Anheuser-Busch, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 28, 1956

116 N.L.R.B. 1988 (N.L.R.B. 1956)

1988 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR' RELATIONS BOARD
Anheuser-Busch , Inc., Falstaff Brewing Corporation , Griesedieck
Brothers Brewery Company, Griesedieck-Western Brewery
Company (Hyde Park Plant ) and International Union. of
United Brewery, Flour, Cereal , Soft Drink and Distillery
Workers of America , AFL-CIO, and its Local Union No. 187,
Petitioner . Case No. 14-RC-195. December 28, 1956
SUPPLEMENTAL DECISION
On June 24, 1953, following a Board-ordered election in the above-
entitled case, ' the Board certified the Petitioner as the exclusive bar-
gaining representative of all employees in a multiemployer unit of
bottle-shop employees at the St. Louis, Missouri, breweries of the
several Employers 2 herein, including Anheuser-Busch.
On February 27, 1956, Anheuser-Busch filed a motion to clarify the
bottle-shop unit, so far as it pertained to its employees, to determine
specifically whether two forklift truck operators who load city de-
livery trucks in the basement of the Bevo building at Anheuser-Busch
are included in, or excluded from, the bottle-shop unit for which the
Petitioner was certified.
Pursuant tO notice, a further hearing was held before Thomas C.
Hendrix, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the
hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, including the record made at
the further hearing, the Board makes the following supplemental
findings of fact :
1. THE DISPUTE
The request of Anheuser-Busch for clarification of the bottle-shop
unit for which the Petitioner is the certified representative arises from
a dispute between the Petitioner, herein called Local 187, and Local
Union No. 133, International Union of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Ware-
housemen and Helpers of America, AFL-CIO, herein called Local
133, with respect to the unit inclusion of two of Anheuser-Busch's
forklift truck operators who currently load and unload Anheuser-
Busch's city delivery trucks in the Bevo basement.
That portion of the multiemployer bottle-shop unit which applies
to Anheuser-Busch employees and to the issue now before the Board
reads as follows :
All hourly rated production and maintenance employees engaged
in, production, shipping, storage, receiving, and noncraft main-
tenance operations in bottling departments and bottling depart-
1103 NLRB 1205
a The Board has been administratively notified that since the date of the certification
Carling Brewing Company has become the successor to Griesedieclc -western Brewery
Company (Hyde Park Plant ), 1 of the 4 Employers in the earlier proceeding.
116 NLRB No. 283.
ANHEUSER-BUSCH, INC. 1989
lent areas, including . . . employees in the basement and on
the first and second floors of . . . the Bevo building at Anheuser-
Busch, Inc.; but excluding . . . employees in the draught beer
washing and packaging operations in the Bevo building at An-
heuser-Busch, Inc.; and in government cellars; brewing depart-
ment employees; . . . employees in areas other than bottling
department areas; . . . [Emphasis supplied.]
Since before the certification, Local 133, not a party to the certifica-
tion proceeding, has represented the city delivery drivers and helpers
of all the Employers, under contracts which describe their duties as
including the loading and unloading of city delivery trucks. At the
time of the certification, all city delivery trucks were loaded and un-
loaded on the first floor of the Bevo building by means of conveyors
which transported the loads directly to and from the trucks; the
drivers, themselves, handled the loads while standing on or in their
trucks.
Subsequent to the certification, Anheuser-Busch acquired some "side-
loader" trucks for its city delivery operations, and for the purpose
of loading and unloading them it substituted forklift trucks for the
conveyors. As a result, wherever this substitution occurred, the job of
loading and unloading city delivery trucks, originally performed by
drivers, thereupon became the work of forklift operators assigned to
the loading dock.
In view of this changeover, Local 133 claims that, as two of the fork-
lift operators have been specifically assigned to load and unload city
delivery trucks, they are thereby performing the duties of drivers as
set forth in Local 133's contracts and are therefore subject to Local
133's jurisdiction. Local 187, on the other hand, claims that, regard-
less of the changeover in loading operations, the certification covers
both the work and work situs of the two disputed forklift operators,
and they are therefore within Local 187's certified unit.
Because of the dispute, Anheuser-Busch filed its instant petition for
clarification of the unit status of the two disputed forklift operators.
II. THE, BACKGROUND OF THE DISPUTE
The certification issued on June 24, 1953. In May 1954, Anheuser-
Busch, having in the meantime acquired the aforementioned side-
loaders for its city delivery operations, removed these trucks, together
with a few end-loaders, from_ the Bevo building first-floor loading area
to the Old Wash House, a vacant building one-half mile distant, for
purposes of city delivery loading and unloading s , At the Old Wash
House, loading and unloading of these trucks was performed by fork-
8 The reason for the removal was the fact that the curbing at the first-floor Bevo load-
ing area was at an incorrect height to permit satisfactory loading of these trucks by the
forklift method.
1990 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
lift operators, who moved the palletized loads to and from freight
cars shuttled to that point from the Bevo basement.
At about the same time, Local 187 of the Brewery Workers filed a
Section 8 (a) (5) charge alleging in effect that the employees per-
forming this work at the Old Wash House were performing work for
which it was certified and that Anheuser-Busch had failed to recog-
nize and bargain with it as the representative of such employees. It
appears that Anheuser-Busch had assigned this work to members of
Local 6 of the Teamsters, a rival union which had been certified with
respect to shipping and receiving employees outside bottle-shop areas."
About October 1, 1954, while a determination of the unfair labor
practice case was pending, Anheuser-Busch moved the city delivery
operations from the Old Wash House to the Bevo basement, at which
point operators belonging to Local 187 moved incoming empties and
outgoing shipments between the conveyors and a temporary storage
area some 70 feet away, and the two disputed forklift operators, who
then belonged to Local 187, moved the same loads between the storage
area and the city delivery trucks, which they also loaded and un-
loaded. Other city delivery trucks continued to be loaded in the
first-floor area by means of the old conveyor-belt method.
On May 10, 1955, the Board issued its decision in the complaint case
affirming the Trial Examiner's findings, to which Anheuser-Busch
filed no exceptions, based on a disregard of the certification in assign-
ing the work therein covered to Local 6, a rival union.5 The Trial
Examiner had found that the Old Wash House operation was merely
an extension of the Bevo basement operation, and that the forklift
operators engaged in city delivery loading and unloading at that
point were therefore within the unit embraced by Local 187's
certification.
On September 26, 1955, Anheuser-Busch and Local 133 executed
a contract effective from March 1, 1955, to March 1, 1956. Duriirg the
course of negotiations for this contract, Anheuser-Busch conditionally
agreed to the insertion of a customary provision which recited in sub-
stance that the work of the truckdrivers consists of the loading and un-
loading of all city delivery trucks; this was substantially the same
type of provision as had appeared in all of the earlier contracts. The
condition for Anheuser-Busch's acceptance of the provision was, that
Local 133 would carry to arbitration the question whether the pro-
vision required Anheuser-Busch to recognize Local 133 as the repre-
sentative of the two disputed forklift operators.
The arbitration decision, early in, 1956, awarded the loading and
unloading of all city delivery trucks to members of Local 133; neither
4 Anheuser-Busch, Inc., et at, supra.
6112 NLRB 686 .' Although Local 6 was jointly represented with Local 133 in the
instant proceeding, it made no separate contentions respecting the disputed employees.
ANHEUSER-BUSCH, INC. 1991
Local 187 nor Local 6 was a party thereto. Following the arbitration,
Anheuser-Busch recognized Local 133 as the representative of the two
disputed forklift operations. In- pursuance of this recognition they
were removed from the supervision of the superintendent in charge of
shipping operations in the Bevo building, who supervised all of the
other Bevo basement forklift operations, and reassigned to the super-
vision of the shift foreman in the city delivery department, who at
that time supervised the city delivery drivers in the first-floor loading
area. In accordance with the terms of Local 133's contract, these em-
ployees were classified as chauffeurs and granted compensation of
$2.70 an hour, as compared with $2.59 an hour that the other forklift
operators received. They were also made subject to rotation as city
delivery drivers, the rotations to apply on days other than those on
which they engaged in forklift operation. Whether or not they have
ever actually driven city delivery trucks does not affirmatively appear.
Their forklift trucks and methods of forklift operation remain indis-
tinguishable from those of the other Bevo basement employees, who
are primarily engaged in loading and unloading freight cars.
On February 27, 1956, Anheuser-Busch filed its instant request for
clarification of the certification. On March 1, 1956, Anheuser-Busch
and Local 133 executed their current contract. During the course of
negotiations, Anheuser-Busch again agreed to the insertion of the
same type of provision as that which went to arbitration, but this time
made it conditional on the outcome of the then-pending request for
clarification. The hearing in the instant proceeding was held on July
9 and 10, 1956.
III. CONCLUSIONS
Local 133 contends, in effect, that clarification would amount to an
improper work assignment, and that the Board is therefore without
aiithoiity=to do so. In support of its position it'rel'ies on General Ani=
line c6 Film Corporation, Ansco Divisions in which the Board denied
a motion for clarification seeking a determination as to whether the
certified pipefitters in the case should perform all of the work of their
classification. The basis of the denial of the motion was that such a
determination would, in substance, amount to an award to employees
in the unit to perform exclusively all the duties required by their job
classifications. However, the factual situation in the instant case is
different. Here the request for clarification arises from a union's
insistence in removing from a certified unit two employees who perform
virtually the same work, and in the same general area, as the other
employees who are covered by the same certification. Indeed, in Radio
Station KHQ and KHQ-TV,7 the Board held that a clarification of
° 89'NLRB 467.
-111 NLRB 874.
1992 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
certification is the appropriate means for resolving a dispute sub-
stantially similar to the one involved here. In the instant case, it is
virtually conceded that the technological change in the method of
loading and unloading city delivery trucks caused no substantial
change in the work of the disputed forklift operators as compared with
that of the other forklift operators. The only significant consequence
appears to have been the extension of the identical type of forklift
operations to a new type of classification of vehicle. As we held in
Radio Station KHQ and KHQ-T P, supra, the granting of clarification
of certification under the circumstances present here is entirely proper
and consistent with established Board precedent.
As to Local 133's further contention that any clarification would
improperly cover the operations of only one employer in the multiem-
ployer unit, we note that the other Employers' operations are without
the scope of the request for clarification and that none of the interested
parties requests clarification with respect to the other operations at this
time. Precedent for clarification on a single-employer basis can be
found in an earlier proceeding in the instant case, in which the Board,
on December 22, 1953, approximately 6 months after the certification,
clarified Local 187's unit, following a request by Anheuser-Busch,
alone.'
As to the question whether or not the two disputed forklift'oper-
ators belong in the Local 187 certified unit, it seems clear that although
the change in effect extended the scope of existing forklift operations,
it" in no wise changed the type of work performed. Under these cir-
cumstances, and notwithstanding the change, we find inescapeable the
conclusion that the disputed employees remain, as formerly, "employ-
ees engaged in shipping, storage, and receiving operations in bottling
department areas, including employees in the basement of the Bevo
building at Anheuser-Busch, Inc." as described in the pertinent lan-
guage of the Local 187 certification, and that the work thus performed
falls within the Local 187 unit. Not only do the facts themselves war-
rant such conclusion, but the result receives direct support from the
Board's decision in the earlier unfair labor practice case,' wherein the
Board found that the loading of city delivery trucks at a point one-
half mile from the Bevo building was properly within the scope of
the Local 187 unit. The same result is clearly warranted in view of the
additional circumstance that these operations have returned to the
Bevo bottle-shop area.
We find no merit in Local 133's final contention that a clarification
which incorporates the disputed employees into the certified unit
would constitute an infringement on Local 133's contract, Anheuser-
Busch having expressly stipulated that the contract provision in dis-
Anheuser-Busch, Inc., et at., 107 NLRB 496.
112 NLRB 686.
WEIS MARKETS, INC. 1993
pute be made subject to the outcome of the instant request for
clarification.
Under these circumstances, we conclude that the forklift operators
here in dispute, who are engaged in shipping, receiving, and storage
operations in the Bevo basement at Anheuser-Busch, Inc., are properly
in the bottle-shop unit for which International Union of United
Brewery, Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers of Amer-
ica, AFL-CIO, and its Local 187, was certified as exclusive bargaining
representative.
Weis Markets, Inc.' and Local 1687, Retail Clerks International
Association , AFL-CIO, Petitioner
Weis Markets , Inc. and Amalgamated Food Employees Union,
Local No . 72, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Cases Nos. 4-RC-314 and
4-RC-3144. December 28, 1956
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTIONS
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Chester S. Montgomery,
hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The labor organizations involved claim to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer .2
3. Questions affecting commerce exist concerning the representation
`of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9 (c)
(1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The Employer operates a chain of 32 retail food stores, all located
within the State of Pennsylvania. Local 72 seeks to represent a unit
of meat department employees at all the stores. Local 1687 seeks to
represent a unit of all other employees at these stores. The Employer
contends that only a single unit of all store employees, including meat
department employees, is appropriate. There is no bargaining his-
tory for any of the employees sought, and the record does not reveal
the pattern of bargaining, if any, for similar employees in the area
where the Employer's stores are located.
Each of the stores contains a meat department, a grocery depart-
ment, and a produce department, under the overall supervision of a
1 The Employer 's name appears as amended at the hearing.
2 The record shows that both Petitioners exist for the purpose of dealing with employers
concerning grievances , labor disputes , wages , rates of pay, hours of employment and work-
ing conditions , and are clearly labor organizations within the meaning of the Act.
116 NLRB No. 285.