[1986] OLRB Rep. January 94
3455-84-R International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America, (U.A.W.), Applicant, v. Highbury Ford Sales Limited, Respondent, V. Group of Employees, Objectors
BEFORE: R. A. Furness, Vice-Chairman, and Board Members P. J. 0 'Keeffe and J. A. Ronson.
APPEARANCES: Lorna J. Moses and Howard Powers for the applicant; D. W Morgan, David F. Keeler, J. J. Vitali and M. E. Geiger for the respondent; F. Glenn Jones and David Scott for the objectors.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; January 16, 1986
In an earlier decision of the Board dated April 13, 1985, before a differently constituted panel, the Board determined that the appropriate unit of employees was "all employees of the respondent in London, Ontario, save and except tower operators, managers, service advisors, foremen, persons above the rank of foreman, office and sales staff". In that decision, the Board noted that the applicant had challenged the list of employees filed by the respondent. The applicant submitted that Dianna Wilson Rose, warranty clerk, and Debbie Agnew, service cashier, were employees in the bargaining unit. The respondent submitted that Ms. Rose and Ms. Agnew were office staff and were therefore excluded from the bargaining unit. The Board appointed a Labour Relations Officer to inquire into and report back to the Board in relation to the duties and responsibilities of Ms. Rose and Ms. Agnew in order to determine whether either or both of them are part of the respondent's office staff. The report of the Labour Relations Officer is dated June 28, 1985, and this matter was listed for hearing for the purpose of entertaining the representations of the parties on the report on October 30, 1985.
The respondent is in the business of the sale and servicing of trucks and cars and consists of a number of departments, namely, sales organization, fleet leasing sales, service department (which is divided into the mechanical shop and the body shop), parts department and a general accounting office. The employees who are affected by this application are employees in the service department and the parts department, together with four employees who are employed at a Texaco service station, which forms part of the respondent's operations. In the general accounting office there are approximately eight to ten employees. These employees are excluded from the bargaining unit. Ms. Agnew and Ms. Rose are, respectively, cashier and warranty clerk. The dispute between the parties over the inclusion or exclusion of Ms. Agnew and Ms. Rose centres around whether their community of interest lies with the employees in the general accounting office, which would lead to their exclusion from the bargaining unit, or whether their community of interest lies with the employees in the service department and parts department and the Texaco service station. The respondent's premises are on Highbury Avenue in London, and consist of operations on two floors. On the second floor there are a number of offices occupied by the president, the vice-president of financing and administration and other employees of the respondent, together with a general office where the general accounting staff works, a board room, a computer room, a supply room, a washroom for the employees on the second floor, a mechanics' washroom and a lunchroom for the mechanics. Within the confines of the second floor, there is a stairway down to the main or first floor. In the immediate vicinity of the staircase there is a waiting room for customers who require service, two offices, a body shop office, a washroom, a small office used by Ms. Rose, a desk behind which Ms. Agnew deals with customers, a retail parts section, a computer office, parts counter, a control tower and kiosk where orders pass from the cashier to the control tower operator, who, in turn, arranges for the production of parts and the assignment of particular tasks to the mechanics employed by the respondent. Also on the first floor there is a body shop, a mechanical shop, a tool room, a storage area and three bays used for washing vehicles, front-end alignment and lubrication. All of the office employees in the general accounting office work on the second floor and Ms. Agnew and Ms. Rose, who are the two persons in dispute, work on the first floor.
Ms. Agnew has been employed by the respondent as a cashier since May of 1984. Previously, she worked at the Texaco station for a four-year period. She regards Dennis Morgan, the service manager, as her immediate supervisor, together with Ron Rancier, the vice-president of finance and administration. Mr. Morgan works on the same floor as Ms. Agnew. Mr. Rancier works on the second floor. Her job as a cashier is to write up the work orders, file them and answer the telephone. When a customer comes on to the premises, the customer is met by a service advisor who discovers the problem which the customer is experiencing with the car. The mechanics do the work and the work order goes to the control tower. The control tower operator gives the work orders to Ms. Agnew. She gets most of her work from the tower. However, she also gets some work from Phil Vitali, the manager at the Texaco station, with respect to safety checks on cars or the pre-delivery inspection of cars. She goes to the control tower if she is uncertain how the time spent on a car is being split by the mechanics on various jobs, or if she is not sure about the retail warranty or parts. This uncertainty happens almost every day. Once the car has been serviced by the respondent, the customer comes to Ms. Agnew to collect the car and receives the keys to the car in exchange for payment for the job. She may have to speak to the service advisor regarding an explanation of the bill to the customer. She answers the telephone for the service advisors if it rings more than three times. This happens about ten times a day. Ms. Rose answers the phone for the service advisors an equal number of times. Ms. Agnew feels competent to answers inquiries about minor jobs, such as oil filter changes and quotes prices. She feels that money differentiates minor jobs from major jobs. She is able to make appointments in the appointment book at the service desk for major or minor jobs for someone to bring in a car for servicing. Basically, she can give an explanation for a bill, but does not feel she is able to give an explanation for the time actually spent on the various items. She receives telephone calls from customers who want to know beforehand if the car is ready, and on these occasions she checks with the control tower. Ms. Agnew collects cash and credit card payments, puts it into an envelope where Ms. Rose checks it and hands it to Sue Price, who works on the second floor. Ms. Price then gives the information to the keypunch operator who punches the information into the accounts records. Ms. Agnew has contact with the manager of the body shop, Roy Boyle. He brings in the work order and she answers his phone if he is not in the office. She is able to take cash from his customers and sometimes she can answer queries and give information when he is not there. She sees the manager of the body shop at least five times a day. The contact with Dennis Morgan, the service manager, occurs when he authorizes charges and sometimes she will ask him to speak to customers regarding work orders that he writes up. She sees him once or twice a day. She sits at the front of the service department next to the waiting room, some thirty feet from the mechanical shop and some sixty feet from the body shop. There is a physical separation between Ms. Agnew and the other areas of the first floor. She goes upstairs with the white copies of the work orders and gives them to Sue Price. On occasions she makes photocopies of work orders using the machine on the second floor. The white copies of the work orders are filed in an area on the second floor. She does not have to go upstairs very often to check for retail forms, and she does not go into the mechanical shop very often. She may go to the body shop to find a work order. She never goes to the tool room or storage place. She goes to the control tower to get keys and to see if a car is ready.
When she was away on holidays, no one from the general accounting office worked on her job. However, where she has made a mistake, someone from the general accounting office will come down and ask her to go up and explain the discrepancy or correct it. Sue Price might phone if she has a cheque and is trying to match it up with a work order. If she has made a mistake on the work order, the keypunch operator on the second floor will ask her to correct the mistake on the order. Ms. Agnew has contact with the keypunch operator and the accounts receivable clerk once or twice a week. Where a customer has a complaint about the time spent on the labour portion of the mechanical job, Ms. Agnew would contact the service advisor. When she asks for occasional time off, or is reporting late, or is sick, she would usually report to Dennis Morgan, the service manager, or make sure that he knows. She works from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays and from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. Her lunch break is from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. on weekdays. When she is at lunch Ms. Rose, the warranty clerk, covers for her and if it is a busy day and she has more than one customer, Ms. Rose, the warranty clerk will also help her. On the other hand, Ms. Agnew does not cover for Ms. Rose. The work orders and paperwork originate from various places in the service department. None of the paperwork originates from the general accounting office on the second floor. She speaks to Phil Vitali about the internal work orders from the Texaco service station. She does not use a computer or a typewriter. She does use a phone and an adding machine and occasionally the photocopying machine on the second floor for about one hour each month.
The appointment book is on the service desk, which is located between the control tower and the waiting room. Some sixty to eighty cars pass through the service department each day and Ms. Agnew makes appointments two to four times a day. The rest of the appointments would be made by the service advisors, other than two per day, which are made by Ms. Rose. It is not part of her normal duties to fill out work orders. She charges out the labour hours and costs out how much the mechanic is getting paid and totals up the amount of labour. Her salary is $200.00 per week and she was informed by the service manager what her pay would be. When she was working at the Texaco service station, Mr. Morgan asked her if she wanted the job as cashier. She arranges her holidays with the service manager. In her view, she has never really dealt with Mr. Rancier and has never really talked to him about her pay. However, Mr. Rancier does tell her what to do sometimes. The mechanics start work at 9:00 a.m. and finish at 5:00 p.m. Sometimes they work nights. Ms. Agnew works until 6:00 p.m. in order to be available for the customers who work late. Ms. Agnew has received no training and has no knowledge of mechanics or of the parts that are used in the servicing work. When Ms. Agnew is off sick, she is replaced by Ms. Rose. Ms. Agnew deals with service advisors and tower operators rather than with mechanics.
Ms. Rose has been employed by the respondent for one year and five months. She was formerly the cashier and then became warranty clerk/computer input. She works as a warranty clerk in the morning and as the computer input in the afternoon. Mr. Morgan is her immediate supervisor and as warranty clerk, she receives claims, fills them in, so that they are ready to be sent to Ford. As the computer input, she takes service work orders and inputs into the system what was done to the vehicle. Claims which originated from and were written up by the service advisors are at the desk when the customers arrive with their problems. The work which is to be done for the customers is either marked up as retail or as warranty. Ms. Rose handles only the warranty items. The warranty work does not go into the computer. She comes into contact with service advisors, the control tower operator and with some of the mechanics. She deals with Mr. Morgan if she has any problems. She sees the control tower operator just a few times if there is any problem with the warranty form and sees the control tower operator if she has to decide if an item is a warranty matter or whether the customer should be paying for it. She sees the control tower operator once or twice a day. If she has problems with a warranty she would ask Mr. Morgan with respect to the time allotted for the item or what has been done. She does get warranty work from the body shop and the body shop manager generally brings the order to her. If she has any problems on this, she sees the body shop manager. Other than that, she has no reason to see him. When she has finished with the warranty papers she gives them to Mr. Morgan, who sends them to Ford. While she works on the first floor, she goes to the second floor to make photocopies and, in the morning, Ms. Rose and Ms. Agnew take the cash and receipts to the second floor. The personnel in the general accounting office on the second floor come to see Ms. Rose if there is a problem with the work order. This happens about once every week or so.
Ms. Rose works from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with lunch from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. or 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. She looks after the cashier function during Ms. Agnew's lunch break and comes in earlier in the morning than does Ms. Agnew and handles any customers who come in before 9:00 a.m. She does not use a typewriter. She uses an adding machine and a computer terminal which is hooked up to the computer which is situated on the second floor. She inputs all repair orders for work done on each customer's vehicle. She uses the computer about three to four hours a day. She does not receive any work from the personnel upstairs. Most of her work originates from the service advisors. She would have something to do with the work order, only if there was a problem, such as whether an item was covered under the warranty. Where there is a faulty radio, she takes the claim back with the radio to the parts department and has them ship it back to Ford. She is paid on the basis of a salary and a bonus. The salary is $170.00 per week, which is paid monthly and the bonus is one per cent of the warranty work which goes through and is paid by Ford each month. This amounts to about $250.00 per month. She answers her own telephone and if the service telephone rings more than three times, she answers it. Ms. Rose also answers the telephone of the service manager and the body shop if it rings more than six times. She relays messages to the manager of the body shop. She does not process any paperwork for the Texaco station. Her direct supervisor is Dennis Morgan. Ms. Rose has never been reprimanded by Mr. Morgan and when she first started work as a cashier, she reported to him. She goes to the mechanic shop once or twice a day and talks to the mechanics and goes to the body shop perhaps once a week. Sometimes she goes into the garage. No one from the second floor general accounting office looks after her work while she is absent or on vacation. She has never been told what her duties would be and, as far as she is aware, she is not the only one to get a percentage bonus. By personal preference, she does not use the lunchroom on the second floor.
When Ms. Rose first came to the respondent she was interviewed by Mr. Rancier. No one else interviewed her. He told her what she would be paid at that time. He said she would be talking to Mr. Morgan about any problems. She uses the warranty book because its an operations code. The problems that she has mainly would be whether or not there is an operations code under the warranty manual for a particular operation. Her fundamental duty is to obtain payment for warranty work from Ford. When she speaks to mechanics it is to get the correct code to put on the form. She does not remember whether she was told by Mr. Rancier that Mr. Morgan was not her supervisor. When she obtained an increase in salary, both Mr. Rancier and Mr. Morgan told her. She has discussed the quality of her work with Mr. Morgan, but not with Mr. Rancier. She saw Mr. Morgan about her holidays and then Mr. Rancier because she wanted more holidays than she was allowed. Both men had a say in her taking holidays. She has no occasion to speak to mechanics other than to clarify information or to fill out a warranty form correctly. Some customers require photocopies of invoices and for this purpose she goes upstairs to use the photocopy machine. Every couple of days she goes upstairs and files bills of lading. She works between eleven and twenty feet from the stairs to the second floor and she would be the same distance from the service desk. The orders are placed in the revolving kiosk at the control tower. Mechanics obtain the order and the parts department gets the parts. She has basic mechanical knowledge but is not qualified to do anything mechanical.
George Vitali has been the president of the respondent for ten years. He describes Ford as his immediate supervisor. The respondent is divided into five departments: the sales organization, which is not affected by this application, the fleet leasing sales department, which has two employees and is not affected by this application, the service department, which is divided into the mechanical shop with thirty to thirty-five employees and the body shop with eight employees, the parts department, which is affected by this application, and the general accounting office with approximately eight to ten employees. By the terms of the agreed bargaining unit, the office staff is excluded from the bargaining unit. In addition, the respondent operates a Texaco service station, which has four employees including a manager. There is a full-time employee in the kiosk and a number of part-time employees. All of the employees at the Texaco service station are included in the bargaining unit except the manager Phil Vitali. The general accounting office consists of the following classifications: accounts payable, vehicle accounting, data processing, leasing files and mechanics' payroll, accounts receivable, switchboard operator (who does some clerical work for vehicle sales), office manager and manager of finance and administration. There are also the two classifications which are in dispute, namely, cashier and warranty clerk.
The functions of the employees who are included in the bargaining unit in the service department and parts department may be described as the servicing of vehicles, that is to say, repairing and dispensing parts in order to effect the repairs. The functions of the employees in the general accounting office are to account for and to pay out money owed by the respondent, collect money owing to the respondent and to detail it from an accounting point of view. According to George Vitali, the jobs of the employees in dispute are part of the accounting function in the sense that they produce the paperwork necessary to account for the costs incurred and the sales to be billed and accounted for through the respondent's books.
It is useful to consider the work of the employees in the bargaining unit from the time when the customer comes into the service reception area and speaks to the service advisor. The customer describes a problem and the service advisor translates these problems on to a work order. A decision is made as to which services are to be paid for by the customer and which are to be paid for by Ford as warranty work. The order is written and one copy goes to the control tower and the remaining copies (known as soft copies) go into a parts department. The hard copy is the mechanic's copy and is handled by the control tower operator. He gives the hard copy to the mechanic after he has analyzed the work which is required and has scheduled the work with a mechanic. To the extent that is required, the work is supervised by the shop foreman. The mechanic time punches on and off the job and returns the work order to the control tower. The mechanic is paid according to a schedule of times for each portion of the job he does. The mechanic writes on the work order what he has done. The soft copies in the parts department are there so that when the mechanic requires a part he goes to the back counter in the parts department and asks for the part. As the parts are dispensed they are charged out on those soft copies. When the job is finished, the hard copy has the mechanic's notes on it and the time tickets are affixed to the back. This is necessary so that the mechanic can be paid for the work performed. The soft copies are retrieved from the parts department and they are put together and, in effect, they are re-assembled as in the original work order package. Now they have to be processed in an accounting fashion. This includes the number of hours that have to be charged out in the job as retail costs for the customer. The cost of parts supplied also has to be added up. The comments of the mechanics have to be translated on to the soft copy so that the customer can see what has been done and what he has been charged for. These functions are done by taking the re-assembled work order, putting it in an air chute which extends from the control tower to the cashier's office.
The cashier assigns labour costs. If the customer is to pay these costs, the cashier takes the work order and fills out those portions that deal with the customer's costs. She assigns the costs to specific account numbers on the work order and assigns sales amounts to different account numbers. She then adds up the totals on the work order and determines the amount of sales tax that has to be added to the bill and the amount to be sent off to the sales tax department. The cashier explains to the customer the work which was done and if more explanation is required by the customer, she will ask the service advisor, the shop foreman or the service manager. If a warranty component is involved in the work this would have to be quoted as "W" on the work order as opposed to "R" for retail. This is where the warranty clerk receives the work order and she performs essentially the same process, except that Ford requires that the billing for warranty work and warranty parts be done in a specific fashion in accordance with Ford's warranty policy manual. The warranty clerk finalizes the orders, asks the service manager to sign them and sends them to Ford. The cashier and warranty clerk may have questions that have to be answered by the service advisor, the control tower operator, the foreman or the mechanic. In preparing these documents, it may be necessary to get supporting information from the general files in the general accounting office. The cashier and warranty clerk may have to produce photostats of invoices from the general accounting office. The warranty clerk keypunches the work orders on to the computer so that the respondent has a complete record of work performed on each vehicle.
The work in the general accounting office consists of work performed by the various employees in that office. The accounts payable clerk opens the day's mail, pays the accounts, handles purchase orders, reconciles money and purchase orders, assigns costs to various accounts, prepares cheques for signature by the departmental manager and puts information into the computer. The vehicle accounting clerk receives vehicle sales documents from the vehicle sales department, assigns costs to cost account numbers for new, used and reconditioned cars, data processes the documents and puts information into the computer. The data processing clerk does the data processing for parts, sales slips and vehicle work orders. She makes the bank deposit each day and goes to the vehicle registration departments and obtains vehicle licences. The leasing clerk handles the accounting for the leasing files, for the mechanics' payroll, does the insurance coverage, makes sure the files are up to date, handles the mechanics' time tickets which come from the service department, feeds the paper hours into the computer so that the computer produces the appropriate paycheques. The accounts receivable clerk ensures that customers pay their accounts with the respondent in a timely fashion. The switchboard operator works in the showroom. She assigns vehicle identification numbers to the new cars and produces photostats of the necessary documents and distributes the necessary paperwork, either to the vehicle sales manager or into the accounting office. She types quotations for the fleet and leasing representatives. She prepares and types out the lease agreements, answers the telephone and assigns calls to departments. The office manager is an accountant who ultimately produces an overall statement of the operations and identifies accounting problems. The vice-president of finance and administration oversees the entire function and has the responsibility for hiring staff and seeing that the accounting functions get done properly. All of the persons in the general accounting office report to the vice-president of finance and administration.
According to the organization chart of the respondent's business, the cashier and warranty clerk report to Ron Rancier, the vice-president of finance and administration. Within the bargaining unit, employees are hired by the respective managers in their departments. In the general accounting office, the vice-president of finance and administration hires them, including the cashier and the warranty clerk. He promotes them, terminates them and evaluates them. The respective managers grant time off to employees in the bargaining unit. However, the vice-president of finance and administration grants time off in the general accounting office and for the two classifications in dispute, namely, the cashier and the warranty clerk. The vice-president of finance and administration grants leaves of absence to the two employees in dispute and also for employees in the general accounting office after consultation. The salaries in the general accounting office and for the cashier and warranty clerk are set by the vice-president of finance and administration in conjunction with the general manager.
With respect to the employees in the bargaining unit, the body shop is staffed by technicians who are licenced by the government of Ontario. The employees in the mechanical shop are licenced, for example, the diesel mechanic, the front-end alignment man, the tune-up man, and general mechanic and the apprentices. All require qualifications to perform their work. While in the parts department there is no licencing arrangement, the employees in the parts department require a depth of knowledge and an understanding of the intricate and complex numbering used for parts. At the service station the mechanic on staff is licenced, but there is no need for a licence to perform oil changes. The employees who operate the kiosk for the gas pumps are not licenced. In addition to their kiosk duties, they wash out the washrooms and in the kiosk they make out sales slips and collect money.
The skills exercised in the general accounting office are, for the most part, accounting skills. If the cashier is absent, the respondent could send one of the employees from the general accounting office to substitute. The skills, in the view of Mr. G. Vitali, between the general accounting office and the cashier are interchangeable. In the bargaining unit the employees use tools, tool boxes, a lathe and a welding torch. On the other hand, the office employees use adding machines, a data processing terminal and a telephone. Employees in the bargaining unit do not replace either the employees in the general accounting office or the cashier or the warranty clerk. Employees in the general accounting office could replace the cashier in the case of illness or vacation, but this does not happen very often. There is no replacement plan operating in the opposite direction.
In the body shop the employees work five days a week from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. In the mechanical shop they work the same hours, but there is also an afternoon shift until 10:00 p.m., and two mechanics work on Saturdays between 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. In the parts department the hours of work are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a representative who is there in the evenings to look after the afternoon shift and the Saturday shift in the mechanical shop. The Texaco station operates from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays and from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays, with the gas bar being open from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., seven days a week. The employees in the general accounting office work from
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., five days a week.
As stated earlier, the cashier works from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., five days a week, and from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. The warranty clerk works five days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The employees in the general accounting office and the two classifications in dispute are paid when they are absent. The respondent has three payrolls and the cashier and warranty clerk are paid on the payroll for the general accounting office. The cash or credit card slips from the Texaco station go to the general accounting office. The attendants at the gas station are paid an hourly rate. When Ms. Agnew worked at the Texaco station, she was interviewed by the vice-president of finance and administration and other people and hired and promoted by the vice-president of finance and administration. The hours of work of the warranty clerk and the cashier are offset for the purposes of covering each other. The cashier was initially assessed by means of an interview, a wonderlich test, which tests the ability of the individual to think logically and by a productive index. After being interviewed by the vice-president of finance and administration, she was not interviewed by anyone else. A comparison of the salaries shows that the vehicle leasing and accounting clerk receives $300.00 a week. The accounts receivable clerk receives $325.00 a week. The switchboard operator receives $185.00 a week. The data processing clerk receives $187.00 a week. As stated earlier, the cashier receives $200.00 a week and the warranty clerk $175.00 a week, plus a monthly bonus of about $250.00. The warranty clerk could do the data processing job in the general accounting office in the view of Mr. G. Vitali.
Clerical workers physically located in or immediately adjacent to the plant rather than in the main or general office and whose main function is to service the plant, for example, foremen's clerks, production clerks, shipping and receiving clerks are normally included in a plant unit on the ground that their community of interest lies with the employees in the plant rather than with the office employees. This practice was described in Wakefield Lighting Limited, [1965] OLRB Rep. May 143, where the Board stated at page 144:
It is a well established practice of the Board in determining the appropriateness of bargaining units of persons engaged in production as distinguished from the office bargaining units, to include in the production units employees in job classifications such as production schedulers, expediters and material control clerks. These classifications may be included in the general description of "Plant Clerical Staff".
It is the Board's practice to include plant clerical staff with the production unit because of such factors as common supervision, the fact that they directly service the production unit, they are commonly associated with the production unit and in general their community of interest is with that unit. This functional coherence and interdependence is the reason for including such classifications in the unit determined by the Board to be appropriate in this matter.
The applicant relied on the decision of the Board in Domtar Chemicals Limited, [1968] OLRB Rep. Oct. 719. In that case, the Board found that having regard to the evidence before it a person classified as a stockroom clerk and a person classified as an assistant stockroom clerk were engaged in the performance of functions which serviced the production employees for whom the applicant was the bargaining agent. The Board found that while the two employees were under the supervision of the office manager, they were physically located adjacent to the production workers, some 200 yards from the office employees. The Board also stated in that decision that while the two employees had some of the same benefits enjoyed by the office workers, their community of interest lay with the production workers, since they were daily associated with them in the performance of their duties and that their duties were performed as a service to the production employees. For these reasons, the Board found that even though their interests were not entirely divorced from the office employees, their main community of interest lay with the production employees and that, accordingly, they formed a tag end to the production unit that would not be appropriate for inclusion in a unit of office employees.
The Board notes that there are some differences between the facts in the instant case and the facts in Domtar Chemicals Limited. First of all, the cashier and the warranty clerk are not located 200 yards from the general accounting office. They are located on the first floor beneath the general accounting office and are approximately the same distance from the general accounting office as from the employees in the parts department, the mechanics, the mechanical shop and the body shop. Moreover, while it may be said that they perform duties with the production workers, their task is clerical and the flow of the administration work is with the employees in the general accounting office. The natural progression and the interchange of skills between the two disputed categories lies with the general accounting office and not with the bargaining unit. The progression and the flow of the work indicates that the warranty clerk and the cashier could reasonably expect to perform some of the work in the general accounting office with perhaps, in some cases, additional training. It is quite clear that neither the cashier nor the warranty clerk could perform any of the work in the body shop, the parts shop, or the mechanical shop, but that they could perform the duties of a gas attendant at the Texaco station. The predominant community of interest of Ms. Agnew and Ms. Rose therefore lies not with the production employees who are licenced and possess skills not possessed at all by either the warranty clerk or the cashier. Their conditions of employment are more similar to the employees of the general accounting office than the other employees and their real supervision is through the vice-president of finance and administration and not through the service managers. The cashier and the warranty clerk are not essentially engaged in performing services for the employees in the bargaining unit and their functional coherence and interdependence lies with the employees in the general accounting office. See also the decision of the Board in Wragge Shoes Limited, [19691 OLRB Rep. Nov. 961.
In Usarco Limited, [19671 OLRB Rep. Sept. 526, the Board set forth a series of tests in order to determine the community of interest of employees and the appropriateness of bargaining units. The four factors which were set forth in that decision are: 1) community of interest of employees; 2) centralization of managerial authority; 3) the economic factor of one bargaining unit; and 4) source of work. The factor of community of interest may be determined by considering the following criteria: a) nature of the work performed, b) conditions of employment, c) skills of employees, d) administration, e) geographic circumstances, f) functional coherence and interdependence. The parts department employees
are plant clericals, in that they service the production people and keep records. They are analogous to the stockroom clerks referred to in Wakefield Lighting Limited. The work of the cashier and the warranty clerk is totally an auditing and clerical job. The nature of the work performed is strictly clerical, with writing, adding and keypunching into the computer. This contrasts with the highly skilled non-clerical work performed by the persons in the mechanical shop, body shop and parts shop. The unskilled people in the bargaining unit are, for the most part, either drivers who may become workers in the parts department or the gas bar attendants in the kiosk at the Texaco service station. Most of these are part-time people who also clean out washrooms and keep track of how much gas is sold. The administration of the wonderlich test, the interview and the production index and the movement of Ms. Agnew from the Texaco service station to the job of cashier was regarded by the respondent not as a transfer but as a promotion. The Board notes that Sue Price, the accounts receivable clerk, performs a similar job to the warranty clerk and the cashier. It appears to the Board that if anyone left the employment of the respondent from the second floor, either the person working as the warranty clerk or the cashier could be offered and could do some of the jobs on the second floor.
Having regard to the foregoing, the Board finds that the community of interest of the warranty clerk Dianna Wilson Rose, and the cashier Debbie Agnew is far more closely aligned with the employees in the general accounting office rather than with the employees in the bargaining unit. In these circumstances, Dianna Wilson Rose and Debbie Agnew are excluded from the bargaining unit on the basis that they form part of the office staff.
The Registrar is directed to list this matter for continuation of hearing, including an inquiry into the origination, preparation and circulation of the statement of desire.