Section 29(8)
LABOR DISPUTE, Same establishment, Direct interest, Bakery workers, Retail workers
CITE AS: Graham v Fred Sanders Co, 11 Mich App 361 (1968).
Appeal pending: No
Claimant: Margaret Graham, et al
Employer: Fred Sanders Company
Docket No: B65 278 33786
COURT OF APPEALS HOLDING: Claimants, non-striking retail employees who worked at diverse locations, were not employed in the "same establishment" as striking bakery production workers.
FACTS: Claimants were employed as retail salespeople at bakery concessions operated by the employer at more than 50 grocery stores throughout the Detroit area. A strike by bakery production workers at the employer's main plant resulted in the layoff of claimants. The two groups of employees belonged to different unions and operated under separate collective bargaining agreements. The employer had a central administrative office adjacent to its manufacturing plant and all personnel and industrial relations decisions were made there. The functions of the bakery workers and retail employees were integrated to the extent neither group could operate without the other.
DECISION: Claimants are not subject to disqualification under Section 29(8).
RATIONALE: "The act contemplates that one employing unit may operate more than one establishment, and that nonstriking employees employed in other establishments will not necessarily be disqualified for benefits. Unity of management, overall executive supervision and functional integrality cannot be determinative because if they are then there would be few, if any, separate establishments.... The bakery employees, who worked in the factory, constituted a work force separate and apart, physically and functionally, from plaintiffs who worked in supermarkets scattered throughout the metropolitan Detroit area.... The relationship of the plaintiffs and of the bakery employees to their units of employment is entirely different. One work force was engaged in production, another in sales. Perhaps most importantly, the aptitudes, skills and labor required of, and working conditions affecting, one work force are entirely different from those in respect to the other."
6/91
NA