Olinkraft, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Oct 28, 1969

179 N.L.R.B. 414 (N.L.R.B. 1969)

414 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Olinkraft , Inc.' and Miscellaneous Drivers & Helpers
Union Local 610, affiliated with International
Brotherhood of Teamsters , Chauffeurs,
Warehousemen and Helpers of America,
Petitioner . Case 14-RC-6102
October 28, 1969
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of
the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Terry M. Brooks, Hearing
Officer. Following the hearing, this case was
transferred to the National Labor Relations Board
in Washington, D. C., pursuant to Section 102.67 of
the National Labor Relations Board Rules and
Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series 8,
as amended. Thereafter, the Petitioner and the
Employer filed briefs.
The Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing
are free from prejudicial error and are hereby
affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, including the
briefs, the Board finds:
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within
the meaning of the Act, and it will effectuate the
purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein.
2. The labor organizations involved' claim to
represent certain employees of the Employer
3. 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, for the following
reasons:
The Employer, a manufacturer and distributor of
corrugated board boxes, maintains a plant at
Berkeley, Missouri, where it employs about 115
production and maintenance employees, including 4
truckdrivers. All such employees have been
continuously represented in a single unit by the
Intervenor since its certification in 1961.
The truckdrivers are engaged principally in
delivering the Employer's finished products to the
customers. They report to the shipping department
foreman from whom they receive their daily
working assignments. The finished products are
generally delivered by lift truckdrivers to the
shipping department, where the lift
truckdriver-checkers handle the various orders and
load the trailers. Some of the orders require hand
stacking which is usually performed by a
miscellaneous department laborer on loan to the
shipping department. When a truckdriver receives
his orders from the shipping foreman, he couples his
The name of the Employer appears as amended at the hearing
'International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers,
Local Union No 531, AFL-CIO, herein called Intervenor , was permitted
to intervene on the basis of a contractual interest
tractor to the loaded trailer and proceeds to make
the delivery to the customer. Unloading is generally
done by the customer's employees, although the
driver may help unload on those occasions when
hand stacking of the load was initially required. On
completion of the delivery, the driver returns to the
plant for another load or calls the shipping foreman
for further instructions. When not actually
performing driving functions, the drivers at times
perform other work at the plant as assigned by the
shipping foreman. Such duties may involve cleaning
out the trailers, cleaning up the shipping department
area, driving fork lifts, assisting in the loading of
customer's trucks, spotting trailers in and out of the
dock, and occasionally handling way bills. The
drivers frequently perform these nondriving
functions for a substantial portion of the 20 percent
of their work time in which they are not driving.
All production and maintenance employees are
hourly paid, including the drivers when they perform
city driving, which involves trips within a radius of
50 miles from the plant. When the trips exceed this
distance, the drivers are performing over-the-road
driving and are paid on a mileage basis. All of the
drivers involved herein perform both city driving
and over-the-road driving.' The drivers are included
on the plant seniority list and are entitled to receive
benefits attributable to seniority, have the same use
of plant facilities as the other employees, and have
the right to enjoy the same fringe benefits as the
other employees. Drivers may be occasionally
assigned to other departments when business is slow,
when there is absenteeism, or when a driver is
unable to drive but is still capable of performing
other duties around the plant. Vacancies for
truckdrivers are filled by posting for bids with the
most senior employees being selected. If there are
no bids from either qualified senior employees or
from other qualified employees, then the driver
position can be filled by outside recruiting.
Qualifications for drivers include passing a physical
examination outlined under I.C.C. regulations,
passing a written test under the same regulations,
and passing a driving test. While the truckdrivers
are the only employees regularly assigned to
perform the Employer's driving function, other
qualified employees are sometimes assigned to drive,
and this usually occurs on occasions when a regular
driver is either ill or on vacation.
Applying the considerations set forth in
Kalamazoo Paper Box Corporation, 136 NLRB
134, we are unable to conclude that the truckdrivers
herein constitute a functionally distinct group with
special interests sufficiently distinguishable from
those of the Employer's other employees to warrant
severing them from the existing unit. Thus,
truckdrivers spend a substantial part of their regular
work time performing work identical to that of
'One driver spends most of his time on over-the -road driving , another
spends about a third of his time on this type of driving, and the other two
do "some" over-the-road driving
179 NLRB No. 61
OLINKRAFT, INC.
other employees, including fork lift drivers and the
loader, whom the Petitioner does not seek to
represent; they spend the great majority of their
driving time on city driving which involves working
hours somewhat comparable to those of other
employees, and are compensated for such city
driving by the same method as the other unit
employees, and they otherwise enjoy the same fringe
benefits and other employment benefits as do the
other unit employees. The truckdrivers also report
to and have the same supervision as other shipping
department employees whom the Petitioner has not
included in the requested unit All these factors
point to the lack of separate interests of the
truckdrivers and to the very substantial community
of interests they share with other employees, as a
result of their inclusion for a number of years in the
overall unit. In these circumstances, we reject the
Petitioner's claim that the truckdrivers are entitled
to separate representation. Accordingly, we shall
dismiss the petition.4
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition herein be,
and it hereby is, dismissed.
MEMBER FANNING, dissenting:
This is a problem of severance of truckdrivers
from a production and maintenance unit certified in
1961.5 It is before the Board for initial decision. The
record gives a clear picture of the specific
qualifications of the four employees involved and the
distinct group interest which their assigned truck
driving duties entail. I cannot agree with my
colleagues that these drivers should be denied the
opportunity to select separate representation if they
wish it.
My colleagues reach this result, they say, by
applying the considerations of Kalamazoo, 136
NLRB 134. 1 participated with two of my
colleagues in that majority decision It was our
stated purpose to require an affirmative showing
other than job classification before granting a
separate unit to truckdrivers seeking severance.
Automatic severance from established units was to
be avoided. However, it was also our avowed
purpose not to deny severance to functionally
distinct groups of drivers.
'See Dura-Containers , Inc. 164 NLRB No 45, and Kalamazoo Paper
Box Corporation, supra
'The original unit included no over -the road drivers These were added in
1968 when a wax impregnated box was developed for shipping poultry, for
customers in Alabama and Arkansas Addenda were then executed to the
Intervenor's contract to include over-the-road truckdrivers, as well as the
additional production workers needed Plant employees and drivers were
given an opportunity to qualify for these driving jobs, and did so Drivers
who testified were not consulted on the terms of the 1968 addenda, which
excluded over -the-road drivers from contract provisions on wages and shift
differential , hours , overtime, and call-in and reporting pay , and provided a
separate system of pay and allowances , they knew of no drivers on the
Union's negotiating committee
415
The two Kalamazoo drivers denied severance by
us spent only 50 percent of their time driving When
not driving, they worked alongside, or in close
proximity with, and performed exactly the same
functions as other employees, production as well as
shipping. Both production and shipping employees
also made truck deliveries. This is not that sort of
case. Adopting the Kalamazoo wording to
characterize the 20 percent nondriving time here
involved will not make it that kind of a case.
These drivers have passed ICC physical and
written examinations, obtained a chauffeur's license
and passed the Employer's driver's test. All are
required to do some long distance driving; two are
specifically designated to do so. Such trips may
involve tandem driving, with a sleeper cab as
equipment. Approximately one out of 2 weeks they
leave Sunday night at midnight when the plant is
deserted In general, long hauls are scheduled to
leave at such times as will meet the customer's
requested arrival time. If the plant is not open at
time of departure, the orders are placed in the cab.
Drivers for "local" runs (within a 50-mile radius)
regularly report 30 minutes earlier and are
scheduled to finish work 1 hour earlier than other
unit employees.6
The shipping superintendent testified for the
Employer. Asked whether there were occasions
when truckdrivers are employed at the plant he said
"some", and whether "normally" there was enough
work to keep the truckdrivers driving, he said "That
is correct." By "some occasions" he meant. "if
work is slow or in case of an injury or
absenteeism", which he said "seldom" occurred. He
also testified that the assignment of truckdrivers to
the second shift (3:30 to midnight) occurred "very
seldom", and that assigning drivers to billing work
occurred "very seldom - lucky if once in 6
months."
The drivers themselves described their nondriving
time as consisting of "just waiting" for the next load
and "occasionally" doing "other shipping work"
such as moving trucks, loading a common carrier,'
or sweeping out a trailer "once in a great while."
One said he did hand loading "maybe once every
four, five months"; the other, who did less
over-the-road driving, that he hadn't done hand
loading "within a year" but had driven a fork truck
"say, once a month "
Thus, so far as the record is concerned, there is
no inconsistency between testimony for the
Employer and for the Petitioner on this crucial issue
of the amount of nondriving time and how it is
spent. By no stretch of the imagination does it show
regular and frequent interchange with other
employees as in Kalamazoo, or regular performance
'This Berkeley , Missouri, plant is 15 miles from Illinois Destinations are
generally within a radius of 150 miles, except to customers for the poultry
box
'Thirty-three percent of the Employer 's product is shipped from Berkeley
by common carrier
416 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
of nondriving functions as in Dura-Containers, 164
NLRB No 45, in which I also participated.'
So, we have here an operation which since 1968
employs four men specifically qualified to drive,'
who spend 80 percent of their time away from the
plant driving, regularly covering an area having a
150 mile radius, plus long distance hauls to
Alabama and Arkansas, whose hours of work do
not coincide with those of other unit employees, and
who "normally" have enough driving to keep them
busy all the time, away from the plant I can see no
reason to deny them recognition as a functionally
distinct group with overriding special interests, as
the Kalamazoo guidelines envision.
Drawing the decisional line tends to be complex,
with either choice a difficult one. Here, by focus on
sworn testimony, the choice is as simple as adding 2
and 2
I would grant these drivers a self-determination
election.
'Dura-Containers ' delivery area was within a 50 mile radius , nondriving
time ranged from 25 to 35 percent and involved some production work
'These drivers require little direct supervision They are familiar with
their destinations by reason of the custom character of the Employer's
corrugated container business Sharing supervision with other shipping
department employees is thus unnoteworthy It is notable , however, that
when illness or vacation requires a substitute for them, this is accomplished
by using a maintenance mechanic who qualified for the job of
over-the-road driver but then decided against taking it Again, the shipping
superintendent used the words "very seldom" in describing how often such
substitution occurs