In Teamster Local 117 v. Washington State Department of Corrections, PERC dismissed a representation petition which sought to place unrepresented supervisors in a bargaining that was separate from the exclusive bargaining unit of like supervisors. The Examiner reasoned that splitting the supervisors into different bargaining units would create work jurisdiction and fragmentation issues.
In 2009, the Department of Corrections decentralized its employee training divisions. Employees from the Prisons Division were separated from employees from the Community Corrections Division. The Prison Division employees remained unrepresented, while the Community Corrections Division was represented by the Washington Federation of State Employees.
In 2013, the divisions were recentralized into a single Training and Development Unit. This resulted in the unit being comprised of 20 represented instructor supervisors and 16 unrepresented instructor supervisors. Teamster Local 117 filed a petition to represent the unrepresented instructor supervisors but did not seek to add the already represented instructor supervisors.
The Examiner concluded that Teamster Local 117 sought an inappropriate bargaining unit configuration. All instructor supervisors within the Training and Development Unit essentially functioned the same and had similar duties, regardless of whether they were represented by a bargaining unit. The Examiner reasoned that,
“When the employer created the Training and Development unit, it did so to create a uniform system of training throughout the agency… Based upon these similarities, the Instructors in the Training and Development unit all share a community of interest. To include the instructors in two different bargaining units would create work jurisdiction issues and fragment the employer’s workforce.”
The Examiner concluded that all supervisor instructors had a shared community interest. Thus, Teamster Local 117’s representation petition was dismissed because placing the supervisors into separate bargaining units would create work jurisdiction and fragmentation issues.
Defining bargaining unit boundaries is an important PERC function and often involves judgment. Especially with larger, more complex employer organizations, can be challenging to define bargaining unit boundaries. One important principle that comes into play, and did here, is that PERC dislikes “fragmentation” – the creation of boundaries that leads to additional bargaining units or leaving employees stranded in non-represented situations.
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