Alton Box Board Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

May 23, 1967

164 N.L.R.B. 919 (N.L.R.B. 1967)

ALTON BOX BOARD CO. 919
Alton Box Board Company and Chauffeurs,
Teamsters and Helpers Local Union No.
525, affiliated with International Brother-
heod of Teamsters , Chauffeurs , Warehouse-
men and Helpers of America ,' Petitioner,
and International Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers, Local 649, AFL-CIO,
Petitioner.' Cases 14-RC-5389 and 14-RC-
5431.
May 23, 1967
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS BROWN
AND JENKINS
On June 30, 1966, the Regional Director for
Region 14 issued a Decision and Direction of
Elections in the above-entitled proceeding in which
he directed elections in three voting groups of the
Employer's employees at its Alton Mill in Alton,
Illinois: in voting group 1, comprised of instrument
men and helpers; in voting group 2, comprised of
electricians and their helpers, to determine whether
they wished to be severed from an established
plantwide unit represented by Alton Paper Workers
Union, herein referred to as APWU; and in voting
group 3, comprised of the remainder of the
employees in the established plantwide unit.3
Thereafter, in accordance with Section 102.67 of the
National Labor Relations Relations Board Rules and
Regulations, Series 8, as amended, the Employer
filed a timely request for review of the Regional
Director's Decision, solely as to his determination
that the employees in voting groups 1 and 2 may be
severed from the established broader unit as appro-
priate craft units.
On July 27, 1966, the National Labor Relations
Board by telegraphic order postponed the elections
which the Regional Director had scheduled for
July 29. Thereafter, on September 28, the Board by
telegraphic order granted the request for review
and, in the interest of expediting resolution of the
question concerning representation of the
employees in voting group 3, authorized the Regional
Director to conduct the election pursuant to his
Direction of Elections and to impound the ballots
cast in voting groups 1 and 2 pending the Board's
disposition of the issues under review. In the event
the impounded ballots were insufficient in number,
when pooled, to affect the results in voting group 3,
the Board directed the Regional Director to issue the
appropriate certification as to the plantwide unit,
except that, if a labor organization were certified,
any negotiations as to employees in voting groups 1
and 2 should be subject to the resolution of their unit
status.'
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the
National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel.
The Board has considered the entire record in this
case with respect to the issues under review,
including the positions of the parties, and makes the
following findings:
The Employer operates a complex of 46 separate
plant facilities at various locations in the United
States in the manufacture of paperboard packaging
products. The only plant here involved is the Alton,
Illinois, mill, the largest of the Employer's three
paperboard mills. At the Alton Mill there are
approximately 950 employees, of which about 575
are in a unit of production, construction, and
maintenance employees represented since about
1937 by APWU.5 Within that unit are 19 electricians
and 5 instrument men.
IBEW, under its amended unit request, seeks to
sever from the plantwide unit, as two separate craft
units, the electricians and instrument men. The
Employer, APWU, and the Teamsters opposed the
severance requests; UPP did not. The Regional
Director found that both groups were composed of
craftsmen of the type IBEW was qualified to
represent in separate units, and that they could,
under Board precedents, appropriately be severed
from the unit established by the bargaining history.
In its request for review the Employer contended,
inter alia, that the Regional Director erred in
refusing to consider, in making the above finding,
the Employer's integration of operations and the
continuity of its production process.''
I Referred to herein as the Teamsters
I Referred to herein as IBEW
3 United Papermakers and Paperworkers , AFL-CIO, herein
referred to as UPP, intervened on the basis of its interest in the
plantwide unit petitioned for by the Teamsters
Pursuant to the Board's Order , the Regional Director
conducted an election on October 21, 1966 As no choice on the
ballot for voting group 3 could have received a majority, even
assuming that all the impounded ballots in voting groups 1 and 2
were favorable to the choice of receiving the greatest number of
votes, the Regional Director conducted a runoff election on
November 4 The tally for the runoff showed that in voting group
3, of approximately 524 eligible voters, 494 cast ballots , of which
263 were for UPP, 228 were for the Teamsters , and 1 was void lie
voting groups 1 and 2 , 25 ballots were cast and impounded The
Teamsters filed timely objections The Acting Regional Director
investigated the objections and on December 6, 1966, issued a
Supplemental Decision and Certification of Representative, in
which he overruled the objections and, as the impounded ballots
were insufficient in number to affect the results in voting group 3,
certified UPP as the representative of the plantwide unit with the
proviso that any negotiations as to employees in voting groups I
and 2 be subject to the Board's determination of their unit status
No request for review of his Supplemental Decision was filed
S APWU was certified for the historical unit in 1961
6In view of our disposition below to deny the severance
requests, on the basis of the record made herein, we find it
unnecessary to pass on the Employer's contention that the
Regional Director erred in affirming the Hearing Officer's ruling
excluding certain additional evidence of integration of the
Employer's operations
164 NLRB No. 129
920 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Subsequent to the Regional Director's Decision
herein, the Board issued its decision in
Mallinckrodt7 under which it concluded that it
would no longer limit itself to the restricted and rigid
tests of American Potash8 with respect to severance
requests and indicated that it would base its
determination on a balancing of interests and a
weighing of all relevant factors present in each case.
It is in the light of this policy that we have reviewed
the record herein.
The Alton Mill comprises 30 acres under a single
roof. It supplies about 95 percent of the raw material
required by six plants of the Employer's Folding Box
Board Division and 11 plants of its corrugated
Container Division, as well as a number of outside
customers. The Alton Mill receives wood chips from
the Employer's 2 chip plants and 12 contract sawmill
suppliers; it receives graded and baled reclaimed
paper stock from 10 employer owned and operated
paper stock plants. Because of the perishable nature
of these raw materials, the huge daily volume
required, and the absence of warehouse space, the
Alton Mill is highly automated. All aspects of the
operations from scheduling and receipt of raw
materials to the shipment of the finished paperboard
products to converting plants are geared to the
continuous flow-type operation of four high-volume
papermaking machines. Operations are continuous
on a 7-day-a-week basis.
On arrival at the mill, the bales of reclaimed paper
stock are unloaded directly into one of seven
hydropulper machines which pulverize the stock
into fibers suspended in a water solution; after
further processing the solution is thickened and
blended with appropriate chemicals and dyes to
produce the particular grade or type of paperboard
desired; the mixture is then fed into one of three
cylinder-type papermaking machines which
produces roll of the finished products;`' the rolls are
then immediately loaded onto a truck or railcar for
shipment to a converting plant. The No. 3
papermaking machine, which primarily produces
corrugating medium for boxes, is a Fourdrenier type
machine and uses wood chips as its basic raw
material. However, except for this difference, the
process is essentially the same as described above
for the fabrication of other paperboard products.
The 19 electricians involved are 1 of some 13
groups of employees, each possessing special skills,
which make up the maintenance department. Their
function is to perform electrical maintenance and
repairs on plant machinery, equipment, and utilities
' Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Uranium Division, 162 NLRB
387.
" American Potash & Chemical Corporation, 107 NLRB 1418
There is frequent cross-blending of the various types of
paperboard sheets fabricated by these three machines to produce
several varieties of multiply sheets
10 There is a team for each of the three shifts and one for the
"swing" shift Other electricians are on call to assist the "zone"
in order to facilitate continuous production
operations. They perform some of their work, under
an electrical group foreman, in an area designated as
the electrical shop within the separate maintenance
building. They also rotate on assignments to four
"zone" maintenance teams to provide around-the-
clock, 7-day-a-week "trouble-shooting" protection.10
Each team is composed of an electrician, a
machinist, a millwright, and a pipefitter. The team
members frequently assist each other and work as a
team on repair jobs and are subject to the
supervision of production supervisors in the areas in
which work is being done." Most of the electricians'
work involves troubleshooting; i.e., resetting
overloaded switches, replacing or resetting motor
starters, removing defective motors and replacing
them with motors from stock, repairing light
fixtures, installing wall plugs, changing light bulbs
and fuses, and checking for inadequate insulation or
short circuits. Electricians perform motor repairs in
the electrical shop. However, over 90 percent of all
motor overhaul and repair is performed by outside
electrical contractors or suppliers. The mill
electricians do not normally work on high voltage
equipment, are not expected to read wiring
diagrams, do not rewind any but the smallest
fractional horsepower motors, do not rebalance
motors, and do not install or work on more complex
equipment, such as elevators, air-conditioning
equipment, and powerhouse electrical controls.
The Employer has no formal apprenticeship
program for its electricians. Maintenance laborers,
who are assigned to assist all maintenance groups,
may bid into helper classifications based on their
secondary or maintenance department seniority.12
Helpers can and do bid across into other helpers
classifications in the maintenance department or, in
4 years' time, progress to the electrician
classification. Automatic wage progression periods
and rates are the same for all maintenance
department groups, including both the electrician
and helper classifications.
The five instrument repairmen work in the main-
tenance department under separate supervision.
Their duties are to re-ink marking pens and change
recording charts on instruments connected to
various machines and pieces of equipment located
throughout the mill, as well as to maintain and repair
the Employer's instrumentation, which includes
electric, electronic, and pneumatic systems.
Although they have an instrument workshop
containing the necessary apparatus for testing and
maintenance men in the event of a major electrical failure
11 During the annual or semiannual shutdown of the mill for
periodic general maintenance, production employees are assigned
to assist electricians and other maintenance employees
12 Primary seniority is mill service seniority, secondary is
departmental , tertiary is within the classification group, or by
helper classification
ALTON BOX BOARD CO. 921
repair of instruments and some of them spend most
of their time throughout the mill in the performance
of their duties. Three of them spend the great
majority of their time in the re-inking and chart-
changing function, on a daily basis, and incidental
thereto perform routine maintenance and make
minor repairs and adjustments on the instruments.13
The other two make installations of instruments, do
"trouble-shooting" to ascertain the causes of
instrument failures, and make repairs in the
instrument shop. Certain complex instruments are
installed and serviced, and defects in them are
generally repaired, by outside contractors.
As in the case of the electricians, there is no
formal apprenticeship program for the instrument
men. Vacancies are filled by bid from senior
production department applicants who qualify on
the basis of a high school education and an
Employer-devised instrumentation test. Because of
the seniority system, above outlined, in the event of
a layoff, an instrument man may bump a junior
laboratory technician or exercise primary mill
seniority to bump back into a production
department job.
As previously indicated, bargaining has proceeded
on the basis of a plantwide unit for 29 years. During
this entire period, it does not appear that any of the
skilled employees in the Employer's maintenance
department have been represented in separate craft
units. The bargaining relationship, insofar as the
interests of the alleged craft groups are involved,
appears therefore to have been a stable one.
Upon the basis of the foregoing and the entire
record in this case, we are persuaded that the
necessity for continuity in the Employer's
production processes at its Alton Mill and the high
degree to which the maintenance and repair
functions performed by the electricians and
instrument men's group are integrated with those
production operations constitute a weighty factor
militating against a finding that such groups may
constitute appropriate units for purposes of
severance from the established plantwide unit.
Furthermore, the fact that the duties of the
electricians and instrument men here involved are,
in part, specialized, or routine and repetitive,
minimizes the weight to be assigned to the exercise,
by some of them, of craft skills.14 Therefore, in all
the circumstances, considering especially the long
and apparently satisfactory bargaining history on a
broader basis, the Employer's need to maintain
continuous production and the very substantial
integration of the work of the alleged craftsmen with
production operations, we conclude that the
requested units of electricians and instrument men
may not be severed from the existing broader unit. 15
Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition in Case
14-RC-5431.16
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition filed in
Case 14-RC-5431 be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
13 At one time the re-inking and chart-changing function was
performed by a chart and meter man, a classification included in
the historical unit However , in 1961, this classification was
eliminated and the duties added to those of the instrument men,
who at the same time were made part of a separate process
control department. In December 1965, the instrument men were
made part of the maintenance department.
14 However , we need not , and do not, make a finding as to
whether the groups involved may, in other circumstances, possess
and exercise sufficient skills to constitute them as craft units
15 See Mallinckrodt, supra
IS In view of our disposition herein, the electricians and
instrument men involved are, by the provisions of the
Certification of Representative issued by the Acting Regional
Director in Case 14-RC-5389 on December 6, 1966, included in
the certified unit