Drewry's Limited U. S. A. Inc.

In the Matter of DREWRY'S LIMITED U. S. A. INC.,' EMPLOYER and DISTRICT LODGE No. 103, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHIN- ISTS, PETITIONER Case No. 13-RC-609.-Decided Jury 1, 1949 DECISION AND ORDER Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before Philip Licari, 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. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the National Labor Relations Act, the Board had 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 Petitioner and the Intervenor, International Union of United Brewery, Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers of Amer- ica, CIO, are labor organizations claiming 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 seeks to represent a unit of "all skilled maintenance employees and grease men of the mechanical department." The Employer and Intervenor contend that the history of collective bar- gaining on a plant-wide basis should not be disturbed and that the unit sought by the Petitioner is inappropriate. The Employer operates a brewery which has two main operations, i. e., the brewhouse and the bottle shop, located in separate buildings about 150 feet apart. After the beer required for bottling has been brewed in the brewhouse it is moved through a system of tanks and piped by a pumping process to the filler tank in the bottle shop: At 85 N. L. R. B., No. 1. 1 2 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD the bottle shop, the bottles are placed in the soaker where they are cleaned. They are then passed into the filler on a conveyor belt and capped. From there they go to the pasteurizer, then into the la- beling. machine. From the.labeling machine they again go on the .conveyor belt to the packers where they are automatically placed in cases and passed to the shipping department for loading on the trucks. This proceeding involves 13 employees at the Employer's plant who are engaged in the maintenance of the automatic. machinery in the bottle shop and in the brewhouse. Of these employees, 8 are main- tenance mechanics in the bottle shop, 2 are maintenance mechanics in the brewhouse, and 3 are grease men. The maintenance mechanics and grease men who work in the bottle shop are under the direction of a working foreman, who, in turn, is under the supervision of the bottle shop superintendent. The maintenance mechanics in the brew- house are under the supervision of the chief engineer who also super- vises the firemen, engineers, steamfitters, and carpenters. The work of the maintenance mechanics in the brewhouse and bottle shop consists of taking out broken parts and replacing them -with parts taken from the parts room, welding a broken part in order to keep the operation going and generally making such repairs which are not normally made by the machine operators. themselves. The grease men oil and grease the machinery and equipment in the bottle shop, and at times also act as helpers to the maintenance mechanics. The maintenance mechanics are selected on the basis of their knowl- edge of brewery machinery, and three of the eight mechanics now working in the bottle shop were recruited from the ranks of the bottle shop production employees. All three grease men were formerly em- ployed in production work. The maintenance mechanics receive an hourly rate which is 16 cents higher than that of the bottling shop employees but the grease men receive the same rate as the bottle operators. There is a history of collective bargaining at the plant in question for a period of 13 years.. From 1936 to 1942, the Intervenor had contracts with the Employer which covered the maintenance men and helpers as well as all other production and maintenance employees. As a result of a Board-directed election in 1942,1 another union was certified as the representative of a production and maintenance unit, and entered into contracts with the Employer - from 1942 to 1947 which also included the maintenance men, who were listed in the contracts as being under the bottling department. In 1947, the pres- Matter of Drewry's Limited U. S. A. Inc., 44 N. L. It. B. 1119. DREWRY' S LIMITED U. S. A. INC. ent Intervenor was certified as exclusive bargaining representative following another election in a stipulated unit of production and maintenance employees, including the employees involved in this. case.;. At.the hearing, the Petitioner conceded that the maintenance me- chanics involved in the present proceeding do not constitute a skilled craft. There is no showing that the grease men exercise craft skills. Thus, the Petitioner's position is based solely on the claim that the unit sought is a separate, homogeneous. department of skilled em- ployees. However, there is no craft nucleus in the alleged department, and the maintenance mechanics in the bottle shop work under a dif- ferent line of supervision from the mechanics in the brewhouse. Under all the circumstances, including the long history of collective bar- gaining in a plant-wide unit, we find that the proposed unit is inappro- priate.'. Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition herein. ORDER Upon the entire record in the case, the National Labor Relations Board hereby orders that the petition herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. s Matter of Drewry'a Limited U. S. A. Inc., 74 N. L. R. B. 31. a Matter of Wilson t Co. Inc., 81 N. L. R. B. 504; Matter of Phillip Morris & Co. Ltd. Inc., .79 N. L. R. B. 56. 857829-50-vol. 85-2