Reed Roller Bit Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 1, 1949

87 N.L.R.B. 314 (N.L.R.B. 1949)

In the Matter Of REED ROLLER BIT COMPANY, EMPLOYER and INTERNA-
TIONAL BROTHERHOOD Or ELECTRICAL WORKERS, LOCAL 716, AFL,
PETITIONER
Case No. 39-RC-117.-Decided December 1, 1949
DECISION
AND
ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before Elmer Davis,
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 National Labor
Relations Act, the Board has delegated its powers in connection with
this case to a three-member panel [Chairman Herzog and Members
Houston and Gray].
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the National Labor Relations Act.
2. The labor organizations involved claim to represent employees
of the Employer.
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the represen-
tation 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 Employer is engaged, at several places in the United States, in
the manufacture of steel tools and equipment for the drilling of oil
wells. Only the Employer's Tool Plant at Houston, Texas, is involved
in this proceeding.
The Petitioner seeks a unit of maintenance electricians, their helpers
and leadmen, and instrument repairmen (A), excluding Martin
Decker machine repairmen and foremen and other supervisors. The
Employer and the Intervenor, United Steelworkers of America, Local
Union 2083, contend (1) that the employees involved in this proceed-
1 After the close of the hearing, the Employer moved to correct certain alleged errors in
the transcript made at the hearing. In the absence of objections to the Employer's motion,
it is hereby granted. The transcript is hereby amended to read as corrected.
87 NLRB No. 45.
314
REED ROLLER BIT COMPANY 315
ing are not true craft electricians; (2) that the duties and interests of
these employees are so integrated with those of production employees
that they should not be separated from the latter for bargaining pur-
poses; and (3) that the long collective bargaining history on an over-
all basis precludes the establishment of the requested narrower unit
at this time.
The Employer 's maintenance department consists of several groups
of employees, including the electrical group, and is located in a sepa-
rate building. In this building, the electrical group, like various other
groups, has its own work shop, separated from the other work shops
by a wire fence. Of the approximately 19 "electricians" and "elec-
tricians' helpers" involved in this proceeding, approximately 13 work
on the day shift and approximately 6 work on the second or "swing"
shift, each shift operating under' its own foreman. The Employer
has stationed approximately 4 of the day shift men in "zones" in its
production departments so that they may be on hand to take care of
electrical breakdowns which may occur on production lines. Except
in emergencies, the same employees are always assigned to the same
zones.
The Employer has transferred most of the workers involved herein
to its electrical department from its other departments. They have
thus become first "electricians' helpers" and then "electricians." The
Employer has no apprentice program, but generally requires that a
worker spend 3 to 4 years in this department before he reaches the
maximum pay rate for "electricians." He may, however, be classi-
fied as an "electrician ," at a lower rate, in a shorter period. In the
course of their varied duties, the employees sought by the Petitioner
clean and replace motor bearings, replace contacts, coils, overloaded
heaters, and burned-out electric light bulbs, and maintain the Em-
ployer's electric water coolers and air-conditioning system. They do
no major electrical repair work, because the Employer sends equip-
ment requiring that type of work to outside repair shops. They do
no motor or transformer rewinding. They do not overhaul motors.
They do no major electrical construction work. They do not, as a
regular matter, construct panel boards, which the Employer pur-
chases from outside dealers.
The Employer's production is entirely dependent' on the continuity
of electric energy; virtually every machine and major tool in its plant
is powered by an electrical motor. The Employer has therefore set
up its electrical department to maintain uninterrupted production.
As stated above, the Employer has stationed approximately four of its
"electricians" or "electricians ' helpers" in production areas through-
out its plant to correct electrical break-downs . The Employer has sta-
316 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
tioned the rest of these employees in their work shop, but they too are
subject to call into production areas in cases of necessity. Repairs are
made in the electrical work shop only if it is not possible to make
them on the production line. All these electrical employees work both
in production areas and in the work shop, and two-thirds to three-
quarters of all their time is spent in production areas. When they
work in these areas, they are subject to the direction of production
foreman, as well as to that of the electrical foreman. They mingle
with production employees in the ordinary course of their duties; they
have the same working conditions and employee benefits; and under
the contract between the Employer and the Intervenor, they are sub-
ject to assignment to production or maintenance jobs, outside the elec-
trical department. In .case of a reduction in force, they have plant-
wide seniority rights, including rights to production or maintenance
jobs which they may formerly have held and to certain "pool" jobs
which may be wholly unrelated to their present electrical work.
The employees involved in this proceeding are clearly not true craft
electricians, because they do not principally perform tasks character-
istic of the electrician's trade. They do not operate wholly under
the control and direction of the electrical department foremen. They
do not constitute a clearly defined group or administrative sector of
the Employer's operations. Their work interests and duties are fused
with those of general production and maintenance employees. The
Employer, for a period of over 10 years, has bargained for these
workers in the larger, over-all unit. Under all these circumstances,
we find that the unit proposed by the Petitioner is inappropriate for
the purposes of collective bargaining.2 We shall therefore dismiss
the petition.
ORDER
Upon the entire record in the case, the National Labor Relations
Board hereby orders that the petition herein be, and it hereby is, dis-
missed.
2E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Inc., 85 NLRB 1301 . Cf. Rice-Stim Dry
Goods Company, 85 NLRB 541.