Potlatch Forests, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 26, 1967

165 N.L.R.B. 1065 (N.L.R.B. 1967)

POTLATCH FORESTS, INC. 1065
Potlatch Forests, Inc. and International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local
Union No. 73, AFL-CIO, Petitioner and
International Woodworkers of America,
AFL-CIO; International Woodworkers of
America, Western States Regional Council
No. 3, AFL-CIO; and International
Woodworkers of America, Local Union
Nos. 3-361, 3-358, 3-10, 3-364, and
3-230, AFL-CIO, Intervenor.' Case
19-RC-3821
June 26, 1967
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS 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 Robert
C. Tillman of the National Labor Relations Board.
The Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing
are free from prejudicial error and are hereby
affirmed. 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, by direction of the
Acting Regional Director for Region 19, this case
was transferred to the Board for decision. Briefs2
have been filed by the Employer, 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.
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. No question affecting commerce exists
concerning the representation of employees of the
Employer within the meaning of Section 9(c)(1) and
Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act for the following
reasons:
The Unit Sought
Petitioner seeks a unit composed of all
maintenance electricians and helpers, of which
there are four in number, employed by the Employer
at its Jaype, Idaho, plant.3 The Employer argues
basically that the petition seeking a craft unit should
be dismissed. It contends first that the employees in
question are properly included in an existing master
collective-bargaining agreement between the
Employer and IWA covering a unit of production
and maintenance employees employed at five of the
Employer's other facilities located in Idaho. More
specifically, the Employer contends that the petition
should be dismissed on the ground that the unit
sought is an accretion to the multiplant unit and on
the further ground that the master contract
constitutes a bar to this proceeding. Alternatively,
the Employer contends, in effect, that because its
Jaype lumber plant is a highly integrated operation,
both functionally and operationally, the only
appropriate unit is an overall maintenance and
production unit, and that, therefore, the petition
seeking a craft unit should be dismissed. The
Employer also contends that the unit sought is
inappropriate because the employees sought are
specialists and not true craftsmen.
IWA's basic contentions are substantially similar
to those of the Employer.
The Petitioner contends that the Jaype plant is a
new facility and not an accretion to the unit covered
by the master agreement. Petitioner further
contends that because the Employer and IWA
neither applied nor agreed to apply major and
substantial provisions of their master contract to the
Jaype employees until after Petitioner's petition was
filed, and thereafter failed to reduce to writing and to
execute their agreement to apply the master
contract, the master contract does not constitute a
bar to the petition. Petitioner also contends, in
effect, that National Tube Company, 76 NLRB 1199,
and Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, 87 NLRB 1076,
which applied the National Tube rule to the primary
lumber industry, were incorrectly decided and
should be overruled.4 Finally, Petitioner contends
that the Employer's maintenance electricians are
craft electricians.
The Employer's Operation
The Employer has plants located in several States
where it is engaged in the production and sale of
i International Woodworkers of America, AFL-CIO,'
International Woodworkers of America, Western States Regional
Council No 3, AFL-CIO; and International Woodworkers of
America, Local Unions Nos. 3-361, 3-358, 3-10, 3-364, and
3-230, AFL-CIO, hereinafter collectively referred to as IWA, was
permitted to intervene on the basis of its status as bargaining
representative of certain of the Employer's employees
3 The parties stipulated at the hearing that their briefs may rely
upon and refer to the testimony or exhibits received into evidence
in Case 36-RC-2072, Timber Products Company, Division of
Cyprus Mines Corporation, a companion case involving
substantially the same issues presented in the instant case The
parties also requested the Board to consolidate Case 36-RC-2072
with the instant proceeding for "purposes of briefing and oral
argument, if any." The request to consolidate the cases for
briefing purposes is hereby granted The request for oral
argument, however, is hereby denied, as the record and briefs
adequately present the issues and positions of the parties
3 The description of the unit sought appears as amended at the
hearing
4 The contentions of the parties respecting National Tube and
Weyerhaeuser were, of course, made prior to the Board's decision
in Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Uranium Division , 162 NLRB
387
165 NLRB No. 89
1066 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
wood products. Specifically, it is engaged in logging
and in the manufacture of lumber, plywood and
other wood products, and pulp and paper products
and their derivatives. The Employer has maintained,
through master agreements, a continuous
contractual relationship with IWA since 1944 in a
production and maintenance unit which was first
established in 1943 and which covered employees
employed at various of its then existing wood
products facilities in Idaho.5 Subsequently acquired
Idaho-based wood products plants have also been
included in these master agreements, the most
recent of which was entered into for a 3-year period
from May 28, 1963, subject to automatic annual
renewal in the absence of proper notice of revision.
The contract provides, inter alia, that IWA is the
exclusive bargaining representative "for all
production and maintenance employees of the
[Employer] in its logging and lumbering operations
at the Clearwater unit...."
In mid-October 1965, the Employer established a
new stud mill and plywood operation at Jaype,
Idaho, which, for administrative purposes, was dealt
with as part of the Clearwater unit apparatus. Based
on the foregoing contractual provision, IWA claimed
representation rights at the Jaype plant and sought
to have the Employer apply the master contract to
this plant. The Employer responded to this demand
by placing many, but not all, of the contractual
provisions into effect at the Jaype plant. Thus, the
record discloses that the Employer refused to apply
the contractual provisions dealing with the union-
security clause, checkoff, the number of crews and
their hours of work, certain holidays,6 and seniority.
Indeed, it was not until February 1966, well after the
December 3, 1965, filing date of the instant petition,
that the Employer began to apply sporadically these
major provisions to the Jaype employees. The record
further establishes that irrespective of the partial
application of the contract to Jaype prior to the filing
of the petition, the Employer did not agree to
recognize IWA as the representative of all
employees at this plant until January 26, 1966, after
the petition was filed, when an impartial observer
certified that IWA had solicited authorization cards
from a majority of the Jaype employees. Despite all
of the aforesaid contractual applications to the Jaype
plant, however, committees representing the
Employer and IWA negotiated and, on April 9,1966,
executed a "Joint Recommendation" recommending
to their principles "That ... the Master Working
Agreement and the application thereof, currently
existing between [the Employer and IWA] ... will
be applicable ..." to the Jaype plant as of April 18,
1966. The Employer and the IWA orally adopted the
"Joint Recommendation" on April 19 or 20, 1966.
As to the Employer's operation at Jaype, the
record discloses that this plant was established
primarily to utilize the Employer's overabundance of
small logs which its other facilities could not handle
economically. As indicated above, the plant is
administratively part of the Employer's Clearwater
apparatus and, as such, is under the ultimate
supervision of a production manager and a general
manager, both of whom are headquartered at
Lewiston, approximately 100 miles from Jaype.
Direct plant supervision, however, is exercised by a
resident plant manager over employees who are
involved in little, if any, interchange with any of the
Employer's other operations.
The plant itself consists of a massive roofed
structure containing a stud mill, which
manufactures 2 by 4 lumber, and a plywood mill.
Each mill is under the supervision of a production
foreman. Timber for these operations, as well as for
the remaining Clearwater operations, is logged and
transported by the Employer from its headquarters
logging camp located 10 miles from Jaype.
Following receipt of the logs, they are unloaded by
a log stacker, sorted for size and species, and the
undesired sizes and species are reshipped by rail to
Lewiston. Suitable logs are conveyed from the
decking area to the barker where the bark is
removed. After being sorted into two groups of logs,
one from which both plywood and 2 by 4's can be
made, the other suitable only for conversion into 2 by
4's, they are sawed to proper length for processing in
the stud mill and plywood mill. Logs which produce
both products are sent to the plywood mill where,
through various and continuous machanical
processes, they are steamed and made into veneer
by lathes which peel the logs to their core. The
veneer is cut to width and laminated into plywood
which is then patched, smoothed, sized, graded, and
sorted. The cores of the logs used for plywood, plus
the logs suitable only for manufacture into studs, are
transported to the stud mill where they are cut by a
series of saws into rough 2 by 4 pieces of lumber
which are then kiln dried and ultimately sent
through planing machines which smooth them to a
finished state. The wood waste from both mills is
converted by a chipping machine into chips which
are pressure-blown into railroad cars or trucks for
delivery to the Employer's Lewiston complex where
they are utilized in paper manufacturing processes.
The plant operates on a 24-hour day, 7-day week
basis. The manufacturing processes are continuous
from the time the raw material is received until the
products emerge in a finished state. A stoppage
anywhere along the production lines would
immediately shut down the entire operation.
5 Potlatch Forests, Inc., 52 NLRB 1377 the terms of the master agreement, he also testified that he was
9 Although a witness in behalf of the Employer testified that unaware of any company records attesting to this fact, and no
holiday pay for Christmas 1965 and New Year's Day 1966 was tangible evidence in support of such payment was introduced into
paid to the Jaype employees entitled thereto in accordance with the record.
POTLATCH FORESTS, INC.
There is a total of approximately 215 persons
employed at the Jaype plant , including 21
maintenance employees. The maintenance
employees, who are given job classifications for
hourly wage purposes only, include, among others,
carpenters, millwrights, welders, pipefitters, and the
four maintenance electricians sought by Petitioner.
Organizationally, there is no separate maintenance
unit or maintenance department of any kind in the
plant and no separate maintenance supervision for
these employees who receive their daily assignments
from and are directly responsible to production
foremen.' With exceptions so few as to be
inconsequential , maintenance employees are
recruited from production ranks.8 Inasmuch as the
Employer does not have a formal or an
apprenticeship training program, these employees
obtain their respective experience informally by
working on the job with experienced maintenance
personnel. In addition, all maintenance employees
commonly share two areas in the plant in which their
supplies are kept and where such shop work as is
necessary is performed.
Maintenance electricians, however, spend very
little time performing shop work. Approximately 95
percent of their time is spent in production areas
under production supervision performing various
duties in accordance with their main function of
maintaining an uninterrupted production process.
While it is true that these employees spend a
majority of their time performing some type of
electrical work, the record shows that in furtherance
of their basic objective, the two most experienced of
the four electricians, as well as many other qualified
maintenance employees, are assigned to specific
machines or machine systems on which they have
primary responsibility, 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, for all phases of maintenance and repair.9
Thus, these electricians routinely perform hydraulic
and mechanical as well as electrical work on their
assigned machines,1° irrespective of whether their
machine is operating or broken down. In the event of
a breakdown of an electrician-assigned machine
which the electrician cannot repair, all available
maintenance employees, as well as anyone else who
is necessary, work together on a team basis helping
each other solve and repair the difficulty as speedily
r Petitioner 's witness testified that maintenance electrician
Heighs was "appointed ... as head electrician " and "was [his]
immediate boss " Beyond the foregoing , there is no record
evidence to substantiate Petitioner 's contention that electricians
are "separately supervised by a head electrician ." There is much
direct testimony , however , that direction and supervision of
maintenance employees is exercised by production foremen.
8 In order to get the plant in operation , the Employer
temporarily transferred some experienced maintenance
personnel from its Lewiston operation to the Jaype plant , and also
employed several now-departed journeymen electricians who had
worked on the construction of the plant The record shows that
the Employer rarely hires experienced maintenance men
0 In this regard , the record discloses that, inter alta,
maintenance electrician Heighs is assigned responsibility for the
lathe control system and the joiner control system; that
1067
as possible. This procedure, which is applicable
throughout the plant, may therefore require various
maintenance employees to perform work on
machines other than those specifically assigned,
doing whatever may be necessary to restore
operations, albeit employees with special skills will
tend to perform tasks in which they are most skilled.
The remainder of the maintenance electricians' time
is spent in the performance of electrical duties
which are not clearly defined by the record.
The record also discloses the further absence of
administrative or functional craft separation as such,
for in both maintenance and breakdown procedure,
electrical or any other type of work may also be
performed by the machine operators who are charged
in the first instance with the responsibility of
preventing and, if possible, repairing a breakdown
by performing such electrical or other work as they
may be capable of doing.
Unit Findings
Contending that the petition should be dismissed,
the Employer argues first that because its Jaype
plant is an accretion to its other Idaho-based
facilities at which there is an existing master
contract covering a unit of production and
maintenance employees, the Jaype employees are
properly included in the aforesaid maintenance and
production unit and that the master contract,
therefore, constitutes a bar to the petition. We find
no merit in this position.
As set forth hereinabove, the record establishes
that the Employer's Jaype operation is separately
located many miles from its Lewiston-based
Clearwater facility, separately and directly
supervised although subject to common ultimate
supervision, and operationally autonomous. In
addition, while jobs at the Jaype plant and at the
Employer's other plants are to a great extent
interchangeable, there has been virtually no
employee interchange and, at most, only a modicum
of product interchange. Such factors do not establish
an accretion." Moreover, it is clear that the
employees sought are not expressly covered by the
terms of the multiplant contract. That contract was
executed prior to the establishment of the Jaype
maintenance electrician Derickson is assigned to the plywood
strapping machine and also keeps moisture detectors operational,
and that the remaining two maintenance electricians are trainees
who will be assigned machines after acquiring sufficient
experience
10 A witness for Petitioner testified, in effect , that the
Employer's maintenance electricians perform the work of
electrical craftsmen He also testified , however, that he was
specifically assigned to the lathe which he was to "learn and be
able to maintain ," that he was subsequently assigned to "go down
into the rest of the plant and help to get the other equipment going
and keep it going," and that in addition to electrical work, he also
checked valves in the low-pressure air system and welded.
" Cf Dura Corporation, 153 NLRB 592, Morgan Transfer &
Storage Co, Inc ,131 NLRB 1435
1068 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
plant and does not provide for later-acquired
facilities.12 Further, all of the provisions of that
contract were not applied to these employees until
after the petition herein was filed, after the
Employer recognized IWA as bargaining
representative of the Jaype employees, and after the
Employer and the IWA had orally agreed to apply
the contract to these employees.13 On the basis of all
the foregoing facts, we find that the Jaype plant is a
new operation rather than an accretion to the
existing unit, and that the master working agreement
between the Employer and IWA is not a bar to the
petition. Moreover, even assuming arguendo, that
there are present factors tending to establish an
accretion, they are effectively counterbalanced by
the above-stated factors which, by themselves, tend
to establish that a separate unit may not be
inappropriate. 14
The appropriateness of the unit sought, therefore,
depends on the validity of the Employer's two
remaining contentions: First, its Jaype plant is
highly integrated both functionally and operationally
and therefore, only an overall production and
maintenance plant unit is appropriate; and second,
the unit sought is inappropriate because the
employees therein are not craftsmen.
As set forth in Mallinckrodt Chemical Works,
Uranium Division, 162 NLRB 387, and E. I. Dupont
de Nemours and Company (May Plant, Camden,
South Carolina), 162 NLRB 413, the Board now
considers the integrated aspects of an employer's
operation as but one relevant factor in determining
the appropriateness or inappropriateness of a unit,
regardless of the industry involved. We find that the
high degree of the Employer's functional and
operational integration at its Jaype plant, although
relevant to the issue before us, is not alone enough to
preclude consideration of other relevant factors
present in this case bearing on whether the unit
sought by Petitioner is appropriate.
This, then, brings us to the Employer's remaining
contention relating to the craft status of the
employees sought. In this regard, the record reveals
that the Employer does not have either a formal or
an apprenticeship training program, that
maintenance electricians, in common with all other
maintenance employees, are recruited from
production ranks, attain proficiency informally by
working on the job with experienced electricians,
and receive their daily assignments from, and are
directly responsible to, production foremen. All four
of the maintenance electricians spend 95 percent of
their time in production areas under production
supervision performing electrical work and carrying
out their main function of maintaining and repairing
machines so as to assure, as far as possible, an
uninterrupted flow of production. Two of these four
electricians, as well as many other maintenance
employees, are assigned specific machines or
machine systems which they must learn thoroughly
and for which they have round-the-clock primary
responsibility for maintenance and repair of all
aspects of the machine, be it mechanical,
hydraulical, or electrical. The record also indicates
that the remaining two maintenance electricians are
presently trainees and will also be assigned
machines when they attain greater experience.
Machine repairs are effectuated by the employees
assigned thereto if possible, and if not, diagnosis and
repair are made by teams composed of such
maintenance and production employees as may be
necessary, each classification tending to specialize
in the field it knows best, but nevertheless assisting
all other classifications involved. The maintenance
electricians use tools indicative of the electricians'
craft, such as voltage testers and insulated plyers,
screwdrivers and wirecutters; they also work on
"hot" or energized wire and various electric control
panels and motors which are not unique. However,
the record is virtually silent with regard to such
other duties as the maintenance electricians may
perform or which may otherwise support Petitioner's
contention that the maintenance electricians are
indeed journeymen electricians. It appears,
therefore, that the skill, training, and duties required
of the maintenance electricians involve only
specialized skills particularly adapted to the
Employer's manufacturing process. Specialists,
however, are not craftsmen and are not entitled to
representation on a craft-unit basis.15
Based on all of the foregoing, we find that the
maintenance electricians do not constitute a craft
unit appropriate for purposes of collective
bargaining. Accordingly, we shall dismiss the
petition. 16
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition filed
herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
12 Cf Morgan Transfer & Storage Co., Inc., supra at 1435.
13 See Appalachian Shale Prod. Co., 121 NLRB 1160,1161-62
14 Cf. Essex Wire Corporation, 130 NLRB 450,453.
's Timber Products Company Division of Cyprus Mines
Corporation, 164 NLRB 1060 E. I. Dupont de Nemours &
Company (Savannah River Plant), 119 NLRB 723, 726; Saco-
Lowell Shops, 94 NLRB 647.
16 Although we have dismissed the petition herein because the
unit sought is generally inappropriate, our action in so doing is
based solely on the facts of the instant case and should not be
construed as foreclosing the severance or initial establishment of
appropriate craft units in this industry Mallinckrodt Chemical
Works, Uranium Division, 162 NLRB 387, E. I Dupont de
Nemours (May Plant, Camden, South Carolina), 162 NLRB 413;
Union Carbide Corporation Chemicals Division, 156 NLRB 634.