Certain-teed Products Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 18, 1952

101 N.L.R.B. 1110 (N.L.R.B. 1952)

1110 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
CERTAIN-TEED PRODUCTS CORPORATION and INTBRNATIOxAL AssoonATlox
of MACHINISTS DxsnacT LODGE No. 115, LocAL LODGE No. 824, AFL,
PETmoxim. Cases Nos. f0-RC 1814, 20-RC-1863, and 20-RC-
1864. December 18,1952
Decision and Direction of Elections
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a consolidated hearing was held before Natalie P. Allen,
hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel [Members Houston, Murdock, and Styles].
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
employees of the Employer'
3. A question affecting commerce exists concerning the represen-
tation of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The Petitioner seeks to sever three separate groups of machine
shop employees, electricians, and boiler room firemen from the exist-
ing production and maintenance unit currently represented by the
Intervenor at the Employer's Richmond, California, plant. The
Employer and Intervenor contend that the requested units are inap-
propriate either as craft or departmental units, and that the integra-
tion of the Employer's operations precludes their severance.2
The Employer manufactures asphalt roofing products from wood
chips, wood flour, and waste paper. The Employer's operations entail
the conversion of these raw materials into pulp and then into dry
felt by a continuous flow process involving the use of steam pressure
generated by the plant boiler room. These conversion operations are
performed in the plant mill. In the plant factory the dry felt is
saturated with asphalt prepared in the plant still and processed into
the end products. From there they are delivered to the warehouse
for storage and shipment. A mechanical department which performs
no production work maintains and repairs equipment and machinery
throughout the plant. Working schedules for the foregoing plant
departments vary. The mill is on three 8-hour shifts, the factory
fi International Brotherhood of Paper Makers , Local 334, AFL, herein called the
Intervenor , was granted intervention.
The motion by the Employer and Intervenor to dismiss the petitions on these grounds
is denied for the reasons stated infra.
101 NLRB No. 177.
CERTAIN-TEED PRODUCTS CORPORATION 1111
and warehouse on two 8-hour shifts, the still and boiler room currently
operate 24 hours daily, and the mechanical department, except for
two employees assigned to duty in the factory, is on a single 8-hour
shift.
We believe that the Employer's operations are not so integrated
as to preclude severance of appropriate craft units. These operations,
especially in the production of dry felt in the mill, are substantially
similar to those of plants in the pulp and paper industry in which
we permitted severance of craft units.$ Accordingly, we reject the
Employer's and Intervenor's contention that severance of the
requested units should be denied because of the integration of the
Employer's operations.4
The mechanical department is under a master mechanic who is
directly responsible to the plant manager for the overhaul, mainte-
nance, and installation of all plant equipment. The physical facilities
of this department include the machine shop to which most of the
employees of the department report, a boiler room, a carpenter shop,
and a truck repair shop. The machine shop has lathes, a milling
machine, shaper, buffer, metal saw, grinders, drill presses, gas and
electric welding equipment, and a hydraulic press and bending rolls
for "cold-forming" metals. A corner of the shop is reserved for the
electricians in the department.
The employee classifications in the mechanical department consist
of seven machinists A, four machinists B, a carpenter, a welder, a
head mechanic, two maintenance men, a pipefitter, a mechanic's helper,
a head electrician, four electricians A, and four boiler room firemen.
The parties stipulated that the head mechanic and the head electrician
are not supervisors, but are lead men who are includible in units of
rank-and-file employees.
The Proposed Machinists' Unit in Case No. 20-RC-1844
The Petitioner would include in this unit the above-listed mechani-
cal department employees with the exception of the electricians and
firemen sought to be separately represented. The Petitioner here,
in effect, seeks a departmental grouping of machine shop employees
with a nucleus of journeyman machinists. The Board has frequently
held that an identifiable, homogeneous group of machine shop em-
s See International Paper Company, Southern Kraft Divi8ion , 94 NLRB 483 , and cases
cited therein . See also Johns-Manville Products Corporation , 98 NLRB 748 , where the
Board granted severance of craft units in a plant producing insulated board and allied
products employing processes similar to those of the pulp and paper industry.
+ We also deem without merit the argument presented at the hearing that severance
should here be denied on the ground that because of the Employer 's highly integrated
operations the granting of the requested units would have an unsettling and disruptive
eRect on the Employer 's industrial relations . Campbell Soup Company, 98 NLRB 741 ;
B. F. Goodrich Chemical Company , 84 NLRB 429.
1112 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ployees with a nucleus of machinist craftsmen may constitute an
appropriate departmental unit which may be separately represented
notwithstanding a bargaining history wherein these employees had
been included in a broader unit.5 The Employer and Intervenor
nevertheless assert that the proposed unit is inappropriate because it
does not contain journeyman craftsmen who perform the duties of
their craft; there is diversity of interest among the employees in the
unit because some of them work mostly in the machine shop whereas
others spend most of their time in production departments working
in close contact with production employees ; and there is considerable
overlapping of maintenance and repair work performed by machine
shop employees and employees in production departments. They
assert also that the unit is defective because the Petitioner would
include in it certain skilled mechanical employees in production
departments. The Petitioner has left to the Board the inclusion in or
exclusion from the unit of these latter employees as well as certain
mechanical department employees."
The mechanical department employees work at all times under the
supervision of the master mechanic either in their shops or in the
various plant production departments maintaining or repairing ma-
chinery and equipment. Minor running repairs and adjustments are
made daily by production employees who operate the machines, but
machinists A from the machine shop are called upon for major emer-
gency repairs, particularly in circumstances requiring the use of
precision machine tools. On these occasions the production employees
assist the machinists in a joint effort to resume production with a
minimum loss of time 7 Twice yearly there are prescheduled plant
shutdowns for periods of approximately 10 days for the overhaul and
repair of plant machinery and equipment. At these times the more
experienced production employees form groups which perform various
mechanical operations and handle by themselves all work within their
competence, but call on the machinists A for assistance on work
requiring the use of precision tools. None of the production employees
is sufficiently skilled to qualify as a machinist A.
Four of the machinists A and the head mechanic who leads the
machine shop employees spend most of their time in the machine shop.
Two of the machinists A are stationed in the plant factory where they
6 General Electric Company, 9,7 NLRB 1265; Armstrong Cork Company , 97 NLRB 1057;
Hudson Pulp d Paper Corporation , 94 NLRB 1018.
e These mechanical department employees include a machinist A who repairs lift trucks,
a machinist B who receives industrial pipefitting training , a machinist B who is essentially
a storeroom keeper, a mechanic's helper who assists the latter, and a maintenance man who
sweeps and cleans the plant factory.
7 Laborers from the unloading department also are occasionally temporarily assigned
to the mechanical department to assist the machinists . They spend only a minor part
of their time at these duties.
CERTAIN-TEED PRODUCTS CORPORATION 1113
spend 95 percent of their time doing maintenance and repair work
at that location, and spend the rest of their time in the shop. All of
the machinists A, with the possible exception of the lift truck repair-
man, are capable of using the precision tools in the machine shop and
in varying degree use these tools to size and shape metal parts for
repairing plant machinery and equipment. It takes 4 years' training
for a production employee familiar with the plant machinery to ac-
quire the skills of a machinist A. An employee without such experi-
ence requires 6 years' training to acquire these skills. We are satis-
fied from these facts, and from the record as a whole, that the ma-
chinists A, excluding the lift truck repairman, and the head mechanic
are journeyman machinists whose duties require the exercise of the
craft skills of their trade. The employee classified as a pipefitter
actually spends most of his time using the precision tools in the shop
to machine parts for plant machinery and equipment and performs
repair duties similar to those of the machinists A. Less than one-
third of this time is spent at pipefitting. Despite his classification we
are satisfied that he, too, is a journeyman machinist who performs es-
sentially the duties of that craft. We find, contrary to the position
taken by the Employer and Intervenor, that the foregoing journeyman
machinists constitute a craft nucleus sufficient to support an appro-
priate departmental grouping of the Employer's machine shop em-
ployees. There remains for consideration a determination as to
whether the other employees whom the Petitioner would include in the
proposed unit have sufficient interests in common with the machinists
to warrant their inclusion in the same unit with them.
The machinist A who repairs lift trucks essentially performs the
functions of an automobile mechanic. He spends 80 to 85 percent of
his time in a separate shop overhauling and lubricating truck engines,
and works the rest of his time in the plant on major overhaul jobs
performing the same duties as the machinists A. One machinist B
spends 50 percent of his time in the machine shop where he uses the
drill press and grinder. He also does some welding and assists the
carpenter. The balance of his time is spent in the plant repairing
wooden columns, roofs, and fences, and doing pipe work. Another
machinist B works in the factory lubricating and making minor ad-
justments to machinery and equipment. He also assists the machin-
ists A in the factory on major repair jobs. He uses the drill press,
grinder , and metal saw in the shop. A third machinist B is receiving
industrial pipefitting training and spends most of his time cutting,
threading, and insulating pipes in the plant. Although the Employer
has no formal apprentice program for machinists, each of the foregoing
machinists B is receiving on-the-job training to qualify him as ma-
chinist A and will progress to this classification upon acquisition of
1114 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
the requisite skills.' The fourth employee classified as machinist B
spends most of his time in the toolroom adjacent to the machine shop
issuing supplies to mechanical and production department employees.
He sometimes assists the machinists and electricians on week ends.
He is assisted in the toolroom by the mechanic's helper. This latter
employee devotes half his time to these duties and the rest of his time
to cleaning the machine shop and checking and repairing fire equip-
ment in the plant. The carpenter does all the plant carpentry, and
on week ends works with the machinists in the factory lining up equip-
ment and performing other mechanical operations such as setting
bearings and packing furnaces. In connection with his work he uses
the drill presses, grinders, and metal saw in the machine shop. Ap-
proximately 50 percent of his time is spent at mechanical duties of a
type performed by millwrights. For the performance of these duties
he received special training from the head mechanic and possesses
mechanical skills which, though lesser than those of the machinists A,
are greater than those of the machinists B. The welder appears to
possess and exercise the journeyman skills of his trade. He spends
70 percent of his time working in the machine shop and the rest of
his time in the plant. One maintenance man (oiler) lubricates ma-
chinery and equipment in the machine shop and plant. For 3 to 5
hours each day he sharpens slitter knives used in production machines,
performing this work in a small building outside the machine shop.
During his vacations, a machinist A sharpens the slitter knives. The
other maintenance man spends 80 percent of this time in the factory
cleaning equipment and sweeping, and spends the rest of his time
assisting the machinist A. Although nominally under the master
mechanic, his cleaning and sweeping duties are assigned to him by the
factory superintendent.
We are satisfied that the three machinists B, whose on-the-job train-
ing will enable them to progress to the machinist A classification, and
the welder are performing functions and exercising skills which are
sufficiently related to the functions and skills of the journeyman ma-
chinists to warrant their inclusion in the same unit with them. In
reaching this conclusion we have also considered the fact that these
employees have the same supervision as the journeyman machinists
and use the machine shop as their base of operations. We shall, how-
ever, exclude the machinist A who repairs lift trucks, the carpenter,
and the maintenance man (oiler) who sharpens slitter knives, as each
of these employees essentially works in a shop which is separate and
distinct from the machine shop and does not appear to be a part of
the machine shop force grouped about the nucleus of journeyman ma-
8 of the journeyman machinists in the machine shop were formerly production
• employees who had been transferred into the shop and through experience in lower
classifications progressed to the machinist A classification.
CERTAIN-TEED PRODUCTS CORPORATION 1115
chinists. Furthermore, the record does not establish that any of these
employees is a journeyman machinist. The maintenance man who
spends 80 percent of his time sweeping the factory does not to any
substantial degree function as part of the machine shop group, and his
work interests essentially ally him more closely with the Employer's
production employees. We shall, therefore, exclude him from the
machine shop unit. We shall also exclude the machinist B who works
in the toolroom as well as the mechanic's helper who assists him, as
their toolroom duties are performed as much for production and
maintenance employees outside the unit as for the machine shop
employees, and on the whole do not appear to possess interests or
exercise skills sufficiently related to those of the machine shop group
to warrant their inclusion therein.
As to the alleged skilled mechanical employees in the production
departments, the record reveals the following facts. There are two
employees who work under the mill superintendent and who regularly
maintain and repair machinery and equipment in the mill. One is
classified as a machinist A and the other as a welder. The master
mechanic testified that the former is not a journeyman machinist but
is essentially a welder. However, despite their welding skills, both
these employees appear to spend most of their time performing
mechanical maintenance and repair operations which do not involve
welding duties. Although they use some of the tools in the machine
shop, they are not as skilled in their use as craftsmen as evidenced by
the fact that the machinists from the machine shop are called in on
jobs which they themselves cannot perform. In addition to these em-
ployees, there is another employee in the mill classified as a tour boss
who spends more than half his time maintaining and repairing mill
machinery and equipment. He, too, uses some of the machine shop
tools, but does not use the precision tools which require the exercise
of machinist craft skills. Thus he relies on the machinists to size
bearings which he uses for replacements whenever bearings of re-
quired dimensions are not in stock. We conclude from these circum-
stances that the foregoing machinist A, welder, and tour boss are
not journeyman machinists. For this reason, because they are super-
vised by the mill superintendent, and as they are not administratively
in the machine shop, we shall not include them in a departmental unit
of machine shop employees s
We find that the following machine shop employees including the
head mechanic, all the machinists A except the machinist A who re-
pairs lift trucks, the pipefitter, and all the machinists B except the
one who works in the toolroom constitute a traditional group of ma-
'Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 101 NLRB 441.
1116 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
chine shop employees who may, if they so desire, appropriately be
represented in a separate unit although they have been bargained for
in the past as part of the production and maintenance unit represented
by the Intervenor. In reaching this conclusion we are satisfied that
neither the performance of some maintenance and repair work by em-
ployees in production departments, nor the association of these em-'
ployees with machine shop employees during the course of their work
in the production departments sufficiently detracts from the homo-
geneity and distinctiveness of the machine shop employees to preclude
their separate representation."
The Proposed Electricians' Unit in Case No. 20-RC-1863
The Petitioner would include in this unit the head electrician and
the four electricians A in the mechanical department. As noted, all
in this group are supervised by the master mechanic. The head elec-
trician, who as indicated is not a supervisor within the meaning
of the Act, leads the electricians in the performance of all the in-
stallation, repair, and maintenance of plant electrical equipment
which includes wiring, motors, circuit breakers, transformers,
switches, and electronic tubes. Except for one instance when the
motors in the plant electrical substation were rewound by an inde-
pendent contractor, these employees have performed all major and
minor electrical jobs at the plant. No production employees do any
electrical work. We find, contrary to the contention of the Employer
and Intervenor, that these employees perform the duties of craft elec-
tricians for which they must necessarily possess craft skills. Accord-
ingly, we find that they may, if they so desire, be separately repre-
sented as a craft unit of electricians.
The Proposed Boiler Room Unit in Case No. 20-RC-1864
The Petitioner desires the inclusion in this unit of the four firemen
who work in the Employer's separately located boiler room. These
employees are directly supervised by the master mechanic's assistant,
the plant engineer, who appears to supervise no other mechanical
department employees. No other employees work in the boiler room
except on those occasions when a machinist assisted by laborers from
the unloading department performs major overhaul jobs on the boiler
room equipment. These jobs are prescheduled and occur four times
yearly. There are two boilers with 305 and 500 hp. capacities which
the firemen tend on a continuous 7 day per week basis. They see
that the boilers have sufficient water and fuel, inspect and maintain
P° Armstrong Cork Company , supra.
CERTAIN-TEED PRODUCTS CORPORATION 1117
their equipment, make minor repairs, and keep operating reports.
The record is silent as to the precise qualifications required by the
Employer of the firemen before they are hired, but it is clear that
they must either have had boiler room experience or receive training
from experienced firemen on the job. Thus one of the firemen with
merchant marine experience, presumably in boiler room work, received
8 months' training from the Employer to qualify for his present
duties. The master mechanic testified that without this fireman's
former experience it would have taken " a great deal longer" to train
him. Although the firemen are unlicensed, it appears that there are
no governmental requirements that they be licensed. We find that
the firemen constitute a homogeneous, identifiable boiler room group,
and may, if they so desire, be separately represented.u
In view of the foregoing determinations, we shall direct separate
elections among the Employer's employees at its Richmond, Califor-
nia, plant in the voting groups set forth below, excluding from each
group all supervisors as defined in the Act.
a. The following employees employed in the machine shop of the
mechanical department: the head mechanic, all machinists A (except
the machinist A who repairs lift trucks), the pipefitter, the welder,
and all machinists B (except the machinist B who works in the tool-
room), excluding all other employees.
b. The head electrician and all electricians A.
c. All boiler room employees.
If a majority in any of the voting groups vote for the Petitioner
they will be taken to have indicated their desire to constitute a sep-
arate appropriate unit, and the Regional Director conducting the elec-
tions directed herein is instructed to issue a certification of repre-
sentatives to the Petitioner for each such voting group described
above, which the Board, under such circumstances, finds to be a unit
appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining. In the event that
a majority in any voting group votes for the Intervenor, the Board
finds the inclusion of the employees in such group in the existing
bargaining unit currently represented by the Intervenor to be appro-
priate, and the Regional Director will issue a certificate of results
of election to such effect.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
? Crown Zellerbaoh Corporation, 96 NLRB' 378.