C. B. Cottrell & Sons Co.

In the Matter of C . B. COTTRELL & SONS COMPANY, EMPLOYER and ELIZABETH A. OZANNE, ET AL., PETITIONERS and INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS, LOCAL #627, UNION Case No. 1-R-D-44.Decided November 9, 1949 DECISION AND ORDER Upon a petition for decertification 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. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Board has delegated its powers in con- nection with this case to a three-member panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Houston and Murdock]. 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 Petitioners, employees of the Employer, assert that the Union is no longer the representative, as defined in Section 9 (a) of the amended Act, of the Employer's employees designated in the petition. The Union is a labor organization recognized by the Employer as the exclusive bargaining representative of the employees, among others, designated in the petition. 3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa- tion of these employees of the Employer, within the meaning of Sec- tion 9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act for the following reasons: The Employer is engaged at Pawcatuck, Connecticut, in the manu- facture, sale, and distribution of multicolored rotary printing presses. Since 1941, under a series of collective bargaining agreements,' the i The contracts were negotiated on an annual basis until June 15, 1947 , when a 2-year contract was executed . The latter contract has expired, and apparently no new contract bas been executed. 87 NLRB No. 1. 1 2 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Union has represented a substantial portion of the Employer's pro-, duction and maintenance employees, together with various shop cleri- cals in the production control and time-study methods departments.2 In 1947, the cost accounting and tabulating department's employees were added to. the establishment contract unit. . The Petitioners request that a decertification election be held only among the employees of the. cost accounting and tabulating depart- ment, contending that this group constitutes an appropriate unit for the purposes of collective bargaining separate from the established contract unit. The Union contends that these employees do not con- stitute a unit appropriate for severance from the unit now bargained for by the Union. The Employer takes no position in the matter. We have held 3 that a group of employees sought to be decertified in a proceeding such as the instant one must constitute an appropriate bargaining unit, and that in determining the appropriateness of the unit the Board will ordinarily apply the same criteria as are applied in certification cases. We are persuaded that the employees in the cost accounting and tabulating department do not constitute an appropriate separate unit. The record in this case shows that the cost accounting and tabu- lating department has in recent years been physically situated in the Employer's "shop office" building adjoining its production plant. Housed in this same building are the Employer's two other shop cler- ical departments, the production control and time-study and meth- ods departments. As stated above, the. employees of the latter two departments have also been included in the unit bargained for by the Union. These three shop clerical departments, together with the plant production department, are all Iulder the general supervision of the assistant superintendent of production.4 All employees in the three shop clerical departments are on a salaried basis, and share equally in insurance, vacation, and other employee benefits. In these circumstances, we find that the interests and working con- ditions of the cost accounting and tabulating department employees are not sufficiently distinguishable from those of other employees- at least from those employees in the other shop clerical departments- 2 The contracts covered all of the Employer's employees with the exception of employees in the foundry , pattern shop , engineering , accounting, cost accounting and tabulating, pay roll, purchasing, and personnel departments. In the contracts, the parties agreed to blanket into the established contract unit any of the excluded departments whose employees designated the Union as their collective bargaining representative. 3 See Gabriel Steel Company, 80 NLRB 1361 , and cases cited therein . Cf. Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co., 83 NLRB 773. ' "Front office" employees , which includes the employees of the executive offices, account- ing, and certain other office departments , are located in the "front office" building and work under the supervision of the Employer 's treasurer. This group of employees has never been bargained for by the Union. C. B. COTTRELL & SONS COMPANY 3 to warrant treating them as a separate unit. The unit is too limited in scope and is thus inappropriate.,' We shall, therefore, dismiss the instant petition. ORDER IT Is HEREBY ORDERED that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. See, Automatic Electric Co., 81 NLRB 218, 75 NLRB 274; Boeing Airplane Co., 78 NLRB 795; Chrysler Corp., 76 NLRB 50 and 55. 0 877359-50-vol. 87-2