Harbor Plywood Corp. of America

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 10, 1949

81 N.L.R.B. 1331 (N.L.R.B. 1949)

In the Matter Of HARBOR PLYWOOD CORPORATION OF AMERICA, EMPLOYER
and INTERNATIONAL A ssocIATION OF MACHINISTS , PETITIONER
Case No. 36-RC-159.-Decided March 10, 1949
DECISION
AND
ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before a hearing
officer of the National Labor Relations Board. 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 National Labor
Relations Act, the Board has delegated its powers in connection with
this case to a three-man panel consisting of the undersigned Board
Members.*
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the National Labor Relations Act.
2. The Petitioner and the two Intervenors, Lumber and Sawmill
Workers Union, Local 2503, AFL, herein called the AFL and the
International Woodworkers of America, CIO, herein called the CIO,
are labor organizations claiming to represent employees of the
Employer.
3. The alleged appropriate unit; the alleged question concerning
representation :
The Petitioner seeks to represent all employees in the Employer's
machine shop employed as journeymen machinists, journeymen auto-
motive machinists, journeymen welders, helpers and apprentices,'
excluding professional and clerical employees, guards, and supervisors
as defined in the Act. The CIO, the AFL, and the Employer contend
that the appropriate unit is the existing unit of all employees at the
Employer's plant excluding office employees, the technical laboratory
staff, and supervisors.
* Chairman Herzog and Members Houston and Murdock.
At the time of the hearing, the Employer had no helpers or apprentices in the depart-
ment.
81 N. L. R. B., No. 213.
829595-50-vol . 81-85 1331
1332 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The Employer's plant consists of a sawmill, planer, and veneer
peeler at Riddle, Oregon. Logging operations are conducted in the
woods approximately 18 miles away. Timber is cut in the woods and
hauled to the plant where it is peeled into veneer shock and shipped
,to• Hoquiam, Washington, to be made into plywood. Logs not suit-
able for plywood are manufactured into lumber at the sawmill and
sold in the open market.
At the Riddle operation, the Employer employs approximately 200
production and maintenance employees. Of these, approximately 20
to 25 are assigned to its Maintenance Department. This department,
under the supervision of the plant engineer, includes millwrights,
electricians, carpenters, a blacksmith, a fireman, a mechanic who works
in the woods, and the machine shop employees 2 sought herein, consist-
ing of 2 machinists, a mechanic, and a welder.
The machine shop, located in a temporary building near the other
buildings of the plant, contains lathes, drill press, power saw, and
other tools and equipment usually found in a machine shop. The ma-
chinists perform light machine tool work, and the mechanic repairs
gasoline driven vehicles such as trucks, lumber carriers, and passenger
cars. The welder works on equipment or machinery with the aid of
welding machines. These employees, however, do not spend all of
their time in the machine shop. About 30 percent of the machinists'
time, half of the mechanic's time, and 90 percent of the welder's time
is spent outside of the shop. The record discloses that while the
employees in the Maintenance Department have separate job classifica-
tions, they are hired as general all-around employees qualified to do
each other's work and do not always perform the work of their classifi-
cations. Thus, machinists have on occasion performed the work of
the auto mechanic and vice versa, millwrights and the blacksmith,
none of whom are in the requested unit, do some welding, as does the
mechanic in the woods. Likewise, the millwrights do machinist and
carpenter work and the machinists have performed millwright work.
And the Employer testified that when the mechanic in the machine
shop went hunting each season, his duties were temporarily taken
over by a millwright. Furthermore, employees in the Maintenance
Department, other than the machine shop employees, work in the
machine shop, operate the tools and have approximately the same
tasks as the machinists.
In view of the foregoing and on the basis of the entire record, we
conclude that the skills, duties, and interests of the machine shop
employees involved herein, are not sufficiently distinguishable from
2 There is one employee employed in the machine shop who receives parts and equip-
ment stored in the machine shop. The record does not disclose whether he is in the Main-
tenance Department.
HARBOR PLYWOOD CORPORATION OF AMERICA 1333
those of the other employees in the Maintenance Department to war-
rant severing them as a separate unit for the purposes of collective
bargaining.8 Accordingly, we find that no question exists concerning
the representation of employees of the Employer in an appropriate
unit, within the meaning of Section 9 (c) (1) of the Act, and we shall
therefore dismiss the Petition'
ORDER
IT Is HEREBY ORDERED that the petition filed in the instant case by
International Association of Machinists, be, and it hereby is, dis-
missed.
+Matter of Caterpillar Tractor Co., 77 N . L. R. B. 457 ; Matter of Combustion Engineer-
4ng Company, Inc., 77 N . L. R. B. 72.
Inasmuch as we are dismissing the instant petition on the basis of the inappropriate-
ness of the unit requested , it becomes unnecessary to rule upon the contention of the AFL
that its contract with the Employer is a bar to this proceeding.