Koppers Co., Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 7, 1949

81 N.L.R.B. 1186 (N.L.R.B. 1949)

In the Matter of KOPPERS COMPANY, INC., SHOPS DIVISION-BARTLETT
HAYWARD PLANT,' EMPLOYER and LOCAL No. 193, INTERNATIONAL
BROTHERHOOD OF BOILERMAKERS , IRON SHIP BUILDERS AND HELPERS
OF AMERICA, A. F. L., PETITIONER
Case No. 5-RC-98.-Decided March 7, 194.9
DECISION
AND
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
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 International Association of Machinists, Dis-
trict Lodge No. 12, Local Lodge 188, herein called the Intervenor,2 are
labor organizations claiming to represent employees of the Employer.
3. A 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.
4. The appropriate unit :
The Petitioner seeks a unit of all hourly rated employees in the
steel fabricating department of the Employer's Bartlett Hayward
plant, Baltimore, Maryland, excluding the toolmaker, maintenance
machinists, clerical and office employees, and supervisors. The pro-
*Chairman Herzog and Members Reynolds and Gray.
1 The Employer 's name appears as amended at the hearing.
x A motion to intervene on behalf of Local Lodges 186 and 188 of International Associa-
tion of Machinists , District Lodge No. 12, was granted . As Local Lodge 186 is no longer
active, and as the Employer ' s current contract is with Local Lodge 188 , we shall refer to
Local Lodge 188 as the Intervenor , and to Local Lodge 186 as the Intervenor ' s predecessor.
81 N. L. R. B., No. 184.
1186
d,
KOPPERS COMPANY, INC. 1187
posed unit contains the following job classifications : annealer , burners
A and B, chipper, crane operator, fabricating machine men A and
B, fitters A, B, and C, helper, holder-on, lay-out men A and B, riveter,
sandblaster, shipper, and welders A and B. The Petitioner contends
that this is a homogeneous departmental unit having, as a nucleus,
employees with the characteristics of the boilermakers' craft. The
Intervenor contends that the steel fabricating department is inap-
propriate as a bargaining unit because it is neither a craft unit, nor
an otherwise homogeneous group, in that similar work is performed
in other departments, and production patterns cut across departmental
lines. The Intervenor further contends that the only appropriate unit
is that set out in the expired 1947 contract between the Employer and
the Intervenor's predecessor, covering all employees in the produc-
tion and service departments, except the pattern shop and foundry.
The Employer takes no position as to the appropriate unit.
The Employer is engaged at the Bartlett Hayward plant in the
manufacture of gas plant apparatus, coke ovens, and coke oven pushers,
pressure vessels and tanks, heavy machinery bases, mine hoists, hubs
and blades for airplane propellers, and couplings for power trans-
missions. Production operations are carried on in 8 departments-
aeromatic, coupling, turret lathe, main machine shop, blacksmith,
forge, foundry and pattern shop, and steel fabricating. The plant
also contains a maintenance department and a construction depot
where equipment is prepared for final assembly and installation in
the field. Each department is separately supervised under the over-
all superintendence of the works manager. The plant consists of
about 50 buildings, most of which are located on 4 contiguous city
blocks, with the remaining buildings some 10 or 12 blocks away. The
steel fabricating department is located in 3 buildings, 1 of which is
outside the central area. Employees in all the job classifications,
except sandblaster, are found in each of the steel fabricating depart-
ment's 3 buildings.
Collective bargaining history: Collective bargaining under written
agreements, none of it based on Board determinations of appropriate
unit, began in 1939 when the Employer recognized the Intervenor's
predecessor as the representative of all employees in the main machine
shop, except supervisors, and office and clerical employees 3 In April
1941, Local No. 633 of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers,
8
Also in 1939, the Employer recognized the Molders & Foundry Workers Union , A. F. L.,
as representative for all employees in the foundry and pattern department , excluding pat-
ternmakers In 1946, the Patternmakers League of North America , A. F. L., was accorded
recognition for the patternmakers . These two unions have continued to represent all
employees in the foundry and pattern shop department since their recognition.
829595-50-vol 81-76
1188 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Iron Shipbuilders and Helpers, A. F. L., became the bargaining repre-
sentative for all employees in the steel fabricating shop and welding
shop, which now constitute the steel fabricating department.
The contract was automatically renewable after the first year but
the contracting local became inactive in the plant and the contract was
allowed to expire. The Intervenor and its predecessor have continu-
ously represented employees in the main machine shop from 1939 to
the present.
It was not, however, until 1942 that the scope of the contract between
the Employer and the Intervenor's predecessor was broadened to
include any additional shops. At that time, the coupling, propeller
and steel fabricating shops, and the welding shop were added. Under
the 1943 contract, coverage was further extended to include the forge
.shop and the electrical department, but in the contract for the next
year, these two units were excluded. In February 1947, Local 186 was
recognized for the first time as bargaining representative for all pro-
duction and maintenance employees except those in the foundry and
pattern department. Upon the expiration of that contract, in Feb-
ruary 1948, Local 186 called a strike which was finally settled by a
new contract entered into on April 20, 1948, between the Employer and
the newly formed Local Lodge 188, the Intervenor herein. The instant
petition, however, was pending at the time the strike ended, and for
that reason the Employer refused to recognize the Intervenor as the
representative for the employees in the steel fabricating department.
The steel fabricating department: There are about 700 employees in
the plant, excluding the foundry and pattern shop. Of that number,
approximately 235 work in the steel fabricating department. Em-
ployees in that department are engaged in fabricating gas holders,
coke ovens, coke oven doors and pushers, pressure vessels, and other
large steel items. Lay-out men, working from blueprints, mark steel
sheets and bars to indicate how they are to be sheared, punched, drilled,
or rolled. Fabricating machine men who operate punch presses, racks,
rolls, spacing machines, shears, angle binders, brakes, and power saws
then shape the steel in accordance with the lay-out man's marks. It is
then turned over to fitters who do the preliminary assembling with
the help of burners, welders, and chippers. Some machining is
required on practically all the items assembled in the department, but
much of it, such as milling and drilling, is done by fabricating machine
men in the department. However, more extensive and precise machin-
ing is necessary on some items, such as coke oven pushers; in such
cases, machinists from the main production machine shop work in the
steel fabricating shops.
KOPPERS COMPANY, INC. 1189
Frequently, fitters from the steel fabricating department will move
to the machine shop to do their regular production work. In all such
cases, the men remain under their own departmental supervisors, and
there is no interchange of functions between employees of the two
departments. Less occasionally, employees from other departments
may do their regular work on items being assembled in the steel fab-
ricating department. There have been no transfers of highly skilled
employees, such as fitters and lay-out men, between the steel fabricat-
ing department and other departments. Those with lesser skills,
such as welders and crane operators, are occasionally transferred.
between departments to prevent lay-ofs.4 Seniority is determined on a
departmental basis by job classification.
Although the operations of the steel fabricating department are in-
tegrated with those of the main machine shop on some items, there
are many products on which the machine shop does no work at all.
We are satisfied that the requested employees constitute a cohesive,
well-defined group, engaged in activities centering about the tra-
,ditional boilermaker skills in shaping and forming steel sheets and
plates. We do not consider a single year of bargaining on a plant-
wide basis as a conclusive indication that only a production and
maintenance unit is appropriate, when counter-balanced by 7 years
,of bargaining for individual shops and departments.
Under all the circumstances, we believe that the establishment of a
separate collective bargaining unit of the employees in the steel fabri-
cating department, excluding the toolmaker and the maintenance
machinists,,' and office and clerical employees, is feasible 6 On the
other hand, the employees in this department may also be included
in a plant-wide unit. We shall make no final unit determination until
we have first ascertained the desires of the employees involved, in
the election directed hereinafter. If a majority of the employees in
the voting group described below select the Petitioner, they will be
taken to have indicated their desire to constitute a separate appropriate
unit. The voting group will be :
All hourly rated employees in the steel fabricating department of
the Employer's Bartlett Hayward plant, Baltimore, Maryland, ex-
cluding the toolmaker and the maintenance machinists, office and cleri-
-cal employees, and supervisors as defined by the Act.
4 Pursuant to the strike settlement between the Employer and the Intervenor , a number
of strikers from the machine shop, hub and coupling departments , whose jobs had been
filled, were taken on as unskilled helpers in the steel fabricating department.
0 The duties, and presumably the interests, of the toolmaker and maintenance machinists
are more closely related to the work done in other departments , such as the main machine
shop or the maintenance department, than to that done in the steel fabricating shop.
6 Matter of Davenport Machine & Foundry Co., 76 N. L. It. B. 938; Matter of Yuba Manu-
facturing Company, 74 N. L. It. B. 157.
1190 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
DIRECTION OF ELECTION
As part of the investigation to ascertain representatives for the pur-
poses of collective bargaining with the Employer, an election by secret
ballot shall be conducted as early as possible, but not later than 30
days from the date of this Direction, under the direction and super-
vision of the Regional Director for the Fifth Region, and subject to
Sections 203.61 and 203.62 of National Labor Relations Board Rules
and Regulations-Series 5, as amended, among the employees in the
voting group described in paragraph numbered 4, above, who were
employed during the pay-roll period immediately preceding the date
of this Direction, including employees who did not work during said
pay-roll period because they were ill or on vacation or temporarily
laid off, but excluding those employees who have since quit or been
discharged for cause and have not been rehired or reinstated prior
to the date of the election, and also excluding employees on strike
who are not entitled to reinstatement, to determine whether they desire
to be represented, for purposes of collective bargaining, by Local No.
193, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders
and Helpers of America, A. F. L., or by International Association
of Machinists, District Lodge No. 12, Local Lodge 188, or by neither.