Community Service Publishing, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 12, 1975

216 N.L.R.B. 997 (N.L.R.B. 1975)

COMMUNITY SERVICE PUBLISHING , INC. 997
Community Service Publishing , Inc. and Wilmington
Typographical Union No. 123, International Typo-
graphical Union affiliated with AFL-CIO, Peti-
tioner. Case 4-RC-11095
March 12, 1975
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
BY MEMBERS FANNING, KENNEDY, AND
PENELLO
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Hearing Officer Marian
Palmer. Thereafter, pursuant to Section 102.67 of the
National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regula-
tions, Series 8, as amended , the Regional Director for
Region 4 transferred this proceeding to the National
Labor Relations Board for decision . The Employer
and the Petitioner have filed briefs.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the
National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
authority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds that they are
free from prejudicial error . The rulings are hereby
affirmed.
On the entire record in this proceeding, including
the briefs, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act and it will effectuate the
purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein.
2. The labor organization involved claims to
represent certain employees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce exists concern-
ing the representation of certain employees of the
Employer within the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and
2(6) and (7) of the Act.
4. The petition seeks an election in a unit
combining composing room and pressroom employ-
ees' at its newspaper publishing . facility in Coates-
ville, Pennsylvania, whereas the Employer proposes
an overall unit.
The Petitioner contends that a single unit of the
two mechanical departments it seeks would be
appropriate by reason of their common interest as
reflected in their skills and functions, similarity in
working hours , and their receipt of the same fringe
benefits . Alternatively, the Petitioner would urge that
separate composing room and pressroom units be
found appropriate.
Community Service Publishing, Inc., hereinafter
called the Employer, is a Pennsylvania corporation
engaged in the publication and distribution of a
newspaper, The Record, published daily (except
Sunday). The Employer's operations are divided into
seven "work units": advertising, business, circulation
and mailing, composition, editorial, press, and
security and maintenance . Each "work unit" or
department has a supervisor, with the exception of
composition which has a supervisor and a depart-
ment head.2 All supervisors, except the one in
composition, report to General Manager Pawlowski
who coordinates the activities for the various
departments. The composing room supervisor re-
ports to his department head who in turn reports to
Pawlowski. There was no evidence to indicate
whether any of the Employer's departments has a
history of collective bargaining.
The Employer's entire operation is in a two-story
building. About 2 years ago, the Employer began
converting its composition department from the
traditional "hot metal" or "hot type" process to the
"coldtype" process and it completed this conversion
in January 1973. In the hot metal process, news and
editorial material is reproduced by means of metal
plugs of type which are arranged into lines and used
to make impressions on celluloid mats produced by a
stereotype department. Illustrative material is pho-
toengraved onto metal sheets, which are used instead
of metal type to impress the mats. The mats, in turn,
receive an injection of hot metal from which a
semicylindrical plate is formed. It is this plate which
is fastened to the press and used to do the actual
printing of a newspaper page.
Under the coldtype process, which is used in
conjunction with the traditional printing operation,
the use of metal type in composition is eliminated.
Instead, the newspaper page is composed by pasting
up copy reproduced onto paper by a photocomposi-
tion machine. This page is then photoengraved onto
a metal sheet which can be used to make the
semicylindrical plate used in the printing process.
The Employer contends that the only appropriate
unit is an overall unit including employees from all
seven departments. In support of this contention, the
Employer argues that, as a result of its newly
automated composition process, its employees in the
composing and pressrooms are not required to
possess and do not utilize the manual skills which
would make their functions those of craft employees.
Further, the Employer contends that the requested
unit is not appropriate because it crosstrains its
employees in numerous operating skills, utilizes them
1 Pedhoner's requested unit consists of 21 of the Employer's 56
employees.
2 The parties stipulated that , if an election is directed in an overall unit,
216 NLRB No. 180
the seven department supervisors and one department head should be
excluded from the unit and found ineligible to vote.
998 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
for various production functions cutting across
departmental lines, has no formal or payroll job
classifications, does not classify any employee, and
does not hire any employee for a particular job or to
fill a specific position.
The record clearly establishes that, though the
Employer has converted its composing operation
from the hot type to the coldtype process, it still uses
the traditional printing operation in which the
pressmen perform the usual duties of their craft.
Contrary to the Employer' s assertion that it cross-
trains its employees in numerous operating skills and
utilizes them for various production functions, the
record reveals that the pressmen spend very little
time doing nonpress work.
Though the Employer maintains that its conversion
to the coldtype process substitutes the skills of
sophisticated electronic automated equipment for the
intellectual and manual skills formerly supplied by
employees in the composing room , the compositors
are still required to perform such tasks as pasteup of
news or advertising copy, operation of keyboards to
prepare type of various kinds to actuate machinery
which sets the type, preparation of negatives for
platemaking, and proofreading and making correc-
tions. In performing pasteup work, the compositor
receives copy from either editorial or the advertising
department on which employees from said depart-
ments indicate the type size to be used , column
width, and usually a catch line for the heading. The
copy is either put into a file for future use or turned
over to a compositor who operates one of the
Compugraphic machines .3 These machines, which
consist basically of a keyboard and a photographic
unit, produce a strip of paper containing printed
material in columnar form. Another composing room
employee adds adhesive to the strips of paper, cuts
them with a sharp instrument , and pastes them on
grid sheets which contain blue nonphotographic
lines . The page is completed when pictures and
headlines as well as decorative borders are added to
the pasted-up page. The completely pasted-up page is
photographed in full size by a self-focusing, automat-
ic camera . The negative from the resulting film is
taken to the stripping room where a compositor
removes impurities from the negative. This negative
is then placed on a very thin metal sheet which is
automatically etched by a platemaking machine. The
3 Employer's general manager, Pawlowski, testified that only a "basic
knowledge of typing" was required in order to operate the Compugraphic
machines and that a person "off the street" could adequately perform
anything in the Employer's composing room after 3 or 4 hours of training.
However, it advertises specifically for composing room personnel.
4 The record indicates that this work is assigned to advertising
department employees only because these employees have more time to do
it.
5 The record does not indicate the amount of time editorial employees
resulting plate is the printing surface which is bent
into a semicylinder and strapped on the press in the
pressroom.
The Employer argues that the amount of functional
integration between employees from all seven depart-
ments supports its overall unit request. We do not
agree . While the advertising department employees
do color separation 4 of copy and about 75 to 80
percent of the proofreading of advertising copy, these
employees spend 90 percent of their time away from
the premises selling advertisements. Furthermore, the
record indicates that ad employees spend only about
1 hour per week doing color separation and about 10
or 15 minutes "a couple of times a week" doing
proofreading. The advertising department's employ-
ees have different work hours from composing room
and pressroom employees and participate in an
incentive plan in which they get 10 cents a column
inch for new advertisements sold.
The editorial employees, in addition to supplying
the substantive parts of the newspaper, have the
responsibility for pulling wire service tapes from the
teletype machines.5 As news, in printed form, comes
over the teletype machine located in the editorial
department, a machine in the composing room is
simultaneously punching holes through wire service
tape which when placed in a typesetting machine
prints out the stories in the desired type. Editorial
employees go into the composing room and remove
the perforated tapes from the teletype machine. They
roll these tapes into spools and number them. The
numbers identify the stories on tape with those which
have been simultaneously printed. For those stories
to be used in the newspaper, editorial employees
supply written instructions to the typesetter in the
composing room, informing him of the type size or
some other instruction for preparing the stories for
print.
Business office employees have somewhat more
contact with composing room employees. Employees
in the business office do about 75 percent of the
proofreading of news and editorial copy. Some of
this proofreading is done in the business office, but
the more difficult copy is done in the composing
room with the help of compositors.6
The Employer's circulation and mailing depart-
ment is located right next to the pressroom. Of the 12
employees in this department, only 2 employees,
spend performing this work.
9 Record evidence indicates that business office employees spend about
2 hours per day doing proofreading , but there is no indication as to what
percent of this time is spent working in the composing room with
compositors. In William E. Locke, d/b/a Dinuba Sentinel and Sentinel
Printing di Publishing Co., 137 NLRB 1610 (1%2), the Board found
appropriate a unit of press and composing room employees, notwithstand-
ing the asserted integration of employer 's operation.
COMMUNITY SERVICE PUBLISHING, INC. 999
Dorothy Maclntire and Mary Peters, actually work
in the circulation _ office and the other employees
work in the mailroom . Maclntire does the billing for
the Employer and gives these bills to the delivery
boys or dealers. On the other hand, Peters operates
the addressograph machine which stamps the names
and addresses of the newspaper subscribers on a
piece of paper to be placed on the individual
newspapers. Employees Rogevich and Donaldson
prepare newspapers to be mailed to individual
subscribers. The other eight employees in this
department perform the task of inserting advertising
supplements in the newspaper .? The inserters also
operate the bulk papercutter located at the end of the
press and, when "on occasion" the "fly boys" are
called away from the press, the inserters, operating
the paper cutter, will fill in and take paper off the
press.
Finally, the Employer has a security and mainte-
nance department which consists of one employee,
Raymond Henderson, who spends 75 percent of his
time performing maintenance duties and the remain-
der as a security man.
On this record, we find that the Petitioner's
requested unit of composing and pressroom employ-
ees is appropriate . Both these operations are mechan-
ical department crafts 8 which , as the Board stated in
Garden Island Publishing Co., Ltd,9 may be joined
when there is no objection from the employer or
from another union seeking to represent any one of
the crafts separately. We do not construe the
Employer's request for an overall unit which would
include the composing and pressroom employees as
an objection to the merger of the mechanical
functions in a single unit to be within the meaning of
Garden Island Publishing Co., Ltd Furthermore,
composing and pressroom employees have common
working hours.10 We also find that neither compos-
itors nor pressroom employees spend a substantial
amount of time performing duties outside of their
respective departments.11 Accordingly, we shall
direct an election among the employees in the
following unit, as requested:
All full-time and regular part-time production
employees performing composing room and
r The inserters work irregular hours and are called in only when the need
arises . Testimony at the hearing evidenced that the newspaper has
approximately 123 inserts per year.
a Leslie F. Clarke & Co., Inc., Clarke Publishing Co., Inc., and Portland
Trade Pressroom, Inc., 147 NLRB 1240, 1242 (1964), where the Board found
that coldtype employees could appropriately be added to a composing room
unit.
Y 154 NLRB 697 (1965).
10 The composing and pressroom employees are the only ones who work
6 a.m. to 2 :30 p.m . Monday through Friday. On Saturday composition
works from 6 a.m. to 12 noon and press works from 6 a.m. to 12 : 30 p.m.
Editorial, advertising, business , and the circulation department work 8 a.m.
to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Editorial and business work 7 a.m. to 12
pressroom operations, beginning with the prepa-
ration and mark-up of copy and continuing until
the product is ready for delivery to the customers;
excluding all other employees, office clerical
employees and guards, professional employees,
and supervisors as defined in the Act.
There remains for our determination the issue of
whether the Petitioner should be disqualified from
serving as a collective-bargaining representative
because of the alleged discriminatory membership
provisions established by the International Typo-
graphical Union's constitution, bylaws, and book of
laws, which are binding on its locals. The Employer
contends that the Petitioner denies to all its mem-
bers, except journeymen or apprentice compositors,
the full rights, privileges, and benefits of member-
ship, and that other employees such as pressmen can
only be "associate members." It submits evidence
tending to show (1) that associate members are
deprived of participation in the Union's two major
financial benefits, its pension and mortuary plans;
(2) that the dues payment plan exposes associate
members to paying higher dues than regular mem-
bers and for fewer benefits; and (3) that part-time
employment is effectively prohibited in that an
employee can be scheduled to work no more nor
fewer than five shifts per week, unless a shorter
workweek of shifts not exceeding 8 hours is provided
by contract.
As authority for disqualifying Petitioner, the
Employer cited the following cases which deal with
discrimination prohibited by the Federal Constitu-
tion or Federal law: American Mailing Corporation,
197 NLRB 246 (1972), and E. & R. Webb, Inc., d/b/a
Town & Country, 194 NLRB 1135 (1972). In
American, the Board rejected the employer's conten-
tion based on the union's discrimination on the basis
of sex because the record made on the discrimination
issue was insufficient. In E. & R. Webb, the Board
dismissed the employer's contention based on alleged
religious discrimination because there was no show-
ing that the union restricted its membership on
religious grounds or that it would not accord
adequate representation to all unit employees.12
noon on Saturday while advertising works from 8 a.m. to 12 noon.
Circulation does not work on Saturday. Mailing starts at 12 noon and works
for the length of the press run, usually about 2 hours.
11 We note that functionally the unit sought is similar to that granted in
The Journal-Times Company, a Division of Lee Enterprises, Incorporated 209
NLRB 745 (1974), which consisted of all employees in the press department
and included camera work, platemaking , stepping of negatives , and allied
processes.
12 See also Bekins Moving & Storage Co., of Florida, Inc., 211 NLRB 138
(1974), involving alleged discrimination on the basis of sex and national
origin , where the specific issue was when such inquiry should be made. The
majority held that such inquiry should be postelection (Chairman Miller,
Member Jenkins, and also Member Kennedy if the issue is discrimination
(Continued)
1000 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
In regard to the Petitioner's establishment of
classes of membership, rates of dues by class, and
provisions favoring full-time employment we note
the proviso to Section 8(bx1)(A) which preserves the
right of a union "to prescribe its own rules with
respect to acquisition or retention of membership
therein." Furthermore, it is well established that in
such a case as this "the willingness of a union to
represent employees, rather than the eligibility of the
employees to membership in that union, is control-
ling" 13 under the Act.
In the circumstances we find no merit in the
Employer's contention that Petitioner is not qualified
on the basis of race , ahenage, or national origin). The minority view was
that such inquiry should be made after certification (Members Fanning and
Penello, except that Member Kennedy would also consider sex discrimina-
tion only after certification).
to seek certification as a potential bargaining
representative of this unit. However, any certification
is, of course, subject to revocation upon a showing
that Petitioner has not complied with its statutory
duty to represent fairly all employees in the unit.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs,
Warehousemen and Helpers of America Local No. 671
(Airborne Freight Corporation of Delaware), 199
NLRB 994 (1972).
[Direction of Election and Excelsior footnote
omitted from publication.]
13 Buzza-Cardozo Company, 99 NLRB 40, fn. 4 (1952); "M" System, Inc,
Mobile Home Div., Mid-States Corp., 115 NLRB 1316 (1956); Hazelton
Laboratories, Inc., 136 NLRB 1609 (1962).