management, common administration and common personnel policies. But there is a substantial basis for distinction between them and employees of other operations, even though they may all be under the employer’s umbrella-type job classifications. I sharply disagree that “no real distinction exists.”
It is not correct, also, to conclude that the Board’s designation in the instant case “tortures the plain meaning of the Board’s prior decisions.” Of course, what is or may be an appropriate unit is largely a factual question, and it is extremely rare that any given set of facts is ever exactly duplicated. But in analogous situations in which given units have been designated or have been held to be improper by the Board, I find no inconsistency in the Board’s rulings. Bagdad Copper Co., 144 N.L.R.B. 1496 (1963); Texas Instruments, Inc., 145 N.L.R.B. 274 (1963); Halstead & Mitchell Co., 151 N.L.R.B. 1460 (1965); L & S Construction Co., 155 N.L.R.B. 524 (1965). The latter, which was a case in which a unit was found not appropriate, is relied on heavily by the employer in this case. I find it factually distinguishable. L & S was an affiliate of another corporation and the two, collectively, were engaged in the business of building roads. L & S would excavate, grade, place a gravel base for the road and install the curbs and gutters. The affiliate would put down the various road surfaces, using materials obtained from L 6 S or from a third affiliate. On every road project, there was common overall supervision, and any supervisor of either affiliate had the authority to take necessary disciplinary action against an employee of the other affiliate. The degree of common supervision and the close working relationship between employees of L & S and its affiliate were held to require that an appropriate unit include employees of both companies. Manifestly, the degree of integration in the L & S ease was, as the Board found in this *984case, considerably greater than that present herein.
The majority’s conclusion that the Board’s designation in this case “eliminates the possibility of effective and stable collective bargaining, and imposes the will of a minority on the majority of the Texas employees and deprives the majority of its guaranteed right of freedom of choice” is not justified. The interests of the calcite employees can be disassociated from other employees at Texas, and vice versa. Of course, there is some overlap of their interests; but they widely diverge in other respects. Whenever an appropriate unit is designated which is something less than an entire operation the potentially invidious effects posited by the majority are present in greater or lesser degree. Bargaining for the unit we indicated would be appropriate in Singer would be bound to have its effects upon Singer’s other employees in the exercise of their § 7 rights. In the instant case, if all of the employer’s laborers were deemed an appropriate unit, irrespective of their duties, the operation in which they were employed and their historical wage structure, the results of bargaining on their behalf would unquestionably have an effect on other employees, as, for example, to encourage or discourage them to engage in concerted activities, to provide economic pressure for a wage increase or decrease depending upon the success of the laborers’ bargaining, to present them with the problem of whether to cross a picket line if the course of the collective bargaining process were to result in a strike and myriad other examples. The same is true with regard to supervisors who, under the Act, are ineligible to be members of any unit. But, on the facts of this case, I can see no greater or lesser problem with regard to other employees than in the numerous cases in which an appropriate unit is less than the entire operation.
Ill
In the view I take of this case, it is necessary to deal with three other issues not reached by the majority.
The employer complains that the Board was in error in affirming adverse rulings of the hearing officer in the underlying representation cases that denied it the opportunity to present evidence in support of its contention that the unit finally designated was arrived at, solely or principally, on the basis of the extent of unionization among employees. Unquestionably, § 9(c) (5) of the Act prohibits the extent of unionization from constituting a controlling factor in the designation of an appropriate unit, and this Court has not hesitated to enforce this provision of the Act. Singer Sewing Machine Co. v. N. L. R. B., supra. I think Singer inapposite because the proffered testimony, even if received and believed, would fall short of establishing a transgression of § 9(c) (5). In substance, the proffer was that it was the union’s general practice to seek a unit embracing all laborers, except where it did not believe that it had sufficiently ingratiated itself with a majority of all laborers, in which event it would seek a unit embracing only those laborers in. which it could obtain a majority. Nothing in § 9(c) (5) prohibits a union from seeking any unit for any purpose which may motivate it. Section 9(c) (5) is a prohibition directed only to the Board. The proffered evidence would, at best, be so marginally relevant on the issue of whether the Board considered the extent of unionization in arriving at its unit determination that I would find no error in its exclusion.
The employer also complains of the Board’s certifying jointly both Local No. 37, International Union of Operating Engineers, AFL-CIO, and laborers’ District Council of Baltimore and Vicinity, Laborers’ International Union of North America, AFL-CIO, as the collective bargaining agent, and denying the employer the right to adduce evidence that both unions would not function as a true bargaining agent but, rather, were parties to a joint agreement to set aside their traditional jurisdictions solely for purposes of organizational activity. In my *985view, the Board decided both issues correctly.
It is not disputed that each of the unions is a “labor organization” within the meaning of § 2(5) of the Act, and the Board has held that two or more labor organizations can act jointly in representing employees in an appropriate unit, Florida Tile Industries, Inc., 130 N.L.R.B 897 (1961). The provisions of § 2(5) of the Act apply to the entity alone and not to limit the number; hence, when two unions act as a joint bargaining representative they constitute a labor organization within the meaning of the Act. N. L. R. B. v. National Truck Rental Co., 99 U.S.App.D.C. 259, 239 F.2d 422, 425 (1956), cert. den., 352 U.S. 1016, 77 S.Ct. 561, 1 L.Ed.2d 547 (1957). On the issue of how the unions would conduct themselves in collective bargaining if they won the election, the proffered evidence was conjectural and premature. It could hardly justify a denial of certification, because once two unions have been certified jointly, the employer has a right to insist that they bargain in fact jointly for all employees in the unit. Vanadium Corp. of America, 117 N.L.R.B. 1390 (1957) ; Florida Tile Industries, Inc., supra ; S. D. Warren Co., 150 N.L.R.B. 288 (1964), enf’d., 353 F.2d 494 (1 Cir. 1965), cert. den., 383 U.S. 958, 86 S.Ct. 1222, 16 L.Ed.2d 300 (1966).
Lastly, the employer contends that the Board proceeded in violation of the Act by refusing to grant a hearing on the § 8(a) (5) unfair labor practice charge and by granting summary judgment. As our previous decisions establish, summary judgment is a proper vehicle for prompt determination of contested matters where there is no real issue of fact. N. L. R. B. v. Carolina Natural Gas Corp., 386 F.2d 571 (4 Cir. 1967); LTV Electrosystems, Inc. v. N. L. R. B., 388 F.2d 683 (4 Cir. 1968) ; N. L. R. B. v. Aerovox Corp. of Myrtle Beach, S. C., 390 F.2d 653 (4 Cir. 1968). Here, the refusal to bargain was predicated solely on the claimed inappropriateness of the bargaining unit designated by the Board. That issue, the appropriateness of the unit, was the subject of two prior plenary representation hearings. The employer has not proffered or suggested any new relevant evidence. The only purpose to be served by a plenary §' 8(a) (5) hearing was further delay; a purpose not properly cognizable by this Court.

. As we said in Singer Sewing Machine Company v. N. L. R. B., 329 F.2d 200, 202, 12 A.L.R.3d 775 (4 Cir. 1964):
“Our function is not, as Singer apparently suggests, to determine what other units could be considered as appropriate ones, or what unit we in the first instance, would, fix were the decision to be ours. Our function is to determine whether there has been a misapplication of law, lack of substantial evidence, or abuse of discretion in the determination made by the Board. If none of the latter are found, the Board’s determination must stand, for it is the Board which has the discretion and the responsibility for deciding whether a unit is appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining; and its determination, if supported by substantial evidence and within the bounds of law, is binding on us.”
See also, Florence Printing Co. v. N. L. R. B., 338 F.2d 289, 291 (4 Cir. 1964); Corrie Corporation of Charleston v. N. L. R. B., 375 F.2d 149, 154-155 (4 Cir. 1967), and cases cited therein.

. As a collateral matter, I sharply dispute the majority’s characterization that “this court has gone to extremes in its efforts to accept and uphold Board determinations in cases which were not wholly free from doubt” in the matter of unit designation. Unless the instant decision is to signal a complete change of direction, blanket indictment of what we have previously decided is unwarranted.