The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 7, 1967

165 N.L.R.B. 188 (N.L.R.B. 1967)

188 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and
Goodyear Electrical Trade Union, Peti-
tioner and United Rubber , Cork, Linoleum
& Plastic Workers of America, ALF-CIO,
and its Locals 2, 12, 131 , 185, 200, 247,
286, 289 , 290, 307, and 532 . Case 8-RC-
5846
June 7, 1967
DECISION AND ORDER
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Joseph A. Szabo, Hearing
Officer of the National Labor Relations Board.
Following the hearing and pursuant to Section
102.67 of the Board's Rules and Regulations, Series
8, as amended, by direction of the Regional Director
for Region 8, this case was transferred to the Board
for decision. The Hearing Officer's rulings made at
the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are
hereby affirmed. Briefs filed by the Employer,
Petitioner, and Intervenor' have been duly
considered by the Board in making its decision in
this case
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 labor organizations involved claim to
represent certain employees of the Employer.'
3. For the following reasons we find that no
question exists concerning the representation of
employees of the Employer.
The Employer, an Ohio corporation engaged in the
manufacture of rubber tires, tubes, and related
products, owns and operates plants in 11 cities
throughout the country. There are approximately
20,000 employees in the 11 cities in the general
classification of production and maintenance
employees. With the sole exception of the wood and
metal patternmakers, for whom the Pattern Maker's
League was certified in a separate unit at the Akron
plants in 1944,•t all production and maintenance
employees, since 1937, have been represented
pursuant to various certifications by the Intervenor
and its Locals 2, 12, 131, 185, 200, 247, 286, 289, 290,
307, and 532.4
' The Intervenor 's request for oral argument is hereby denied
as the record, including the briefs, adequately presents the issues
and positions of the parties
2 The parties stipulated that Petitioner is a labor organization
within the meaning of the Act, that it was organized about 10
months prior to the hearing herein, admitted to membership at
first solely the electricians employed at the Goodyear plants in the
Akron area, and that it will admit to membership electricians and
electrician helpers or apprentices employed at other plants of the
Goodyear Company The parties further stipulated that Petitioner
admits to membership no one other than employees who are
Petitioner seeks to sever a unit composed of all
electricians and apprentice electricians at all the
Employer's plants. In the alternative, Petitioner
seeks units of electricians and apprentice
electricians composed of the 6 Akron, Ohio,
locations and at each of the other 10 locations. There
are approximately 336 electricians in all, 165 of them
located at the Akron plants.
The Intervenor contends the petition should be
dismissed, among other reasons, because of the
integration of the electricians' work with that of
other production and maintenance operations of the
plants. The Employer asserts that it would not
effectuate the purposes of the Act to distrub the long
history of bargaining and adequate, successful
representation by the Intervenor in a multiplant
production and maintenance unit including the
employees sought to be severed.
Since 1937, the Employer has bargained with the
Intervenor on a production-and-maintenance unit
basis. Beginning in 1947, the Employer and
Intervenor have engaged in companywide
negotiations culminating in a master agreement that
covered certain subjects common to all the plants,
such as wage scales, hours, vacations, broad
seniority rules, union security, safety rules, and
fringe benefits. The companywide negotiations were
supplemented by negotiations at the plant level only
on limited local subjects such as employees'
plantwide and departmental seniority privileges, and
local rules governing specified matters involving
transfer and bumping rights, overtime work
assignments, etc. Grievance procedures have been
negotiated on both a companywide and local level,
with the actual processing of grievances handled on
a local basis.
The Employer at present has a separate contract
with each of the 11 locals to which the Intervenor is
also a party. Although the parties no longer maintain
a master contract signed by all the locals, the
negotiations continue to be basically conducted on a
companywide basis at the national level, and local
bargaining is designed essentially to supplement and
implement such companywide negotiations. Where,
as here, there is an established history of collective
bargaining on a multiplant basis, the Board has long
followed the policy of requiring that severance of an
identifiable group of employees must be coextensive
with the established multiplant unit. Therefore, to
the extent the Petitioner requests separate units of
electricians or electrician apprentices or helpers employed by the
Goodyear Company and does not intend to do so
3 See The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, 55 NLRB 918.
' The Intervenor Locals as numbered respectively represent
the production and maintenance employees at the following cites
Akron, Ohio, where six plants are located, Gadsden, Alabama,
Los Angeles, California, Jackson, Michigan, St Mary's, Ohio,
Muncie, Indiana, Lincoln, Nebraska, Windsor, Vermont, New
Bedford, Massachusetts, Topeka, Kansas, and North Chicago,
Illinois
165 NLRB No. 28
GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO. 189
electricians limited to the Akron plants and to each
of the 10 other plants, we find the units so requested
are inappropriate.
We turn, then, to the Petitioner's request for a
separate unit of electricians at all of the Employer's
plants. We find such a unit also inappropriate for the
following reasons.
The Employer is engaged in the production and
manufacture of a great variety of products ranging
from rubber tires and tubes to chemicals, printer's
supplies, and shoe products. Among its total work
complement of over 20,000 employees, are
approximately 336 employees classified as
electricians. In most plants, the electricians are an
integral part of an overall maintenance department
grouping that is composed of numerous
classifications of craftlike employees, such as
machinists, sheet metal workers, painters,
carpenters, and pipefitters.
Those classified as electricians perform diverse
functions. Considered as a broad group, however,
they are generally responsible both for furnishing
the electrical power supply in the production
process and for the electrical servicing and
maintenance of production machinery and plant
facilities throughout the Employer's nationwide
operation. The work of the employees so classified
involves substantial functional integration with
varied phrases of the Employer's entire operation.
Their work as a group ranges from construction and
maintenance electrical work to such specialized
tasks as elevator repairing, telephone work, and the
installation of burglar alarm systems. They also do
testing, repairing, and troubleshooting. Because of
the varied work functions of members of this group,
the Employer's job description for electricians
indicates that applicants must be well versed in the
electrical field.
The greater part of the work of the electricians,
considered as a group, is performed in the
production area where the electricians maintain the
production machines. At the larger plants, there are
special "product groups" of electricians who spend
almost 100 percent of their working time on the
production floor. This work involves the observation
of malfunctioning machines and making necessary
corrections and adjustments on the production floor.
In performing these duties, electricians work in
close association with production or other
maintenance and construction employees. In most
instances electricians do not have a separate work
area, but share a shop with other maintenance craft
employees involved in similar work.
The training and background of the electricians in
the Employer's total operational structure is by no
means the same in all plants and tends to vary with
each plant. Thus, in Akron, Gadsden, and Los
Angeles, the Employer has a large force of
electricians and provides an apprenticeship
program. In eight plants the Employer has neither an
apprenticeship nor a training program. And, in New
Bedford, the Employer has no electrician
classification, and the electricians are grouped with
other types of maintenance men in a very general
classification. Furthermore, there are instances
where employees not classified as electricians, not
sought by the Petitioner herein, perform electrical
work in the plants. And, at some of the smaller
plants, electricians, in addition to performing
electrical work, assist other crafts when they are
needed and when no electrical work is available. At
the North Chicago plant the four electricians were
hired as electricians-mechanics, performing about
40 percent mechanical work. Hiring, for the most
part, is based on experience.
Electricians are supervised either on a "gang" or
"zone" basis. "Gang" supervision refers to
situations where a group of electricians work under
the supervision of an electrician supervisor. "Zone"
supervision refers to a situation where various crafts
are commonly supervised within a specific area of a
plant by a supervisor who may or may not be an
electrician. Many of the plants have both gang and
zone supervision for electricians. In the six Akron
plants there are nine departments in which
electricians work, and these departments and the
subdivided departments in some instances are
supervised by an electrician; in others by a
nonelectrician who also supervises other craft
groups. In the smaller plants and during the second
and third shifts at others, the electricians are usually
supervised by engineering or mechanical
supervisors who also supervise other crafts. In
certain of the small plants, electricians' work may be
performed under the direction of a production
supervisor.
Electricians may transfer or bid into production
jobs, and production employees can transfer into the
electricians' jobs provided they can prove their
qualifications for such work. Interchange of this
kind has occurred on occasions. The craft
employees have the same fringe benefits as
production employees.
In determining the unit issue in this case, we are
guided by the principles declared in our recent
decision in Mallinckrodt.5
Examination of facts of this case in light of the
relevant factors discussed in Mallinckrodt, leads us
to conclude that it will not effectuate the policies of
the Act to permit the Petitioner herein to "carve
out" a unit of electricians. Many of the employees in
the group sought to be severed perform specialized
functions not requiring the skills of journeymen
craftsmen, while others who are not classified as
' Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Uranium Division , 162 NLRB
387
190 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
electricians and are not sought to be severed at
times perform work similar in kind to that of some of
the employees whom Petitioner would include in its
proposed unit.
In the main, there is a high degree of integration
between the Employer's production process and the
work of employees in the group sought to be severed.
Thus, the electricians spend most of their time
working in the production areas, singly or in groups,
repairing and maintaining production equipment
and machinery. In performing these duties,
electricians work in close association with
production employees or other maintenance and
construction employees who are not electricians.
Only a very limited amount of the work of the
electricians as a group is spent in the shop areas.
The electricians share a community of interest with
all the other plant employees as evidenced by their
common working conditions and benefits, and they
particularly have a close community of interest with
the other crafts which are usually grouped in the
same department and with which they most often
share common supervision.
During the 28-year period of bargaining on the
basis of a production and maintenance unit, the
electricians have not sought to maintain a separate
identity for bargaining purposes, but on the contrary
have acquiesced in the established bargaining
pattern by actively participating therein as stewards
and on negotiation and grievance committees.
Although the electricians possess to some extent a
separate identity by reason of their skills, they also
share a close community of interest with other
employees in the existing multiplant production and
maintenance unit, both because of their long and
uninterrupted association in that unit and because
their work is functionally integrated with other work
performed in that unit. For these reasons, as well as
others indicated above, and in the absence of other
compelling considerations of overriding force, we do
not believe it would effectuate the purposes of the
Act to permit disruption of the historically
established pattern of bargaining which has proved
conducive to a stable bargaining relationship. In our
opinion, the interests to be served by maintaining
the established bargaining unit far outweigh any
interests that may be served by affording the
electricians an opportunity to change their mode of
representation. Accordingly, finding as we do that a
unit or units limited to electricians are not now
appropriate, we shall dismiss the petition.
ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition herein be,
and it hereby is, dismissed.
Member Fanning, concurring:
I agree with my colleagues that the established
bargaining unit herein is a multiplant unit of
production and maintenance employees at the
Employer's plants in 11 cities. Accordingly,
Petitioner's petition for severance of a unit of craft
electricians must be judged in terms of a single unit
of electricians at all the foregoing plants.
Judged on this basis, I am satisfied that the record
adequately reveals the inappropriateness of a unit
limited to electricians. Thus, the training,
experience, skills, and work assignments of
electricians vary substantially from plant to plant.
Some plants have apprenticeship programs for
training electricians; others do not. Electricians in
some plants are highly skilled; those in other plants
are substantially less skilled. Some of the
electricians spend substantially all their time in the
performance of tasks which do not require exercise
of a high degree of skill. Some of the electricians
perform nonelectrical work and, conversely, some
electrical work is performed by employees not
classified as electricians. Moreover, supervision of
electrical work varies from plant to plant and
apparently a substantial amount of electrical work is
performed under supervision of production
supervisors or supervisors of other maintenance
crafts. Electricians may, and do, bump into
production work. In view of the circumstances and
on the entire record, I find that the electricians in
this case do not share a community of interests so
separate and distinct from that of the other
employees in the existing unit as to warrant a finding
that they constitute an appropriate craft unit entitled
to a craft severance election. Accordingly, I concur
in the dismissal of the petition in this case.