The Borden Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jul 27, 1949

85 N.L.R.B. 385 (N.L.R.B. 1949)

In the Matter of THE BORDEN COMPANY, BORDEN'S ICE CREAM COMPANY
OF MICHIGAN DIVISION,' EMPLOYER and LOCAL No. 547, INTER-
NATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS, AFL, PETITIONER
Case No. 7-RC-516.-Decided July 27, 1949
DECISION
AND
ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before George A.
Sweeney, 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 [Members Reynolds, Murdock, 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 representa-
tion 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 Petitioner requests severance of a unit described as all refrigera-
tion equipment operators, boiler operators, and power plant mainte-
nance employees at the Employer's plant located at 14707 Dexter
Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan. Since August 1941, the Intervenor,
Local No. 83, United Dairy Workers, CIO, has represented all the
employees, excluding certain stated categories, but including the em-
ployees involved herein, at the Employer's plants in Detroit and neigh-
boring. cities in, the State of Michigan. The Employer and the
Intervenor oppose the petition and contend that the. currently recog-
nized over-all, multi-plant unit constitutes the only unit appropriate
for the purposes of collective bargaining.
1 The Employer 's name appears as amended at the hearing.
85 N. L . R. B., No. 68.
5
386 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The Employer manufactures ice cream in its Dexter Boulevard plant
and maintains distributing branches in the cities of Saginaw, Lansing,
Kalamazoo, Jackson, and Pontiac. Employees in the categories de-
scribed in the petition work only in the Dexter Boulevard plant. This
plant is functionally divided into three departments, a production
department, a delivery department, and a maintenance department.
The employees in the proposed unit are all included in the maintenance'
department.
There are eight employees in the unit for which the Petitioner seeks
certification, of whom three are classified as operating engineers, two
as machinery maintenance and operating engineers, two as junior
mechanics, and one as working foreman. The three operating engi-
neers are concerned principally with the operation of the boilers and
the refrigeration equipment, but they also do general maintenance
work throughout the plant. The other five. employees primarily do
general plant maintenance work and all, except the junior mechanics,
occasionally substitute for the operating engineers in operating the
boilers. Furthermore, these maintenance employees sometimes do
production work and the production employees frequently do mainte-
nance work. Thus, the employees petitioned for do not constitute an
identifiable group of powerhouse employees nor a functionally distinct
,group of maintenance employees. We have recently found that
groupings of employees similar to those involved herein do not consti-
tute appropriate bargaining units 2 In view of the foregoing and the
fact that there has been collective bargaining on a broader basis for
8 years at the Employer's plants, we do not believe that the employees
petitioned for constitute an appropriate bargaining unit. Accord-
ingly, we shall dismiss the petition herein.
ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition for investigation and certifi-
^cation of representatives of certain employees of The Borden Com-
pany, Borden's Ice Cream Company of Michigan Division, Detroit,
Michigan, filed herein by Local No. 547, International Union of Oper-
ating Engineers, AFL, be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
2 Matter of Cincinnati Industries , Inc., 84 N . L. R. B. 489; Matter of The Borden
Company, The Borden Cheese Company Division, 83 N. L. R. B. 765.