Kraft Foods Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Sep 27, 1950

91 N.L.R.B. 525 (N.L.R.B. 1950)

In the Matter Of KRAFT FOODS COMPANY, EMPLOYER and COMMISSION
HOUSE DRIVERS; HELPERS AND EMPLOYEES UNION, LOCAL No. 400,
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS, WARE-
HOUSEMEN & HELPERS OF AMERICA (AFL) , PETITIONER
Case No. 8-RC-928.-Decided September 27, 1950
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National
Labor Relations Act,' a hearing was held before Bernard Ness, hear-
ing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free
from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pusuant 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 [Chairman Herzog and Members Houston 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 organization involved claims to represent certain em-
ployees 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 Petitioner contends that those salesmen in the Employer's
Cleveland branch who operate within Cuyahoga County constitute
a separate appropriate bargaining unit. The Employer contends that
the proposed unit, limited to a portion of its Cleveland branch, is not
appropriate for bargaining purposes and that the appropriate unit
for these salesmen should include all salesmen operating within its
Cleveland branch.. The Petitioner desires to participate in an elec-
tion among salesmen in the larger unit proposed by the Employer if
the Board finds that its proposed unit is not appropriate.
The Employer is engaged in the manufacture, sale, and distribution
of food products in the United States and Canada. The Employer
I The petition and other formal papers were amended at the hearing to show the correct
name of the Employer.
91 NLRB No. 80.
525
526 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
divides its operations into 7 divisions. Each division manufactures,
sells, and distributes the Employer's products,2 and operates with con-
siderable autonomy, but within the framework of general policies set
down by the Employer's management. For administrative purposes,
each division is subdivided into branches, each under the charge of
a branch manager. One of the Employer's divisions is the central
division, with headquarters at Chicago. The central division is,
divided into 22 branches, one of which is the Cleveland branch, with
headquarters at Cleveland, Ohio.
The Cleveland branch covers an area in Ohio, generally bounded
on the north from Conneaut to Huron and on the south from Mans-
field to Bowerston. It includes the towns of Mansfield, Ashland,
Canton, Akron, Cleveland, and Elyria. The branch office and ware-
house are at Cleveland and all branch activities stem from the Cleve-
land office.3
At the present time, the Employer operates on the advance-selling
basis. In the Cleveland branch, the sales and distribution of its
products are handled by 20 salesmen, who ride in passenger cars and
take orders for the Employer's food products, and truck drivers and
warehouse employees, who, working in and out of the Cleveland
branch warehouse, assemble the products to fill the orders taken by
salesmen and make delivery of the goods to customers. All these
salesmen, warehousemen, and truck drivers are under the charge of
the Cleveland branch manager and his assistant.
Salesmen in the Cleveland branch are subdivided into 3 groups,
each under the immediate direction of a supervisor, who trains, assists,
and advises them in their work. Although no exact territorial lines
are drawn about the operations of Employer's salesmen or the cover-
age of any one of the 3 supervisors, all salesmen under each super-
visor operate for convenience generally in one geographical area.
Thus, the salesmen working under the supervisors operate (1) in the
eastern section of Cleveland and east; (2.) in the western section of
Cleveland and west; and (3) further south, in the vicinity of Akron,
Canton, and Mansfield. Of the Employer's 20 salesmen, 8 operate
primarily in Cuyahoga County, but no one of the 3 groups of sales-
men operating under a supervisor include all and only salesmen who
work in Cuyahoga County. Salesmen are transferred from 1 area
within the branch to another. Salesmen working near the Cleveland
8 Not all divisions manufacture all products made by the Employer. Divisions buy from
one another products which they do not manufacture.
8 The Cleveland branch maintains a mailing address at Akron, Ohio, where stationery and
sales books are kept on hand for the convenience of salesmen of the Cleveland branch
operating In the vicinity.
KRAFT FOODS C'OMP'ANY 527
branch office bring their daily orders to the office each evening; those
working at a distance mail their orders into the branch office. each
day. All salesmen come to the Cleveland branch for general meet-.
ings, 8 to 11 of which are held each year. Letters of general direction
and advice are sent out to all individual salesmen in the branch from
time to time by the branch manager and his assistant. Supervisors
verbally inform salesmen working under them of any special changes
or individual instructions affecting them which may be directed by
the branch office, All salesmen in the branch operate under the same
base pay, hours of work, and vacation schedule.'
. The Petitioner is the recognized bargaining representative of the
warehousemen and truck drivers who work in and out of the Cleve-
land branch office, fill the orders of the branch salesmen, and dis-
tribute the merchandise to customers in the entire branch area. The
contract between the Petitioner and the Employer makes special pro-
vision for the compensation and maintenance of truck drivers who
work too far from the Cleveland office to return to Cleveland at the
end of a day's delivery. Not all salesmen in the branch live in Cleve-
land. Other locals of the Petitioner's International represent sales-
men in the Employer's Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New
York; and Chicago, Illinois, branches. In all these branch bargain-
ing units, all salesmen operating within each branch are included in
the salve unit, wherever they may work or live within the territorial
limits of the respective branches.
Although both. in the Cleveland and other branches, there is clearly
established a pattern of bargaining among the Employer's employees
on a branch basis, the Petitioner nevertheless presently urges that its
proposed unit limited to salesmen in Cuyahoga County in the Cleve-
land branch constitutes an appropriate bargaining unit on the basis
of a past bargaining history limited to these employees.
Before 1940, the Employer distributed its food products in the
Cleveland branch through independent concerns. In or about 1940,
the Employer changed its. distribution policy and absorbed these dis-
tributing companies into its operating system, taking into its employ
employees of such distributors who desire to work for the Employer.
Distribution of the Employer's products was at that time on an order-
delivery basis, each salesmen being both a salesman and delivery man,
operating from a truck stocked with merchandise. . Each driver-
salesman made calls upon his customers and took and filled their orders
in one transaction. The Petitioner represented the driver- salesmen
4 The hours of work for salesmen are governed by the hours of the stores at which they
solicit their orders. These hours generally run from 8 or 8 : 30 to 5 o'clock.
528 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
of the Employer's distributors at the time when the Employer took
over the distribution work from the former distributing companies.
As its predecessors had done, the Employer continued to recognize the
Petitioner as the bargaining representative for the driver-salesmen
who were members of the Petitioner. On May 22, 1942, the Employer
signed a memorandum of agreement covering wages of these employees
for a period of 1 year. Although this memorandum of agreement
does not designate the area covered by the so-called "route salesmen"
concerned, the parties agreed that these employees operated in Cuya-
hoga County.
In 1945 the Employer changed over from the order-delivery system
to its present advance-sales system, wherein its salesmen, working in
passenger cars, take orders for merchandise to be later delivered by
delivery truck drivers with goods, selected, loaded, and transported
from the branch warehouse. The Employer, however, continued to
recognize the Petitioner as representative of its salesmen who were
members of the Petitioner, and bargaining arrangements were con-
tinned on a verbal basis.
In 1948 the Employer and the Petitioner, in Case No. 8-UA-1009,
entered into a consent-election agreement for union-authority elec-
tions. Separate elections were held on June 23, 1948, (1) among the
warehousemen and truck drivers operating in the Cleveland branch
and (2) among the salesmen of the Cleveland branch who operated
within Cuyahoga County. The Petitioner won the election among
the warehousemen and truck drivers, but lost, by a vote of 0 to 11,
the election among salesmen operating in Cuyahoga County. There-
after, the Employer, whose recognition of salesmen had been pre-
viously on a members only basis, refused to deal with the Petitioner
as bargaining representative for any of these salesmen.
We do not believe that the history of negotiations between the
Employer and the Petitioner for member-salesmen working within
Cuyahoga County is determinative of the scope of the appropriate
unit for salesmen at this time. In determining units appropriate for
employees in larger integrated enterprises, we have favored units
that are coextensive with an employer's entire operation or some
administrative sector thereof. We have tended to adopt unit patterns
already established in the same industry or for other employees of
the same employer. The Petitioner presently represents in one unit
all warehousemen and truck drivers who fill and deliver the orders
gathered by the Employer's salesmen in the entire Cleveland branch.
Other locals of the Petitioner's International represent on a branch
basis salesmen in other branches of the Employer's operations. Be-
cause salesmen of the Cleveland branch who operate within Cuyahoga
KRAFT FOODS 'COMPANY 529
County have no identifying characteristic distinguishing them from
other salesmen operating under the same supervisors in the Cleveland
branch, we find that the proposed unit limited to salesmen of the
Cleveland branch, operating in Cuyahoga County is not appropriate
for bargaining at this time.5
We find that all salesmen operating in the Cleveland branch of the
Employer's operations, excluding the branch manager, the assistant
manager, and supervisors, constitute a unit appropriate for the pur-
poses of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9 (b)
of the Act.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
B Singer Sewing Machine Company, 87 NLRB 460 , and cases cited therein ; Darling d
Company, 87 NLRB 45 ; cf. Coldblatt Brothers, Inc., 86 NLRB 914; Paul Cusano , et at.,
d/b/a American Shuffleboard Company, et at., 85 NLRB 51 ; Westbrook Enterprises, Inc.,
79 NLRB 1032.