This writ of certiorari brings here for review the decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals enforcing an order of the National Labor Relations Board which was entered after the Board found upon hearings that petitioner had violated Sections 8(1) and 8(5) of the National Labor Relations Act. The petition for the writ presented issues (1) as to whether two small related departments with thirty to forty employees may be an appropriate bargaining unit when the department store of which they are a part has around three hundred and fifty departments and approximately five thousand employees; (2) as to whether the Board could properly place the name of a Joint Labor Council on the ballot for the employees' bargaining representative when none of the employees were members of the Council but only of a local union which was associated with others in the Council; (3) as to whether seeking authority by the employer from the National War Labor Board to increase wages without taking up the increase with a certified bargaining agent may be an unfair labor practice under Section 8(1) of the Labor Act; and (4) as to the propriety of a Board order to cease and desist generally from unfair labor practices instead of an order to cease and desist only from the type or types of unfair practices which the Board found the employer committed. As these issues presented important problems in the administration of the National Labor Relations Act, certiorari was granted. 324 U.S. 838, 65 S.Ct. 1014.
Appropriate Unit. After a hearing in which the employer, the petitioner here, the May Department Stores Company, doing business as Famous-Barr Company, a St. Louis department store, took part, the Labor Relations Board, on June 16, 1943, found that all non-supervisory employees of the Company, then 28 in number, working in the main and basement men's busheling rooms constituted an appropriate unit for collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159(b). An election was ordered. It resulted in the choice and designation of the St. Louis Joint Council, United Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Employees of America, C.I.O., as the representative for collective bargaining of the employees of the unit.
The Company contended that a storewide unit of its five thousand employees was the most appropriate and at any rate that employees in the women's alteration and the fur alteration departments should be added to the employees in the men's busheling rooms to form the unit. As there is no provision for direct review of the determination and certification of the bargaining representative, the Company, in order to secure judicial view of the finding as to the unit, awaited this proceeding which sought a decree directing it to bargain collectively with the representative. See Inland Empire Dist. Council, etc., v. Millis, 325 U.S. 697, 65 S.Ct. 1316.
A few months before this proceeding a determination that all employees of the Company subject to stated exceptions were the appropriate unit for collective bargaining had been sought by the C.I.O. The Company objected because no sufficient showing of representation was made and because it took exception to the exclusion of certain employees from the proposed unit. This petition was dismissed for failure of the C.I.O. to make a substantial showing of membership in the suggested store-wide unit. 46 N.L.R.B. 305. That prior application is not a bar to this. The Board was careful to note in this proceeding that a larger unit might be fixed as appropriate if self-organization developed. Other departments of the store had members of this and other unions as employees. This presence of union members throughout the enterprise was a matter of consideration in deciding upon the appropriate unit but was not decisive. Compare Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 313 U.S. 146, 156, 61 S.Ct. 908, 914, 85 L.Ed. 1251. No labor organization claimed to represent the entire body of employees. Therefore the Board determined to approve this unit as appropriate so that collective bargaining might start for these employees without waiting until more employees might be organized into a larger unit. Compare National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111, 134, 64 S.Ct. 851, 862, 88 L.Ed. 1170.