U. S. Plywood-Champion Papers, Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Feb 3, 1969

174 N.L.R.B. 292 (N.L.R.B. 1969)

292 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
U. S. Plywood-Champion Papers, Inc. and Western
States Regional Council 3, International
Woodworkers of America , AFL-CIO and
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
Local Union No. 932, AFL-CIO, Petitioners.
Cases 36-RM-492, 36-RC-2338, and 36-RC-2348
February 3, 1969
DECISION AND DIRECTION OF
ELECTION
Under separate petitions duly filed under Section
9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as
amended, a consolidated hearing was held before
Hearing Officer Thomas P. Graham, Jr. The
Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Following the hearing, this case was transferred to
the National Labor Relations Board in Washington,
D.C., pursuant to Section 102.67 of the National
Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations and
Statements of Procedure, Series 8, as amended. All
of the Petitioners and the Intervenor, Western
Council of Lumber and Sawmill Workers, United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, AFL-CIO,
have filed briefs which have been duly considered by
the Board.
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. A question affecting commerce exists
concerning the representation of certain 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 Units Sought
The International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, Local Union No. 932, AFL-CIO,
hereinafter IBEW , seeks a departmental
maintenance unit of some 30 employees in the
general classifications of millwright, electrician and
apprentice , carpenter , automotive mechanic,
machinist , oiler , and powerhouse employee. The
IBEW contends that the maintenance and
powerhouse employees constitute an appropriate
unit in that they compose an identifiable
homogeneous group of employees sharing a
community of a-`:rest which is separate and distinct
from that ( of the production employees.
Alternatively, IBEW seeks to represent the
general maintenance employees excluding the
powerhouse employees if the inclusion of the latter
in the unit is found to be inappropriate.
By separate petitions the Employer and the
Western States Regional Council 3, International
Woodworkers of America, AFL-CIO, hereinafter
IWA, seek an election in the overall production and
maintenance unit. They contend that because of the
highly integrated functional and operational nature
of the Employer's plywood and lumber
manufacturing business, the only appropriate unit is
the overall unit, and that, therefore, the petition
seeking the maintenance unit should be dismissed.
The Intervenor, the Western Council of Lumber and
Sawmill Workers, United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners, AFL-CIO, hereinafter
LSW, joins with the Employer and the IWA in
contending that the only appropriate unit is the
all-inclusive unit.
Bargaining History
The Employer's sawmill was constructed in 1956.
Following an election in 1957, the Board certified
the LSW as the bargaining representative in an
all-inclusive employee unit at this point.' A
collective-bargaining agreement covering that unit
was thereafter negotiated. Later the Employer
expanded the facility to include a complete plywood
plant, and in 1959 a stipulation of agreement was
entered into whereby the recognition clause in the
collective-bargaining agreement was revised to
include the employees in the expanded facility as
part of the unit. In 1961 following the reopening of
the contract negotiations, an employee
decertification petition was filed covering the
established all-inclusive unit.' This was followed by
a disclaimer on the part of the LSW as a result of
which the Regional Director dismissed the petition
for decertification. Thereafter, the LSW filed a
petition seeking certification as the representative of
only those employed in the sawmill part of the
Employer's operation .3 After a hearing, the
Regional Director dismissed this petition finding
"nothing to warrant upsetting the
collective-bargaining practices on an overall unit
basis." Later, in 1963, the IWA filed a petition
seeking an election in the all-employee unit. A
consent election was held in which a majority of the
employees in the unit chose not to be represented.
The Employer's Operation
The Employer's lumber and plywood plant is
located close to its source of raw material on the
remote Rogue River near the small coastal town of
Gold Beach, Oregon. This facility employs some 380
persons, has an annual payroll of nearly $3,000,000,
and generates annual expenditures of a nearly
equivalent amount for supporting services, raw
'Case 36-RC-1266
'Case 36-RD-155
'Case 36-RC-1677
174 NLRB No. 48
U. S. PLYWOOD-CHAMPION PAPERS 293
materials, and related supplies.
Independent contractors harvest and transport
logs from the Employer's nearby timberlands to the
plant's woodyard, where they are graded and sorted
according to size and quality. Peelable logs are
tagged for plywood manufacture, and sawlogs are
tagged for the sawmill and the production of
lumber. Tagged logs are rolled into a log pond for
storage until needed, at which time they are
removed, debarked, mechanically returned to the
water, and pushed by the pond boat either to the
in-feed end of the plywood plant or the sawmill.
At the plywood plant debarked logs are cut to
predetermined lengths, charged into a huge lathe
and peeled into a continuous sheet of veneer. As the
veneer sheet moves at high speed along a bank of
conveyors it is clipped into desired lengths by a
stationary knife, the pieces are sorted and graded,
and transferred to another conveyor system which
processes them through huge ovens at a speed which
will dry the wood to a predetermined moisture
content. The dried veneer then is passed through a
series of glue-spreading rollers and stacked or
sandwiched in a hot-press and squeezed to a
predetermined pressure bond. The plywood is
trimmed into a true rectangle and either packaged
for warehousing, in the event the particular order
calls for rough facing; or it may be processed
further in the form of sanding, after which it is
similarly packaged and warehoused. Through this
process the plywood plant has the capacity to
produce 400,000 feet of plywood every 24 hours, and
an interruption of the production process at any key
point would shut down the remainder of the
production line within 15 minutes.
The manufacture of lumber at the sawmill
involves production processes similar to those used
at the plywood plant. Logs are conveyed from the
pond to a log deck where they are trimmed or cut
into lengths up to 32 feet. They are then hoisted
onto a carriage mounted on rails which is run back
and forth by means of a steam-powered cylinder.
The carriage holds logs up to 7 feet in diameter and
runs them at high speeds against a fixed band saw.
The carriage moves back and forth, turning the log
by means of huge arms to achieve desired thickness
and maximum utilization. From this point the slabs
of lumber drop onto a continuous conveyor system
and are run through a series of stationary saws
which cut them to predetermined widths. These
rough boards, still the length of the original logs,
are conveyed by a chain conveyor system to a bank
of 17 circular saws which trim or cut the planks to
length from whence they pass to a sorting belt. The
boards are sorted, passed through a planer, graded,
and finally stacked for storage. A log starting at the
in-feed end of the sawmill will be a pile of stacked
planks at the other end of the mill within 15
minutes.
Trimmings, chips, and other waste wood from
both the plywood plant and the sawmill are
converted into what is called hog fuel and conveyed
by means of a blower system to the powerhouse to
be used as fuel. The powerhouse generates the power
supply for both mills and in turn is dependent upon
their combined waste products to accomplish this
task.
The plant operates on a 3-shift basis, although
presently most of the production is accomplished on
the first shift. The first shift operates at full
production capacity, the second shift at partial
capacity, and the production line is shut down on
the third shift. Of the 380 employees working at
both the plywood plant and the sawmill on the 3
shifts, the vast majority are production employees,
27 are general maintenance type employees, and
there are 6 powerhouse employees.4
Although there is a maintenance superintendent
with responsibility for the hiring and firing of
maintenance and powerhouse personnel, the
handling of their grievances, and the keeping of
their time and work records, he shares his authority
with the production foremen who directly supervise
all maintenance employees working on the
production floor. Futhermore, although the
maintenance superintendent does hire maintenance
personnel, it should also be noted that his actual
authority in this regard is somewhat limited in that
the maintenance crew is composed largely of former
production employees who have bid in to the various
maintenance jobs. Because of the remoteness of the
plant's location from any city or source of labor
supply and perhaps because of the industrial
uniqueness of much of the heavy production
machinery used, the Employer has been obliged to
make its own maintenance crews by training
production line employees. As a result, of course,
many of the maintenance personnel are experienced
production operators and quite frequently, when
needed, will fill in on production jobs.
The maintenance millwrights and electricians, who
comprise a majority of the maintenance crew, spend
from 75 to 90 percent of their time working in
production areas , largely answering emergency calls
for the production line. In fact they are normally
assigned to either the production area of the
plywood plant or of the sawmill and report there at
the beginning of their shift after collecting the
necessary tools and supplies from the maintenance
shop. The only exception is a group of four
employees on the plywood day-shift referred to as
the "shop crew" and consisting of two millwrights,
'At the plywood plant the maintenance crew is composed of ten
employees on the first shift (four millwrights , two electricians and one
apprentice , one carpenter, one automotive mechanic , and one machinist),
five employees on the second shift (two millwrights , two electricians, one
automotive mechanic), and seven employees on the third shift (two
millwrights, one electrician and one apprentice , one automotive mechanic,
one oiler, and one serviceman for rolling equipment) At the sawmill only
one millwright is employed on each of the first two shifts, and one
millwright, one helper and one oiler are employed on the third shift At the
powerhouse one fireman and one fuelpuncher are employed on each of three
shifts
294 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
the carpenter, and the machinist. The shop crew acts
as a kind of first-shift pool whose work is assigned
out of the maintenance shop on a priority basis by
the maintenance superintendent. The two
millwrights on the shop crew spend 85 to 90 percent
of their working time in production areas. The
carpenter works in various areas of the plant, and
the machinist generally works in the maintenance
shop. The remaining members of the maintenance
crew are the automotive mechanics and one oiler.
The automotive mechanics work principally in the
maintenance shop, and the oiler spends his entire
time oiling the shut-down machinery on the third
shift.
On the day shift, the work of the maintenance
employees other than that of the shop crew is
assigned by one of two methods, the first called
whistle-chasing and the other termed preventive or
routine maintenance. The Employer has installed an
elaborate electrical code system which permits the
machine operator who encounters difficulty in the
operation of his equipment to call for maintenance
assistance by pressing a button near his machine
which activates a loud whistle in both the plant
facility and in the maintenance shop and which will
alert the production foreman and, according to the
code used, will call either a millwright or electrician
and will also designate the area of the plant in
which the operator is working. Millwrights and
electricians spend most of their time chasing
whistles. Routine or preventive maintenance is
assigned as fill-in work between whistle-chasing.
When an operator believes that his machine is in
need of maintenance service but that the need is not
an immediate one, he will file a report with his
production foreman. The production foreman will
review the request and, if warranted, transmit it to
the maintenance superintendent. The maintenance
superintendent reviews all of these requests except
those requiring electrical work which he passes on to
the lead electrician. If the particular request for
maintenance service is approved, the work is
assigned by noting it on a blackboard which is kept
for that purpose in the production area. Thus,
maintenance employees who are between whistles
will go to this blackboard for work assignments.
Whistle-chasing is confined to the first and second
shifts because only during these shifts is the
production line operating. Preventive maintenance
work for both the second and third shifts is assigned
by the maintenance superintendent or the day shift
leadmen who note the assignments on the
blackboard or otherwise leave written or oral
assignments. Inasmuch as the production line does
not operate on the third shift, the third shift
maintenance employees spend all of their time doing
general repairs and routine or preventive
maintenance.
Thus, most of the maintenance employees spend
time in the production areas carrying out their main
function of doing everything necessary not only to
keep production machinery operating, but also, in
the event of machine breakdown, to effectuate
repairs and reestablish operations as soon as
possible. Machine operators and their assistants also
share the objectives of the maintenance employees
and, in fact, the machine operator has primary
responsibility for keeping his machine running by
servicing it himself if possible or by seeking the
assistance of maintenance personnel when necessary.
Spare parts, supplies, and tools for servicing
equipment are located at various areas throughout
the plant near the machines as well as in the
maintenance shop. The record is clear that the
machine operators and other production employees
engage in routine servicing of the production
machinery and the machine operators often
participate in the more complicated aspects of the
maintenance problems. For example, because of the
large size and industrial uniqueness of some of the
machinery, as well as the special skills of the
machine operators, the operator of such equipment
as the huge lathes which peel the veneer from the
logs or the large device or carriage which rotates
and planks logs is necessarily involved in any
significant maintenance of the machine and often his
advice and participation in the correction of the
particular problem is required.
When maintenance help is needed, the appropriate
maintenance employees are summoned by whistle or
otherwise. When machinery difficulties threaten or
curtail the continuity of the production process, it is
a matter of routine for millwrights, electricians,
carpenters, machinists, and anyone else necessary, to
be called to aid in diagnosis and repair. If, for
example, investigation discloses the difficulty to be
electrical, the electrician assumes primary
responsibility and the millwright, operator, or
whoever else proves to be necessary and is called,
becomes in effect the electrician's helper, and
vice-versa if the problem is mechanical and thus the
millwright's primary responsibility. The production
foreman may be present on such an occasion and
may instruct, advise, or consult with the operator or
the maintenance employee involved.
The powerhouse employees, a fireman and fuel
puncher on each of the 3 shifts, work strictly in the
powerhouse. They are under the technical
supervision of the maintenance superintendent, who
checks on them every week or so through a personal
visit, but they are also subject to the daily orders of
the production superintendents and foremen
regarding steam or power requirements for their
respective plants or departments. Otherwise, they
have little contact with the production or other
maintenance employees.
Finally, the record indicates that all hourly
employees share common fringe benefits and a
common wage structure. With regard to wages,
there is a single common denominator, the common
labor rate, on the basis of which all other
classifications are determined in accordance with
U. S. PLYWOOD-CHAMPION PAPERS
their relation to that classification after , evaluating
experience, responsibility, skill, and ingenuity.
Furthermore, production workers can and do bid
into maintenance jobs and, as previously mentioned,
constitute the Employer's major source of supply for
maintenance personnel. Moreover, in the event of a
production curtailment or reduction in force,
maintenance employees have the right to bump back
into the production units. In addition, and quite
frequently, maintenance employees with prior
production experience are expected to fill-in on the
production line when needed because of absences or
otherwise. Administratively, there is a unitary
system for processing and maintaining personnel
and payroll records, and although separate time and
work records are kept by the maintenance
superintendent for maintenance personnel, costs for
the services of the maintenance employees are
allocated to the production cost center in which the
particular maintenance work was perfomed.
Unit Findings
The Employer, the IWA, and the LSW, contend
that the overall plantwide unit is alone appropriate
in that the employees involved, the maintenance and
production workers, are an inseparable part of an
integrated and functionally interdependent
continuous flow production process in which they
share common and overlapping work tasks, common
supervision, job bidding, bumping, and hiring rights,
as well as common facilities and a common wage
structure and fringe benefits. They argue, further,
that the maintenance unit sought by the IBEW
comprises neither a distinct homogeneous group of
skilled journeymen nor a readily identifiable and
functionally distinct department working at trades
for which a tradition of separate representation
exists. Rather, the maintenance and powerhouse
employees in question, it is contended, are an
inseparable part of an integrated and functionally
interdependent production unit, who, working jointly
with employees who operate the production
equipment, perform necessary functions on the
production line as a matter of routine.
While' there was prior bargaining at this plant on
a plantwide basis, it is not controlling in view of the
approximately 7-year interval since the LSW ceased
to represent the employees. We note, however, that
the employer is engaged at least in substantial part
in the basic lumber industry.' This industry has
historically bargained on a plantwide basis, which
has been conducive to a substantial degree of
stability in labor relations, and this background was
a substantial reason for the rule announced in
Weyerhaeuser Co.' We no longer adhere to the
Weyerhaeuser doctrine, but determine the
appropriateness of units in this industry based on
the same factors as any other type of enterprise.7
However, the integrated nature of the operations as
well as the industry bargaining pattern and stability
295
which were the underlying reasons for the
Weyerhaeuser decision remain valid factors to be'
considered and weighed in making unit findings,
even though they are not sufficient in and of
themselves to preclude consideration of other
relevant factors.8 However, we are persuaded, in
view of our evaluation of all relevant factors, that
the maintenance department unit sought herein is
not composed of a distinct and homogeneous group
of employees with interests separate from those of
other employees, and hence is not appropriate.9
As more fully set forth above, the majority of the
maintenance crew spend 75 to 90 percent of their
time on the production floor working with
production employees under the supervision of
production foremen. The remainder of the day
maintenance employees, consisting of four
employees known as the "shop crew," serves, in
effect, as a pool for assignment out of the
maintenance shop on a priority basis. Of this crew,
two millwrights spend 85 to 90 percent of their
working time in the production areas, the carpenter
works in various areas of the plant, and only the
machinist works entirely in the maintenance shop.
Further, and very significantly , maintenance
employees frequently substitute on production jobs,
and the production and the maintenance employees
enjoy a common wage structure and the same fringe
benefits. In addition , maintenance employees are
recruited largely from the production ranks and may
bump back to production jobs in the event of a
reduction in force.
Based on the entire record, we conclude that any
separate community of interests which the
maintenance employees might enjoy by reason of
their skills and training- has been largely submerged
in the broader community of interests which they
share with other employees, especially by reason of
the common supervision in the performance of their
usual tasks, the fact that production employees and
maintenance employees perform some similar
functions and frequently work together in the repair
and maintenance of machinery, the line of
progression from the production department to
maintenance department and the right of
maintenance employees to "bump back" into
production work in the event of a layoff, and the
frequent assignment of maintenance employees to
perform production work.
'Cf Burke Millwork Co., Inc, 100 NLRB 522, 523.
'87 NLRB 1074, holding that only plantwide units embracing all
production and maintenance employees were appropriate in basic lumber
operations.
'Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Uranium Division , 162 NLRB 387.
'Timber Products Company, 164 NLRB 1060
In view of this conclusion , we need not consider whether a maintenance
unit in this plant should include the powerhouse employees.
"See American Cyanamid Company, 131 NLRB 909, 910 In that
decision the Board relied in part on the "similarity of function and skills"
among the maintenance department employees There is no basis in the
instant case for concluding that the employees sought have similar skills
On the contrary, it appears that they exercise a variety of skills and
perform a variety of functions , although all are directed to the end of
attaining continuing mechanical operation of the equipment
296 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
In view of the above, it is apparent that Crown
Simpson Pulp Company, the case cited and relied
on by our dissenting colleagues, involved totally
different facts and is thus inapposite." In this
connection, it is to be noted that in American
Cyanamid Company, supra, the case usually cited in
support of the principle that a maintenance
department unit may be appropriate, the Board did
not hold that every maintenance department must
automatically be found to be an appropriate unit for
collective-bargaining purposes, but only that such a
unit may be appropriate where the record establishes
that maintenance employees are a separately
identifiable group performing similar functions
which are separate from production and having a
community of interest such as would warrant
si parate representation.
Accordingly, we find that the unit sought by the
Petitioner herein is inappropriate for the purposes of
collective bargaining, and we shall dismiss the
petition.
4. We find, for the reasons above cited, that the
following employees of the Employer at its Gold
Beach plant constitute a unit appropriate for the
purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning
of Section 9(b) of the Act: All employees of the
Employer at its Gold Beach operations excluding
office clerical employees, professional employees,
guards and supervisors.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition filed in Case
36-RC-2338 be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
[Direction of Election12 omitted from publication.]
MEMBERS FANNING and ZAGORIA, dissenting:
We do not agree with our colleagues' conclusion
that the maintenance operation is not sufficiently
identifiable to warrant finding as appropriate the
departmental maintenance unit sought. The Board
found appropriate a strikingly similar multicraft
11163 NLRB 796 We find that decision is distinguishable on its facts
and not controlling in the instant case. Thus, in contrast with the findings
herein, there the maintenance department was separately administered, had
a seaparate wage scale , and had its own maintenance superintendent who
hired maintenance department employees and reported directly to the plant
engineer; there was no interchange between production and maintenance
employees; the maintenance funtion was separately identifiable and there is
no indication that production employees did any maintenance work or that
maintenance employees were ever supervised by production supervisors,
when maintenance and production employees worked together the latter
performed functions incidental to those of the maintenance employees; the
maintenance department was separately located and was composed of
groups of craft-type employees , each having its own work area; and the
tools were housed in the maintenance budding and were primarily for use
of maintenance personnel
1'An election eligibility list, containing the names and addresses of all the
eligible voters , must be filed by the Employer with the Regional Directoi
for Region 36 within 7 days after the date of this Decision and Direction
of Election . The Regional Director shall make the list available to all
parties to the election . No extension of time to file this list shall be granted
by the Regional Director except in extraordinary circumstances Failure to
comply with this requirement shall be grounds for setting aside the election
whenever proper objections are filed. Excelsior Underwear Inc, 156 NLRB
1236
maintenance unit in a previously unorganized plant
in this industry in Crown Simpson Pulp Company.' 3
In the present case, as the Employer's plant has
remained unorganized for some 7 years, there is no
controlling bargaining history on a broader basis to
preclude finding appropriate the maintenance unit
sought under the principles of American
Cyanamid" Moreover, in the present case there is a
maintenance department headed by a superintendent
who hires and fires maintenance employees, handles
their grevances, assigns work, and keeps separate
employee time and work records. He is assisted in
some or all of these tasks by subordinate leadmen
There is a maintenance shop located in a separate
building which houses the tools, equipment, and
workbenches of the maintenance employees. In this
ship, distinct areas for work and storage of
equipment, tools, and supplies exist for the
electricians, the millwrights, the oiler, the
mechanics, and the machinist. Some maintenance
employees, such as the machinist and the
automotive mechanics, spend most of their time
working in the maintenance shop. The electricians
and the millwrights work out of the maintenance
shop in the production areas. They generally report
to the shop before going to their assigned
production areas to prepare for work and to gather
up their tools. Although the great majority of their
time, 75 to 90 percent, is spent making repairs or
servicing machinery on the production line, the work
that they perform is clearly maintenance work
calling for the exercise of traditional maintenance
skills and it is work which can be accomplished on
the production line. Moreover, they normally
exercise this skill because the particular maintenance
problem cannot be handled at the production
employee level. Thus, when the maintenance service
needed is beyond the competence of the machine
operator, the electrician or the millwright is
summoned, by whistle or otherwise, to exercise his
traditional skill. The remainder of the time of the
millwrights and electricians is spent performing
traditional routine or preventive 'maintenance
assigned as fill-in work directly by maintenance
department leadmen or the maintenance
superintendent. In addition, a substantial number of
the maintenance employees eat their lunch or have
coffee in the maintenance shop whether or not they
are assigned to work in production areas
Furthermore, although they punch in at a common
time clock area with the production employees, their
cards are separately racked and designated. Finally
the maintenance employees generally receive
substantially higher wages than the production
employees.
13163 NLRB 796
14131 NLRB 909. See National Carbon Company , 107 NLRB 1486,
wherein the Board found that the absence of a bargaining history for only
5 years constituted a sufficient period of time to overcome a prior
bargaining history on a broader basis and premit the Board to find as
U. S. PLYWOOD-CHAMPION PAPERS
In the comparable Crown Simpson case the
maintenance employees at the previously
unorganized plant there involved were found to
constitute an identifiable homogeneous group of
employees sharing a community of interest separate
and distinct from that of the production employees
based on facts similar to those existing in the
present case: the maintenance department was
located in its own building where the various craft
type employees had their own tools and work areas;
although the maintenance employees worked with
the production employees, the functions performed
by the production workers were only incidental to
the preparation of the equipment for the
maintenance or repair work; the maintenance
department was administered separately from the
production department, had its own wages scale,
and had its own superintendent who did the hiring;
and production employees regularly transferred to
the maintenance department where they started at
the lowest rate in the maintenance wage scale. In
accord with long standing Board policy concerning
initial organization, and based on the factors recited
above, the Board found that the maintenance
employees at that plant could constitute a separate
unit if they so desired.' S
It is true, that the Employer's plant is a highly
automated plant which produces lumber and
plywood through a continuous flow process and that
the maintenance functions are necessarily integrated
into the production process insofar as that process
comes to a complete halt whenever the machinery is
not maintained in operating condition. However,
precisely the same situation obtained in Crown
Simpson, and the Board specifically found that,
despite these factors, and despite the fact that
another union was seeking to represent an overall
production and maintenance unit, the maintenance
appropriate a unit limited to the employer' s maintenance employees.
"American Cyanamid, supra
' N.L R. B v Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 270 F 2d 167 (C A.
Mallinekrodt Chemical Works , Uranium Division, supra
297
employees were entitled to an opportunity to be
represented in a separate unit if they so desired. The
majority's refusal to apply this same policy to the
Employer's maintenance employees finds no
justification in relevant distinguishing factors of
record, and must, therefore, be rejected as contrary
to the accepted principle that it is improper for the
Board to arbitrarily discriminate between industries
in the application of its general rules governing unit
determinations.' 6
We think industrial stability is best insured by
giving employees "fullest freedom" pursuant to the
statutory mandate of Section 9(b) of the Act to
select the bargaining representative they think will
best serve them - at least on initial organization
and in view of the limited opportunity available to
them thereafter to change their bargaining
representative.
Accordingly, we would find that the maintenance
employees in the present case, like those in Crown
Simpson, are readily identifiable as a group whose
similarity of functions and skills create a community
of interest warranting separate representation. We
would include in such a unit the powerhouse
employees who have been and are a part of the
maintenance department and who work under the
overall supervision of the maintenance
superintendent. We would, therefore, direct
self-determination elections in the maintenance and
powerhouse unit and in the overall unit."
"Member Fanning would also point out that the Board's failure to find
the maintenance unit at this unorganized plant to be an appropriate unit
further resurrects the limitations imposed upon employee organization in
the lumber industry by Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, 87 NLRB 1076.
In his dissent in Timber Products Company, 164 NLRB 1060, Member
Fanning noted that the failure to find a craft unit of journeymen
electricians in the previously unorganized plant there involved would put
craft representation in an even less desirable position in the lumber
industry than had existed under the 18 year sway of the Weyerhaeuser
doctrine The present decision seems only to add to the limitations
contemplated in that dissent, for the majority decision in the present case
would appear, in Member Fanning ' s view, to contravene the principles of
American Cyanamid, supra, by denying the appropriateness of a
departmental maintenance unit in a previously unorganized plant