Lever Brothers Co.

448 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD LEVER BROTHERS COMPANY and UNITED GAS, COKE AND CHEMICAL WORKERS OF AMERICA, CIO, PETITIONER. Case No. 1-RC-$$24. September 26,1951 Decision and Order Upon a petition duly filed, a hearing was held before Robert E. Greene, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hear- ing are free from prejudicial error. and are hereby affirmed. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Houston and Reynolds]. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds : 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 2. The Petitioner and Local 116, International Chemical Workers of America, AFL, the Intervenor, are labor organizations claiming to represent certain 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 composed of all production and maintenance employees at the Employer's Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, plant, including employees in the Waltham, Massachusetts, warehouse. The Employer and the Intervenor contend that a master contract executed by them on March 14, 1950, as amended by supple- mental agreements executed on June 20, 1950, and November 13, 1950, is a bar to this proceeding.' The March 1950 master contract provided for a 1-year term and covered the Employer's Baltimore, Edgewater, and St. Louis plants 2 and also provided that any present or future plants of the Lever Brothers Company, the workers of which designated the Union [the Intervenor] as their collective bargaining agent, shall automatically come under this agreement. On May 25, 1950, the Intervenor, following its designation as bargain- ing representative in an election conducted pursuant to a consent elec- I The Employer also contends that the requested single-plant unit is inappropriate and that only a multiplant unit embracing the Cambridge plant together with its plants at Baltimore, Maryland, Edgewater, New Jersey, and St. Louis , Missouri, is appropriate. The Intervenor did not take a definitive position on this issue . In view of our finding on the contract bar issue , we deem it unnecessary to pass upon this contention. 2 Although the Cambridge employees have been embraced by similar agreements executed during the preceding 4-year period , their representatives withdrew from the 1950 joint plant contract negotiations before the execution of the mater contract. 96 NLRB No. 60. LEVER BROTHERS COMPANY 449 tion:ab eement executed by all the parties herein, was certified as the bargaining representative of the Cambridge employees sought herein. Thereafter, the Employer and the Intervenor executed the June sup- plemental agreement mentioned above, which provided for the, in- clusion of the Cambridge employees within the coverage of the March 1950' master contract. On' June 29, 1950, this amendment was ap- proved by the Cambridge plant membership. On November 13, 1950, .the Employer and the Intervenor executed,-the second supplemental agreement, which likewise amended the March 1950 contract, provid- ing for certain wage increases and extending its term until March 17, 1952. This supplement, although disapproved by a majority of the employees of the Cambridge plant, was nevertheless ratified by a majority of the employees in the four plants covered by the March and June 1950 agreement and thereupon became effective. The petition herein was filed on April 26,1951. As the petition was not filed until after.the execution of the March 1950 contract and the June and No- vember 1950 supplements, these contracts, if validly applicable to the employees of the Cambridge plant, would normally bar an election among these employees.3 In support of its assertion that the March 1950 contract and the June and November 1950 supplemeiital agreements do not bar t:iis proceeding, the Petitioner contends that (a) the inclusion of the Cambridge operations within the coverage of the master agreement resulted in a material change in the unit for which the Intervenor was certified in May 1950 thereby under Board precedent,4 rendering the March and June contracts ineffective; (b) the June supplement is likewise invalid because the Intervenor's Cambridge plant membership had no knowledge whatever of the merger proposition at the time they voted to ratify that agreement; and (c) the action of the Cambridge employees in disapproving the November extension agreement nulli- fies that contract insofar as this proceeding is concerned. We find no merit in these contentions. With respect to the Petitioner's first contention, there was, in fact, no change accomplished in the Cambridge certified unit. Unlike the situations involved in the cases cited in the Petitioner's brief where actual changes occurred in the composition of the Board-certified units,5 here the contracting parties merely achieved a merger of a 3 Although, under the Board's contract bar principles , the November 1950 agreement might be regarded as a "premature extension" of the March 1950 contract, the petition was not timely filed with respect to the March 1950 contract 's expiration date and therefore would be barred by the November 1950 extension . Moreover, as•the 'November 1950 agree; ment was executed well within the certification year at the Cambridge plant, it would in any event constitute a bar to this petition for representation of the Cambridge plant employees. 4 Savannah Electric and Power Company, 48 NLRB 33; The Mathieson Alkali Works, .51 NLRB 113. See cases cited in .footnote 4. 450 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD smaller unit into a larger group which has a strong community of in- terest in the subject matter of collective bargaining, such as the Board customarily finds an appropriate unit .6 As to the contention that the June supplemental agreement was not validly ratified because the employees who voted did not know that they were approving the merger of the Cambridge unit into the multiplant contractual unit, it is the practice of the Board in repre- sentation cases, at least so far as the question of the bar to a proceed- ing is concerned, to presume the legality of a collective bargaining agreement, absent obvious irregularities such as, for example, unau- thorized union-security provisions.? We perceive no reason in this case for departing from, our established practice. In any event, in the light of the provisions as to coverage of the Intervenor's multi- plant contracts, we believe that "it may fairly be assumed that the Cambridge 'employees, by selecting the Intervenor as their bargaining representative in the May consent election, indicated their desire to be included in the existing multiplant unit covered by the March contract. Regarding the further contention that the November extension agreement cannot operate as a bar because a majority of the employees iii the Cambridge plant disapproved it, there is uncontroverted evi- dence in the record that beginning in 1946 and continuing through 1950 all questions relating to collective bargaining that affected the plants covered by existing master contracts, such as ratification of amendments, were decided by a majority vote of the combined mem- bership of the Intervenor in all plants covered by such agreements .s It is evident that a substantial majority of the employees in the four plants covered by the March and June contracts approved the Novem- ber amendment and that the parties regarded it as in effect. Accordingly, in view of the foregoing, we find that the current agreements covering the Cambridge' plant employees bar a present determination of representatives., We shall, therefore, dismiss the petition. Order IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition filed herein be, and the same hereby is, dismissed. 8 See, e. g., Lone Star Producing Company, 85 NLRB 1137, and cases cited therein. 4 See. Columbia River Salmon and Tuna Packers Association , 91 NLRB 1424: Electro- Metallurgical Company, 73 NLRB 1396; Wilmington Terminal Warehouse Company, 68 NLRB 299. See also. Irving , Feller ,d/b/a Sport Girl Co. and/or Annex Sportwear, Inc., 90 NLRB 133, unpublished in bound volume. 8 Illustrative of past practice is the fact,that in 1947 a majority of the employees, in the Edgewater plant voted against an amendment affecting all the plants covered by the master agreement then in existence, whereas the employees in the remaining plants approved the amendment. Notwithstanding the expressed disapproval of the Edgewater employees, the amendment became binding as to all plants , including Edgewater. t