1 - National Labor Relations Board

126 Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the National Labor Relations Board
as "somewhat unusual," the court rejected an interpretation of
that decision which would "permit any employer to impede
unionization merely by centralizing final decisions on labor
policies," and held that such centralization did not preclude establishment
of a separate unit of an office where, as here, that office
possessed substantial administrative autonomy in matters other
than labor relations, temporary transfers between offices were
infrequent, and the geographic compactness and established bargaining
pattern among the other employees present in Solis
Theatre were absent.
In Harry T. Campbell Sons, 17 the Fourth Circuit rejected the
Board's determination that a unit limited to the calcite operation
at a stone quarry, and not including employees at other
quarry facilities, was appropriate. In the court's view, all of the
operations at the quarry should be regarded as a single plant
whose separate processing operations were entirely dependent
on the quarry as a source of supply, and as possessing "an
extraordinary degree of integration and interdependence, both
from an operational and personnel standpoint." It found this
conclusion required by the proximity of the different operations,
the substantial interchange and contact between the employees
engaged in different operations, and the uniformity of job classifications
and labor relations policies, common administration,
and centralized control of management functions, not only at
the quarry, but for all of the employer's facilities. In the court's
opinion, allowing the calcite operation to form a separate unit
would eliminate the possibility of effective and stable collective
bargaining, since neither the union nor the employer could bargain
concerning the calcite employees without considering the
effect of any agreement reached on other employees at the quarry.
Moreover, it found that creation of such a separate unit would
impose the will of the calcite employees, who were only a minority
of the employees at the quary, on the majority and deprive the
majority of their freedom to choose their own representatives,
since a strike by the calcite employees would undoubtedly severely
disrupt the operations of the remaining facilities, causing
economic hardship to employees not involved in the dispute but
dependent upon the uninterrupted functioning of the quarry operations.
Accordingly, the court concluded that the calcite operation
was neither the appropriate unit nor an appropriate
unit for collective bargaining, and denied enforcement of the
17 N.L.R.B v. Harry T Campbell Some Corp., 407 F2c1 969.