Paramount Press, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 31, 1970

187 N.L.R.B. 586 (N.L.R.B. 1970)

586 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Paramount Press , Inc., and Lithographers and Pho-
toengravers International Union, Local 218,
AFL-CIO, Petitioner . Case 12-RC-3545
December 31, 1970
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
BY MEMBERS FANNING, BROWN, AND JENKINS
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing
was held before Hearing Officer William E. Franke.
Following the hearing and pursuant to Section 102.67
of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and
Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series 8, as
amended, and by direction of the Regional Director
for Region 12, this case was transferred to the
National Labor Relations Board for decision. Briefs
have been timely filed by the Petitioner and the
Intervenor.'
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the
National Labor Relations Board has delegated its
powers in connection with this case to a three-member
panel.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds that they are
free from prejudicial error.2 The rulings are hereby
affirmed.
Upon the entire record in this case, 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 Petitioner and the Intervenor are labor
organizations within the meaning of the Act, and both
claim to represent certain employees of the Employer.
3. A question affecting commerce exists concern-
ing the representation of certain employees of the
Employer within the meaning of Section 9(c)(1) and
Section 2(6), (7), and (11) of the Act.
The Intervenor contends that successive collective-
bargaining agreements with the Employer and its
I Jacksonville Typographical Union No. 162, AFL-CIO, moved to
intervene claiming that it represents, and has had collective-bargaining
agreements with the Employer which have covered, the employees sought
in the petition. Ruling on this motion to intervene has been referred to the
Board . We find that on the basis of its asserted contractual interest the
motion should be, and hereby is, granted.
2 A motion to strike the testimony of a witness convicted of carrying a
concealed weapon has been referred to the Board. We hereby deny the
motion to strike as the crime did not involve one of moral turpitude and as
the witness was, in all other respects, competent.
3 By its terms, the latest agreement between the Intervenor and the
Employer expired some time before the petition herein was filed.
Consequently, this last agreement is not asserted to be a bar to the petition.
However, to substantiate its claim of a relevant bargaining history the
Intervenor has called attention to the following portion of this last
agreement:
Jurisdiction of the Union begins with the markup of copy and
predecessors have contained substantially identical
language covering, among others, all of the litho-
graphic preparation employees sought by the Peti-
tioner, and that in view of a history of bargaining,
dating as far back as 1940, the petition filed herein
should be dismissed. However, while the contract
language is susceptible to the interpretation being
urged by the Intervenor,3 we find no evidence that the
Intervenor has in fact ever bargained on behalf of, or
even represented, the petitioned-for employees. Thus,
the record shows that not one of the current
employees sought by the Petitioner was ever told he
was covered by the Intervenor's bargaining agreement
until after the petition giving rise to this proceeding
was filed. Further, although it is alleged that the
Intervenor's bargaining agreements have been ap-
plied to lithographic production employees since the
introduction of that printing process in 1956-57 at
one of the plants of the Employer's predecessor, it
appears that at no time subsequent thereto did any
lithographic preparation employee ever become a
member of the Intervenor4 or serve on the Interve-
nor's bargaining committees. Indeed none of the
present lithographic preparation employees were ever
consulted with respect to contract negotiation mat-
ters. Finally, no grievances were ever filed under the
bargaining agreements by the Intervenor on behalf of
the employees sought in the petition.
All of the above is entirely consistent with the
testimony of several employees to the effect that,
while they were aware of the existence of these
agreements, they understood them to apply only to
the composing room employees who were members of
the Intervenor. In a similar vein, the Employer's
president, although alleging that the agreements
generally fixed the terms and conditions of all
employees in its plant, nevertheless admitted that the
agreements really applied only to members of the
Intervenor all of whom were in the composing room.
Under these circumstances, we find that the bargain-
ing history, instead of supporting, actually contradicts
the Intervenor's position.
4. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of
continues until the material is ready for the Printing Press, and the
appropriate bargaining units [sic] consists of all employees performing
any such work.
The only specific reference to an employee in the requested unit is
contained in the agreement's apprenticeship section. There, along with the
composing room operations, mention is made of the "paste-makeup"
function. However, it does not appear that the paste-up employee in the art
department had any actual connection with, or had any relation to, the
Intervenor's collective-bargaining efforts with the Employer. Therefore, the
following comments with regard to the absence of a bargaining history for
the lithographic preparation employees are equally applicable to the art
department's paste-up employee.
4 There was some testimony that a cameraman, no longer in the
Employer's employ, was perhaps a member of the Intervenor because he
was referred to the Employer by his father who was then in the composing
room and belonged to the Intervenor. However, whether the son was also a
union member is, at best, inconclusive.
187 NLRB No. 65
PARAMOUNT PRESS, INC
lithographic production employees, including offset
pressmen and lithographic preparation employees
performing platemaking, stripping, camera, and
paste-up functions. The Intervenor makes no claim to
represent the offset pressmen. However, relying
principally on bargaining history (discussed above),
integration of operations, and employee community
of interest, the Intervenor contends that all employees
engaged in the preparation of material for the
pressroom should be included in the same unit. Thus,
it is the Intervenor's contention that a unit which does
not include both the lithographic preparation opera-
tions as well as the composing room functions of
proofreading, hand compositing, and linotyping is
inappropriate. The Employer takes somewhat the
same position, but its main opposition to the request-
ed unit appears to be that the future introduction of a
form of typesetting, variously referred to in the
industry as photo-typesetting or cold typesetting and
not usually considered to be lithographic production,
would substantially change the paste-up employee's
present duties. Therefore, the Employer contends that
the inclusion of this employee in the petitioned-for
unit would be inappropriate.
The Employer is engaged in the commercial
printing business and utilizes standard equipment
common throughout the industry for both its letter-
press and lithographic printing processes. Likewise,
there is the traditional departmentalization of em-
ployees according to job skills. Preparation work for
the letterpress, or hot metal, process is performed in
the Employer's composing room department by a
linotype operator, a floorman, and a proofreader. The
lmotype machine simply drops molten metal into
forms, one line at a time. The floorman or hand
compositor takes the material produced by the
linotype or other letterpress machine and sets the type
in proper order in a galley or in another unit of
metallic type. From this a proof is made which is
checked for errors by the proofreader. Once locked by
the floorman, the finished unit of type is ready for the
pressroom. However, if the job calls for lithography,
the composing room employees make a reproduction
proof from the proofpress. The proof may then go
directly to either the art department's paste-up
employee or to the camera operator. The paste-up
employee in the Employer's art department places
image bearing material (that is, paper prints of
reading matter, photographs, or art works) in proper
position before all of these items are photographed in
the lithographic preparation department. The paste-
up employee receives most of the paper material from
either the composing room, in the form of production
5 See The Lord Baltimore Press, Inc, 144 NLRB 1376, 1378-79, fn 8
6 See Lianco Container Corporation, 177 NLRB No 116, Court Square
Press, The, 151 NLRB 861, The Lord Baltimore Press, Inc, supra, The
587
proofs, or from outside contractors, in the form of
velox prints. Only a small percentage of original art
work is performed in the art department. The paste-up
employee's finished copy is then taken to the
lithographic preparation department where it is
photographed for reproduction by the lithographic
cameraman. A film stripper then arranges the
component filmed images into a final unit or "flat,"
and makes corrections by opaquing unwanted areas.
The flat, after being checked by the proofreader, is
then taken to the platemaker where it is placed in
contact with a thin, light- sensitive lithographic metal
plate and exposed in a vacuum frame . The resulting
image-bearing plate is then ready for the lithographic
press. The equipment used in the lithographic press
department is, as mentioned above, the same standard
equipment found throughout the industry.
The Intervenor and the Employer contend that
there is an integration of operations in the way work
from the composing room reproduction-proof stage
flows to the other departments in eventually produc-
ing a metal image for the offset presses. This argument
against the granting of a separate unit of lithographic
production employees is not a novel one and has been
consistently rejected by the Board, for it asserts no
more than what is the obvious in the graphic arts
industry; that is, that work progresses from skill to
skill.5 More importantly, this contention overlooks
the fundamental differences between the composing
room hot metal typesetting operation and the litho-
graphic process. Likewise, we are not persuaded by
the attempts to analogize the job functions of the
hand compositor to those of the paste-up and film
stripping employees. Indeed, the record shows that
there is virtually no interchange of composing room
and lithographic preparation employees. Moreover,
only one instance was recalled where an employee
transferred from letterpress work to the requested
unit, and that occurred only after he had undergone
considerable training. We believe that under these
circumstances the fact that all employees engaged in
the preparation of material for the pressroom share
the same plant facilities, such as timeclocks, rest-
rooms, and the cafeteria, is of little significance.
We accordingly find that a separate unit of
lithographic production employees is appropriate .6
There remains to be considered the Employer's
opposition to the inclusion of the paste-up employee
in the requested unit. As mentioned above, the
Employer at some unspecified time in the future
expects to introduce a photo-typesetting, or cold-
typesetting, process which would, it is alleged,
substantially change the present paste-up operations.
Plimpton Press, 140 NLRB 975, Tongg Publishing Co, Lid, 131 NLRB 174;
Con P Curran Printing Co, 57 NLRB 185.
588 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
But that problem is not before us at this time, as the
change is speculative at best, and in the absence of
important facts concerning this technique
(specifically, the equipment it uses, the new skills it
may involve, and in what manner it will affect the
present paste-up operation) we are unable to and need
not resolve the problems that may arise when, and if,
cold typesetting is introduced. As presently described
in the record, we are satisfied that the paste-up
operation is one normally considered part of the
lithographic production unit.7
Finally, there remains the question of the superviso-
ry status of several persons and the problem of
whether they are included in the requested unit.
The Intervenor and the Employer contend that the
offset pressroom supervisor and the working foreman
in the lithographic preparation department should be
excluded. The Petitioner takes no position with regard
to the status of these employees. We agree with the
Intervenor and the Employer. Both employees have
the authority to hire and fire, recommend wage
increases and promotions, and report directly to the
plant manager. It would appear that they also possess
the authority to discipline and reprimand. According-
ly, we find they are supervisors and excluded from the
unit.
We also agree with the Intervenor and the Employer
7 See The Standard Register Company, l20 NLRB 1361, Printing
Industry of Seattle, Inc, 116 NLRB 1883
8 See The Lord Baltimore Press, Inc, 144 NLRB 1376, 1380
9 We shall place the name of the Intervenor, as well as the Petitioner,
on the ballot However , should the Intervenor desire not to participate, it
shall notify the Regional Director for Region 12 in writing of its decision
within 10 days of the issuance of our Decision If the Intervenor exercises
its option not to appear on the ballot, the Direction of Election shall be
deemed amended accordingly
is In order to assure that all eligible voters may have the opportunity to
be informed of the issues in the exercise of their statutory right to vote, all
parties to the election should have access to a list of voters and their
that the working forelady in the art department is not
a supervisor within the meaning of the Act. She
possesses none of the indicia of authority set forth in
the Act and with regard to virtually all matters must
consult with the plant manager. It appears that the
direction she gives to the other employee in the art
department is routine and no more than that which
might be expected of a more experienced employee.8
We therefore include her in the unit.
Accordingly, having found that the petitioned-for
unit is an appropriate unit, we shall direct that an
election be conducted among the following employees
at the Employer's place of business.
All employees engaged in the lithographic prod-
uction work at the Employer's place of business in
Jacksonville, Florida, including offset pressmen
and helpers, the lithographic preparation employ-
ees, including the platemaker, film stripper,
cameraman, and helpers and the pre-camera
paste-up employees in the art department, but
excluding all other employees, employees in the
composing room and bindery, office clerical
employees, guards, professional employees, and
supervisors as defined in the Act.
[Direction of election91° omitted from
publication.]
addresses which may be used to communicate with them Excelsior
Underwear Inc, 156 NLRB 1236, N L R B v Wyman-Gordon Co, 394 U S
759 Accordingly, it is hereby directed that an election eligibility list,
containing the names and addresses of all the eligible voters, must be filed
by the Employer with the Regional Director for Region I within 7 days of
the date of this Decision and Direction of Election The Regional Director
shall make the list available to all parties to the election No extension of
time to file this list shall be granted by the Regional Director except in
extraordinary circumstances Failure to comply with this requirement shall
be grounds for setting aside the election whenever proper objections are
filed