General Electric Co.

In the Matter of GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, EMPLOYER and INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS, DISTRICT No. 101, PETITIONER Case No. 13-RC-232.-Decided April 4, 1949 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before a hearing officer of the National Labor Relations Board. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. At the hearing the Employer and the United Elec- trical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, CIO, herein called the Intervenor, moved to dismiss the petition, contending that an exist- ing contract between the Employer and the Intervenor is a bar to this proceeding, and further that the unit sought is inappropriate. For the reasons stated infra, the motions are hereby denied. 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-man panel.* 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. The question concerning representation : On April 1, 1946, the Employer and the Intervenor entered into a collective bargaining agreement covering the Employer's production and maintenance employees, including the employees involved herein. The contract provided for an initial period of 1 year, and for its automatic renewal yearly, in the absence of written notice of a desire to terminate, given by either party 90 days prior to the anniversary date of the contract. This contract further provided for modification of the terms of the agreement upon written notice 60 days prior to the *Reynolds , Murdock, and Gray. 82 N. L. R. B., No. 82. 722 GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 723 anniversary date. The contract was automatically renewed on April 1, 1947, and modified in accordance with its terms on April 25, 1947. Neither of the parties has given notice to terminate the 1947 agreement. However, timely notice for modification of the 1947 contract was given by the parties in December 1947, and January 1948. Negotiations continued from March 2, 1948, until June 11, 1948, at which time all modifications were embodied in an agreement to be effective from April 1, 1948, until April 1, 1950. The Petitioner made its demand for recognition on April 28, 1948, and filed its petition herein on April 29, 1948. The Employer refused to recognize the Petitioner as the exclusive bargaining representative of certain employees of the Em- ployer. The Employer and the Intervenor assert the automatically renewed contract, as modified, as a bar to this proceeding. The agreement executed on June 11, 1948, cannot be regarded as merely a modification of the old contract pursuant to its broad modi- fication provision, but is, in and of itself, a completely new contract the substantive provisions of which, including the contract termination date, are wholly different from those of the original contract. It is clear, therefore, that by executing a new contract, the parties effected a termination of the original contract as automatically renewed, there- by rendering the latter ineffective as a bar to this proceeding'. More- over, as the filing of the petition herein preceded the execution of the new agreement, it cannot, under well-established principles, operate as a bar to a present determination of representatives.' We find that a 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. 4. The appropriate unit : The Petitioner seeks a unit consisting of all toolroom employees,3 maintenance machinists, 1st class, 2nd class, and 3rd class, and machine welders at the Employer's De Kalb, Illinois, plant. The Employer and the Intervenor contend that the unit sought is inappropriate in view of the history of collective bargaining on a plant-wide basis, the alleged integration of operations and existing plant-wide seniority and promotion system. I Matter of Puritan Ice Company, 74 N. L. R. B. 1311; Matter of E. L. Bruce Company, 74 N. L. R. B. 1354; Cf. Matter of S & W. Fine Foods, Inc., 74 N. L. R. B. 1316 ' See Matter of E. L. Bruce Company, supra. Since neither of the contracts constitutes a bar, we have no occasion to consider the effect of the inclusion therein of an unauthorized maintenance-of-membership provision. See Matter of C Hager d Sons Hinge Manufacturing Company, 80 N. L R. B. 163; Matter of General Electric Company, 80 N. L. R B. 169; Matter of Ball Bros Company of California, Inc., 80 N L R. B. 1316. 3 The employee complement in the toolroom consists of tool, jig, fixture and gauge makers, milling machine and lathe operators, die sharpeners, die repairmen, tool grinders, carbolold tool sharpeners, precision tool grinders, and universal tool grinders. 724 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD The record shows that the toolroom and maintenance departments are separated from the rest of the plant by walls and wire mesh. Although separated from the toolroom by an open areaway, the main- tenance machinists do their machine work in the toolroom 4 along with the other toolroom machinists. Moreover, although the tool- room and maintenance departments have separate foremen on the first shift, they have a common foreman on the second shift. The toolroom employees make tools, jigs, fixtures, and gauges from blueprints, sketches, or broken parts. In making items from sketches, it is often necessary to develop details such as height or form. Most of the work consists of making replacements for broken parts. How- ever, toolroom employees are also required to make entirely new parts for engineering changes in motors. In all of this work they are re- quired to work at extremely close tolerances since the plant has a number of specialized technical precision machines that operate by electronic controls and require very fine precision work. Because of the intricate and vital nature of these machines, the toolroom em- ployees are required to perform all maintenance work for these par- ticular machines. Such maintenance work together with setting up of dies, jigs, and similar equipment necessitates that these employees spend approximately 15 to 20 percent of their working time in the production departments. Although these employees are given occupa- tional titles according to the type of machines contained in the tool- room, toolroom employees must generally be proficient in the operation of all machines located in the toolrooms. The maintenance machinists, consisting of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class machinists, respectively, are primarily engaged in repairing, main- taining, fabricating, and in some instances installing machine tools and production machinery. The maintenance machinists as well as the toolroom employees are required to be able to operate and use the various types of machine tools contained in the toolroom. Neither toolroom employees nor maintenance machinists are interchanged with the production employees from whom comparable skills are not re- quired. Although about 50 percent of the toolroom and maintenance employees have worked in production, the record reveals that certain of these employees who came from production had prior experience as machinists either with the Employer or elsewhere; and that others were promoted to the toolroom or maintenance division as 3rd class 4 The toolroom equipment consists of heald, international grinder, Brown & Sharpe Cylindrical grinders, Universal No. 2, Brown & Sharpe No. 3 Universal tool and cutter grinders, Cincinnati cutter grinders, Cincinnati sharpeners, vertical mill, two horizontal mills, Universal miscellaneous lathes, bench type drill presses, large drill presses, surface grinders, rotary table grinders, jig bores, radical drills, and vertical shapers. GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 725 machinists in accordance with the Employer's policy of plant-wide seniority and promotion for its employees. Furthermore, while the Employer has no formal apprenticeship program in effect for ma- chinists, it appears from the record that the 3rd class machinists 5 are in effect trainees, having substantially the same status as ma- chinist apprentices. The three machine welders do combination electric and acetylene welding for the toolroom and maintenance machinists. A major por- tion of their work is done in the toolroom. Although a part of their work requires them to do welding for the production division, such work does not contribute to the manufacture of finished products e In view of the special skills and the large craft nucleus of the tool- room employees, and the similar craft skills of the maintenance ma- chinists and machine welders, their physical segregation, their lack of interchange and integration with other employees of the Employer, together with their separate supervision, we are persuaded that they constitute a cohesive and well-defined craft group of a type which the Board has, in the past, found appropriate for bargaining purposes, notwithstanding a history of collective bargaining on a plant-wide basis.7 Moreover, we have previously considered, and found entitled to separate representation on the basis of their essentially craft char- acter, similarly classified employees with virtually identical functions at another plant of the Employer." Under the circumstances, we are of the opinion that the group sought by the Petitioner may constitute an appropriate unit if the employees in that group so desire. How- ever, we shall make no final unit determination at this time, but shall first ascertain the desires of the employees as expressed in the election hereinafter directed. We shall direct an election among the following employees in the Employer's De Kalb, Illinois, plant : All toolroom employees including tool, jig, fixture and gauge makers, machinists,9 maintenance machinists, and machine welders,1e but excluding all other employees and all supervisors as defined in the Act. 5 Such employees are generally those who have worked on production punch presses or lathes and have shown machine adaptability. However, the Employer states that such production operations do not otherwise qualify them for work in the machine shop. 6 The welders' work for the production division is not to finish a product but rather to make it possible to remove a broken part so that the production employees may replace such broken part with an undamaged part in order to complete the product 7 Matter of National Container Corporation, Inc., 75 N. L. It. B. 770 ; Matter of Dazey Corporation, 77 N. L. It. B 408 8 Matter of General Electric Company, 80 N L It. B. 169 Included as machinists, 1st class , 2nd class, and 3rd class, are those employees working under the job titles noted in footnote 2, supra. 10 Matter of St. Regis Paper Company , 80 N. L. It. B. 570. 838914-50-vol. 82-47 726 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD DIRECTION OF ELECTION 11 As part of the investigation to ascertain representatives for the pur- poses of collective bargaining with the Employer, an election by se- cret ballot shall be conducted as early as possible, but not later than thirty (30) days from the date of this Direction, under the direction and supervision of the Regional Director for the Thirteenth Region, and subject to Sections 203.61 and 203.62 of National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations-Series 5, as amended, among the em- ployees in the voting group described in paragraph numbered 4, above, who were employed during the pay-roll period immediately preceding the date of this Direction, including employees who did not work dur- ing said pay-roll period because they were ill or on vacation or tem- porarily laid off, but excluding those employees who have since quit or been discharged for cause and have not been rehired or reinstated prior to the date of the election, and also excluding employees on strike who are not entitled to reinstatement, to determine whether or not they desire to be represented by International Association of Ma- chinists, District No. 101, for the purposes of collective bargaining. 11 We shall not place the Intervenor's name on the ballot, inasmuch as it has not com- plied with Section 9 (f), (g), and (h) of the Act.