NLRB Cases Archive 1960 - 1995, LABOR-RELATIONS 1993-94 CCH-NLRB ¶15,425, EMPIRE HEALTH CENTERS GROUP dba DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER and INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPEERATING ENGINEERS, LOCAL 280., (July 29, 1994), National Labor Relations Board, (Jul 29, 1994)

The Respondent argues that the Board should reverse the judge and find that the accretion of the Cowley Street skilled maintenance employees into the larger skilled maintenance unit located at the Fifth Street facility took place after the two facilities merged, based on what it contends was an overwhelming community of interest between the two employee groups. It appears to base its argument in part on the fact that the two groups shared the same wage and benefit structure after the merger. The Respondent’s argument begs the question. The employees shared the same wage and benefit structure only because the Respondent has refused to bargain with the union representing the maintenance employees and unilaterally imposed on those employees the terms of its collective-bargaining agreement (with another union) that covered the Fifth Street employees.

The Respondent further contends that the judge failed to give adequate weight in his assessment of its accretion defense to the permanent transfer of one of eight skilled maintenance employees at Cowley to Fifth Street. We disagree. The judge appropriately deemed “Negligible” the Respondant’s proof of all skilled maintence employee interchange, both permanent and temporary, between the two facilities in the months following the Respondant’s takeover of the Cowley facility. We note that permanent transfers are generally a less significant indication of actual interchange than temporary transfers. See Red Lobster, [1989-90 CCH NLRB ¶16,367] 300 NLRB 908, 911 (1990). In reaching our conclusion regarding the interchange factor, however, we have placed no reliance on the judge’s conclusion that the Respondent’s use of two Cowley Street engineers at the Fifth Street location was “artificial” interchange in the sense that “it merely balanced cost controls” between the two facilities.