Parker Brothers & Co., Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

May 3, 1957

117 N.L.R.B. 1462 (N.L.R.B. 1957)

1462 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Parker Brothers & Company, Inc. and International Brotherhood
of Boilermakers , Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths , Forgers and
Helpers of America, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case No. 39-RC-
1106. May 3, 1957
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Wilton Waldrop, hearing
officer. 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 Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member
panel [Members Murdock, Rodgers, and Bean].
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 organizations involved claim to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer. Shell Workers Independent Union, herein
called the Intervenor, was permitted to intervene prior to hearing on
the basis of its 1955 contract covering a companywide unit of em-
ployees, which contract was opened for negotiation of a new agree-
ment before its December 1956 Mill B date.
3. The Employer is in the shell, sand, gravel, cement, and concrete
business, in connection with which it uses boats, dredges, and tugs, as
well as trucks. It repairs its own marine equipment and also builds
some. The various operations which go to make up its business appear
to be located within a 100-mile radius of Houston, Texas. Since 1947
the Employer has entered into contracts with the Intervenor covering
an all-employee unit. In 1954, based upon a consent election, the In-
tervenor was certified by the Board as the collective-bargaining repre-
sentative of the employees in the following stipulated unit, which con-
1sisted of approximately 400 employees:
All employees employed at all of the Employer's plants and facilities,
including the Engle Street plant, Green's Bayou batch plant, Harris-
burg plant, Clay Road plant, Holmes Road plant, Columbus plant,
Dickinson plant, San Leon plant, shipyard, Highway 73 plant; all
employees employed on all of the Employer's vessels, including the
dredges Trinity I, Trinity II, Echo, Raymond (Kilgore 3), the der-
rick barges, old and new, Fred S. Robbins, the tugs Lavinia, Gertrude,
Edna May, Annie 0., Billy C., Iliff, Allan W., Sharon, Cindy, Jim F.
Newell, and the Clarence H. Brown; and the yacht Mary Gene II, and
1110 NLRB 84. In 1952 the Board gave some consideration to the unit problem in
connection with the Teamsters' attempt to represent the Employer 's truckdrivers. See
101 NLRB 872, 876.
117 NLRB No. 191.
PARKER BROTHERS & COMPANY, INC. 1463
all employees employed on vessels manned and operated by the Em-
ployer, but excluding office clerical employees, technical and profes-
sional employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act.
The Petitioner here seeks a unit limited to the shipyard employees.
The shipyard is operated not only to service the Employer's facilities
and marine equipment, but also to construct new marine equipment.
It is located at Green's Bayou and approximately 100 employees report
there for work. The larger part of this group is known as the "ship-
yard force" and the smaller, numbering about 18, is referred to as
"Sykora's maintenance force." The 1955 bargaining contract uses
this terminology. Sykora is the foreman of the maintenance force.
Chief Brown is his superior in charge of this group. Weisinger, who is
superintendent of the shipyard, is in charge of the shipyard force.
Most of the maintenance force, which consists of welders and burners,
helpers, an electrician who is also a qualified welder and burner, and a
winch-truck driver who may also act as a helper, is taken out to the
dredges on Monday of each week for a stretch of 14 to 20 hours of
repair work on the dredges. The balance of its time is spent in the
shipyard or in the maintenance shop located there. The larger group,
or shipyard force, does almost all of its work at the yard, where marine
equipment other than dredges, and draglines are brought in for repair.
This group consists of the following classifications : welders and
burners, carpenters, painters, electricians, diesel mechanics, a drafts-
man,2 and a shipyard clerk. All the shipyard employees, including the
maintenance group, report to work at the same time and are paid the
same rate for corresponding work. The two groups work side by
side when vessels are repaired or new vessels constructed. There is
also frequent interchange between these two groups.
In support of its position that the shipyard employees are appropri-
ate for severance as a department, the Petitioner refers to the seniority
clause in the 1955 contract, which sets up as separate departments of
the Employer the following : Marine employees, shipyard employees,
plant employees in Harris County, plant employees in other counties,
and employees at the Columbus gravel pit. It also refers to the pay
scale of the contract for "this department," that is, "shipyard and
maintenance force."
The Employer and the Intervenor contend that the existing all-
employee bargaining unit is appropriate. In its brief the Employer
emphasizes the history of bargaining on an overall basis, its central
personnel and payroll records and central formulation of labor policy
for all operations, and the alleged integration of its operations by
reason of the transfer of employees to other types of work and to
other installations as the occasion arises.
2 The draftsman is hourly paid and is not a graduate engineer. Two other employees
apparently do some drafting work, but 1 is an architect and 1 an engineer . The parties
concede that the latter two employees should be excluded from the unit.
1464 - DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Testimony by the Employer's president indicates that the shipyard
'is the only place the Employer has "extra" men not assigned- to "a
specific job" which is repetitive. Therefore it takes employees from
-the shipyard to "set up" all new plants and jobs, and may send them
out "to repair existing plants. The record also indicates that shipyard
employees may be sent out to rebuild plant facilities from time to time.
However, 'it appears that 85 to 90 percent of the time of shipyard
employees is spent working in the yard and on boats, dredges, and tugs.
Although there have been transfers of employees both into and out
of the shipyard, the record contains no testimony that shipyard em-
ployees'are interchanged with the employees of the various plants, with
gravel'pit'employees, or with the various crews (marine employees).
'The-Columbus gravel pit, which is 90 miles 'from Houston, has em-
ployees classified as "welder and repairman," the Engle Street and
Harrisburg plants have "welders," and, for truck repair, the Em-
ployer has a classification "combination welder and mechanic." The
record,does not show precisely the number of employees in these classi-
fications or elaborate upon their duties. However, concerning the
"welders and burners" employed in the shipyard, the Employer's
president testified that "almost all" of them have to be highly skilled
and that its carpenters are likewise highly skilled. These skilled em-
ployees constitute the bulk of the shipyard group. However, the
shipyard employees, as such, actually constitute a multicraft group-
ing which the Board does not sever in the face of bargaining history.3
The fact that the group happens to be an administrative department
in the Employer's organization does not alone qualify it for severance
as a "traditional department" within the meaning of the American,
Potash criteria.4 Accordingly, we find that no question concerning
representation exists in a departmental unit of shipyard employees
as primarily requested by the Petitioner.
There remains for consideration the alternative unit requests of the
Petitioner for craft severance of a unit of welders and burners at the
shipyard., Although the record as developed at the December hear-
ing in this case shows clearly that the Employer considers its shipyard
welders and burners to be skilled employees, no evidence was taken
concerning their training and experience. Also, no evidence was
taken concerning the training, experience, comparative skills, and
duties of the employees whom the last bargaining contract between
the Employer and the Intervenor shows to be classified as "welder
and repairman" at the Columbus gravel pit, as "welder" at the Engle
Street and Harrisburg plants, and as "combination welder and me-
chanic" for truck repair. The hearing officer undoubtedly felt no
responsibility to develop the record concerning the scope of a possible
$ Standard Register Company, 106 NLRB 351, 352
4 American Potash & . Chemical Corporation, 107 NLRB 1418, 1424.
DENVER PUBLISHING COMPANY 1465
craft unit of welders employed by this Employer because of our ruling
in Clayton & Lambert Manufacturing Company, Ordnance Division,
111 NLRB 540, that welding was no longer to be considered a separate
and distinct craft appropriate for severance, and because of, the fact
that our decision in Hughes Aircraft Company (Tucson Operations),
117 NLRB 98, which reexamined that question and held to the con-
trary, had not yet issued. In these circumstances we shall remand
this proceeding for the taking of additional testimony concerning
the Petitioner's alternative unit requests.
[The Board remanded this case to the Regional Director.]
Denver Publishing Company and International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, Chauffeurs , Warehousemen and Helpers of America,
Local No . 775, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case No. 30-RC-1267. May
3,1957
.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 Clyde F. Waers, hear-
ing officer. 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 Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-
member panel [Chairman Leedom and Members Murdock and
Rodgers].
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 organizations involved claim to represent certain
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 Employer is engaged at its Denver, Colorado, plant in the
printing, publication, sale, and distribution of The Rocky Mountain
News. Its nonmechanical operations are divided into the editorial,
circulation, classified, business office, and building maintenance de-
partments. Except for the mailers who are represented by the In-
ternational Mailers Union, the Intervenor represents the remainder
of the employees in these departments in a multidepartment unit.
The Petitioner seeks to sever from this unit a unit composed of truck-
'Denver Newspaper Guild, Local No. 74, American Newspaper Guild, AFL -CIO, the
Intervenor herein, intervened on the basis of a contract covering the employees involved.
117 NLRB No. 190.