General Mills, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Oct 16, 1950

91 N.L.R.B. 984 (N.L.R.B. 1950)

In the Matter of GENERAL MILLS,' INC., SPERRY DIvIsIoN, EMPLOYER
and INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS, DISTRICT LODGE
No. ' 41, PETITIONER
Cases Nos. 20-.RC--959 and 20-RC-960.-Decided October 16, 1950
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon separate petitions duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the Na-
tional Labor Relations Act, a hearing in these consolidated cases 1
was held before David Karasick, 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, Reynolds, 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 employees of
the Employer.2
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act, for the following
reasons:
The Petitioner, International Association of Machinists, District
Lodge No. 41, herein called the IAM, in Case No. 20-RC-959, seeks
to represent a unit consisting of all first, second, and third class me-
chanics including beginners, but excluding employees who do sheet
metal and electrical work, crib attendants, motor inspectors and oilers,
plumbers and pipe fitters, watch standers and beginners who tend the
boilers. In Case No. 20-RC-960, the IAM seeks to represent a separate
unit consisting of watch standers and beginners who tend the boilers,
but excluding pipe fitters. The Millwrights' seeks a unit comprising
I The cases were consolidated by order of the Regional Director dated June 1.3, 1950.
2 The following Unions intervened in the above-entitled proceedings : American Federation
of Grain Millers , herein called the Grain Millers ; International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, herein called the IBEW ; and Millwrights Union No. 102 , United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners of America , herein called the Millwrights.
.91 NLRB No. 137.
984
GENERAL MILLS, INC. 985
all first, second, and third class mechanics, motor inspectors and oilers,
'and receiving and stock clerks, including beginners in each of those
categories. The IBEW contends that an appropriate unit comprises
the first class mechanic who checks metal detectors, first class mechanics
who do electrical work, motor inspectors and oilers, and beginners
doing electrical -work. The Employer and the Grain Millers both
contend that only a plant-wide unit of production and maintenance
-employees is appropriate.
The Employer at its Lodi, California, plant, which is the only plant
involved in this proceeding, is engaged in the manufacture and sale
of cereals, pancake and waffle mix, corn heal, biscuit and cake flour,
and cakes. Operations at this plant first commenced early in 1948.
As a result of a consent election conducted by the Board, the Grain
Millers was certified on June 18, 1948,3 as exclusive bargaining rep-
resentative of all of the Employer's production and maintenance
employees. Thereafter, the Employer and the Grain Millers entered
into a collective bargaining agreement dated October 1, 1948, to remain
in effect until August 15,1950, covering all production and maintenance
employees at the Lodi plant, excluding office and clerical employees,
laboratory employees, professional employees, buyers, salesmen, em-
ployees taking the training course for supervisory service, and
supervisors.
The operations of the plant are divided into four departments :
Milling, warehouse, packing, and maintenance. There are approxi-
mately 50 employees in the milling department, 46 in the warehouse
department, 55 in the packing department, and 34 in the maintenance
department.
About 75 percent of the man-hours worked at the Lodi plant is spent
in the manufacture of cooked breakfast cereals such as Wheaties, Kix,
and Cheerios.. The production of these cereals is a continuous process,
.and varies only in the amount of time involved and in the number of
.steps with respect to each of the cereals.' The plant is highly mecha-
nized. Throughout the production process the product is moved about
the plant, to and from storage, and through numerous stages of clean-
ing, addition of water, cracking, weighing, measuring, cooking under
:steam pressure, breakup, drying, temporary storing, flaking, toasting,
.addition of thiamine chloride, packing, casing, sealing, and warehous-
ing to await shipment. Raw materials and ingredients are moved by
various conveyors, belts, pneumatic hoses, screw lifts, and gravity.
The products other than cereals are manufactured either by a con-
tinuous mix method or in separate batches. All products travel be-
tween the milling, packing, and warehouse departments, the major
3 General Mills, Inc., Sperry Division, Case No. 20-RC-185 (unpublished).
986 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ingredients being stored in bulk in house bins at one end of the plant
and conveyed for mixing and processing through all four floors of the
plant.
The units sought in these proceedings consist of certain of the classi-
fications of employees in the maintenance department . As already
noted, there are 34 employees in the maintenance department. All
employees in this department are under the-supervision of the mainte-
nance department superintendent , with the exception of 9 mechanics
who work in the packing department and are responsible to the assist-
ant packing superintendent . Of these 34 employees , 22 are first class
mechanics , 6 are second class mechanics , 4 are third class mechanics,
and 2 are motor inspectors and oilers.
The maintenance department employees are assigned to locations
close to the machines they normally service, or if used generally
throughout the plant, in the main shop area. Thus, on the mezzanine
above the fourth floor where the puffing guns are located , one first
class mechanic , who generally makes up replacements for the puffing
guns, is stationed , as are three third class mechanics who service the
guns. On the fourth floor proper , there is a first class mechanic who
principally services the Kix and Cheerios cookers. On the second floor,
a first class mechanic is assigned to servicing and repairing scales on
that floor as well as other floors. In a shop in the packing department
on the first floor there are five first class mechanics , three second class
mechanics , and one motor inspector and oiler who works primarily in
the servicing and repairing of the packing machinery. In the main
shop area , also on the first floor , there is one first class mechanic and
one second class mechanic who do most of the sheet metal work; two
first class mechanics who do most of the electrical work, about 85 to
90 percent of their time being spent on the production floors; a first
class mechanic who, for the most part , operates a lathe; a first class
mechanic who does mostly welding; five first class mechanics who are
shifted anywhere in the plant for servicing and repair work, about
85 per cent of their time being spent on the production floors; a second
class mechanic who generally helps the others ; a second class mechanic
who services lift trucks ; a third class mechanic who acts as stock and
receiving clerk; and a motor inspector and oiler who works through-
out the plant . Adjacent to the main shop is a boiler room which
contains the boiler for production of steam in the manufacturing
processes and for heating, and , also air-conditioning equipment. Of
the four first class mechanics who work there , three tend and do
repair work on the boiler and take care of the air -conditioning equip-
ment. The fourth mechanic works primarily at plumbing and pipe
work , about 90 percent of his time being spent on the production floors.
GENERAL MILLS, INC. 987
The employees in the maintenance department are not, however,
a-estricted to their principal assignments . Thus, a third - class
mechanic on the fourth floor mezzanine may also work as a helper
to a first class mechanic elsewhere in the plant ; the second class
mechanic who repairs, and services lift trucks also assists the first class
mechanic who repairs scales and works on sheet metal work ; one of the
first class mechanics in the boiler room frequently operates a lathe
in the main shop area; and all of the boiler room employees work at
odd jobs in or near the boiler room.
The Company has no apprenticeship system for the mechanics in
the maintenance department , nor does it require journeyman status
.as a condition precedent to promotion to a first class mechanic or any
,established requisites as to skill or years of service. Of the employees
now working as mechanics in the maintenance department , 9 had been
transferred from other plants of the Company where they had first
worked as production workers and later in maintenance , and 10 were
originally hired as production workers in the Lodi plant and there-
after assigned to maintenance. It is the policy of the Company to
transfer employees from the production line to the maintenance de-
partment as production experience is deemed desirable in maintenance
work. ' When a vacancy in the maintenance department occurs, the
job is posted and production workers are eligible to apply.
All maintenance department employees have the same conditions
of employment , such as hours of work, vacations , overtime pay, holi-
day pay, lunch-hour pay, leaves of absence, processing of grievances,
general wage increases , and seniority provisions as are applicable for
production , workers. Lunch-room and locker-room facilities are
shared in common by all employees.
As noted above, the bargaining history in this plant has always
been on a plant-wide basis, and it appears from the record that the
pattern of collective bargaining in the grain-milling industry through-
out the country is on the basis of plant-wide units of production and
maintenance employees.
The Employer and the Grain Millers direct our attention to those
decisions in which the Board has held that, because of the high
degree of integration between production and maintenance and the
well-established pattern of bargaining on a plant -wide basis, only
units embracing all production and maintenance employees are appro-
priate4 In particular , our attention is directed to those cases in
which this result has been reached in plants engaged in the "wet
4 E. g. National Tube Company, 76 NLRB 1199 ; Ford Motor Company (Maywood Plant),
78 NLRB 887 ; Weyerhauser Timber- Company ( Springfield Lumber Division ), 87 NLRB
1076.
988 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
milling" process .5 However, the operation involved herein is not
"wet milling," and although this case involves operations and a bar-
gaining pattern which are similar to those before the Board in the
``wet milling" cases, we need not here decide whether we should grant
the severance of any -units in this industry . It is sufficient that the
units sought herein do not satisfy our standards for severance wholly
apart from the question of whether this is an industry in which less
than a production and maintenance unit may be appropriate.
The JAM and the IBEW each seek separate units embracing only
part of the mechanics in the maintenance department . Nothing in
the record before us indicates any such separate community of interest
among the employees'in these groupings as would warrant their con-
stituting separate bargaining units. As has been noted, the mechanics
in the maintenance -department have no specific craft designations;
there are no requirements as to apprenticeship or journeymen status,
and the mechanics do not perform tasks confined to the duties normally
associated with a particular craft. Thus, some of the mechanics
sought by the IAM work with or do some of the work of those excluded
from the proposed unit. Others whom it would exclude , such as boiler
.tenders, frequently use the tools and perform the work done by the
mechanics it would include . For this reason, the unit of boiler tenders
is similarly inappropriate . The mechanics in the group sought by
the IBEW likewise lacks cohesion , being merged with the other
mechanics in the main shop area and engaged in a diversity of work
not necessarily confined to the electrical craft.
The Millwrights , and the IAM as an alternative unit, propose a unit
of all maintenance department employees . However, even if we were
satisfied that the maintenance department employees constituted a
multicraft group, it has been the policy of the Board to refuse to estab-
lish such multicraft units in the face of a substantial history of col-
lective bargaining on 'a plant-wide basis.6
Under all the circumstances, including the history of collective
bargaining on a plant-wide basis, we find the proposed units inap-
propriate . Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petitions herein.
ORDER
Upon the entire record in the case, the National Labor Relations
Board orders that the petitions herein be, and the same hereby are,
dismissed.
6 Corn Products Refining Company , 87 NLRB 187 ; Union . Starch and Refining Company..
91 NLRB 3.
6 United States Time Corporation, 86 NLRB 724 ; George S. Mepham Corporation, 78
NLRB 1081.