Moore Business Forms, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 27, 1973

204 N.L.R.B. 552 (N.L.R.B. 1973)

552 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Moore Business Forms, Inc. and Graphic Arts Interna-
tional Union , AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 1-RC-
12533
June 27, 1973
DECISION AND ORDER
BY MEMBERS FANNING, KENNEDY AND PENELLO
Upon a petition duly filed with Region I of the
National Labor Relations Board under Section 9(c) of
the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held on February 27 and 28, 1973, before
Hearing Officer Thomas P. Kennedy. Thereafter, pur-
suant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Rela-
tions Board Rules and Regulations and Statements of
Procedure, Series 8, as amended, and by direction of
the Regional Director for Region 1, this case was
transferred to the Board for decision. Thereafter, the
Employer and the Petitioner filed briefs.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its au-
thority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's rul-
ings made at the hearing and finds that they are free
from prejudicial error; they are hereby affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, including the
briefs filed herein, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act.
2. The labor organization involved claims to repre-
sent certain employees of the Employer.
3. The Employer, at its Manchester plant, the only
plant involved herein, manufactures complex contin-
uous business forms. A complex continuous form is
an assembly of carbons and papers punched so that
it can be fed over the customer's automatic printing
device or computer.
The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of all bind-
ery and shipping employees including collator opera-
tors and helpers, slittermen, carbon rewind operators,
carbon coater operators, material handlers, and ship-
ping and receiving employees.
The Employer contends that because of the inte-
grated nature of its operation with overlapping job
functions and production processes, the only appro-
priate unit is a production and maintenance unit in-
cluding those job categories sought by Petitioner and
press operators and helpers, preliminary employees,
planners, and maintenance employees. There is no
history of collective bargaining at this plant.
All the principal manufacturing operations are per-
formed in a large open area. In the center of this area
are four enclosed cages: a stock cage where paper and
carbon are stored, a machine shop cage where mainte-
nance personnel maintain the equipment, an ink cage,
and a number cage.' North of the cages are the colla-
tors; south, east, and west of the cages are the press
units; and also east of the cages are slitters, rewinders,
and carbon coaters.
The remaining part of the plant is partitioned into
three other large sections: central storage, which in-
cludes a carbon kettle storage area, and a docket and
preliminary storage cage where reusable plates for
both the presses and collators are kept; a finished
goods storage area, which also includes shipping, and
a security cage for negotiable instruments printed for
customers; and a section subdivided into rooms for
the preliminary department, customers' and confer-
ence rooms, planning, superintendents' offices, and
clericals.
The Employer's operation is divided into five de-
partments, each headed by a superintendent. The pre-
liminary department has approximately 45 employees
and includes typesetting, camera, pasteap, and plate-
making employees.' The press department has ap-
proximately 68 press operators and helpers and I
number head specialist.' The finishing (collating) de-
partment has approximately 48 collator operators and
helpers. The carbon manufacturing and material han-
dling department, which includes carbon coating, car-
bon rewinder, slitters, and warehouse job functions,
has approximately 35 employees of whom 15 operate
the carbon coaters, rewinders, and slitters, 12 are ma-
terial handlers who transport raw material and fin-
ished goods among all departments 4 and do janitorial
work, and 8 general planners whose job is to route the
work efficiently through the plant. The maintenance
and engineering department has approximately 10
employees who service all machines I and the build-
ing.
The press department has 23 press units which
print, assemble paper and carbon tissue sheets, glue,
punch, perforate, slit, fold, and stripe the forms. Four
presses are similar to the carbon manufacturing and
material handling department's carbon coating ma-
chines in that they can apply carbon dope to tissue in
a patterned configuration. Approximately 35 percent
of the business forms are completed by the presses
and are packed at the presses.
1 Printing devices used by both the presses and collators to consecutively
number the forms being produced are stored in this cage
2 These employees make plates for the presses and collators and also
collect reusable plates from the various departments for storage in the prelim-
inary material storage area
t
The employee responsible for numbering units, see in. I.
Press and collator helpers also help move raw materials to, and finished
goods from, their respective departments
5 All employees also do some basic maintenance work on their machines
204 NLRB No. 93
MOORE BUSINESS FORMS
The finishing (collating) department's 14 collating
machines are used in the remaining 65 percent of the
forms to insert carbon tissue into the forms and to do
more complicated gluing, perforating, slitting, and
folding than the press units. The collators also print
consecutive numbers. One collator also prints mag-
netic ink characters and most collators can print lines
and borders.
The carbon manufacturing and material handling
department consists of slitting machines which cut
paper or tissue into the proper width needed for a job
for the presses, collators, and carbon coating ma-
chines; carbon coating machines which apply carbon
dope on the tissue's entire surface and carbon coaters
which can apply the carbon dope in a patterned con-
figuration; and carbon rewinders which punch holes
in the carbon paper margins to enable the paper to be
aligned with the marginal punching performed on the
press units. These holes allow the paper to be moved
through the collators.
The requested unit consists of all employees of the
finishing (collating) department and all employees of
the carbon manufacturing and material handling de-
partment except the latter department's eight general
planners.
Most new employees are hired without any printing
experience. They receive a short orientation course
with limited emphasis on their specific job. The new
employees are then immediately sent to their work
assignments where they acquire most of their skills
553
while on the job.
The facts in this case are substantially similar to
those in Moore Business Forms, Inc.,6 where the Board
found a substantially identical unit inappropriate. We
find that the requested employees do not constitute a
well-defined group of employees entitled to separate
representation. All production and maintenance em-
ployees, except preliminary, shipping, and storage
employees, work in one large area; printing presses
perform collating, punching, and slitting functions;
and collators perform some printing functions. Em-
ployees in the requested unit service both presses and
collators and the employees in question do not share
the same supervision and those sought in the carbon
manufacturing and material handling department
share their supervision with employees not requested.
We conclude that the unit sought is a heterogene-
ous grouping of employees and inappropriate for pur-
poses of collective bargaining. Accordingly, as no
question affecting commerce exists concerning the
representation of employees of the Employer within
the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the
Act, we shall dismiss the petition herein.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition herein be, and
it hereby is, dismissed.
6 173 NLRB 1 133 The Employer's operation in the instant case is virtually
identical to the operation in the earlier Moore Business Forms case which
involved a sister plant of the plant involved here