Paasche Airbrush Co.

PAASCHE AIRBRUSH COMPANY 277 PAAscm AIRBRUSH COMPANY and SHEET METAL WORKERS LOCAL UNION No. 115, SHEET METAL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIA- TION, A. F. L., PETITIONER PAASCHE AIRBRUSH COMPANY and LOCAL 1031, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, A. F. L., PETITIONER. Cases Nos. 13-RC--281 and 13-RC-,2907. November 13, 1952 Decision and Direction of Elections Upon separate petitions duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the Na- tional Labor Relations Act, a consolidated hearing was held before Albert H. Kleen, hearing officer. 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 has delegated its powers in connection with these cases to a three-member panel [Members Houston, Styles, and Peterson]. Upon the entire record in these cases, the Board finds: 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 2. The following labor organizations claim to represent certain employees of the Employer : Sheet Metal Workers Local Union No. 115, Sheet Metal Workers International Association, A. F. L.; Local 1031, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, A. F. L.; Local 1119, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America; District Lodge No. 8, International Association of Machinists; and International Jewelry Workers Union, Local No. 4; herein called the Sheet Metal Workers, I. B. E. W., U. E., I. A. M., and Jewelry Workers, respectively. 3. Questions affecting commerce exist 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. 4. The appropriate units; the determination of representatives: The Sheet Metal Workers, the Petitioner in Case No. 13-RC-2842, seeks to sever, on a craft basis, a unit of all employees except paint sprayers employed in the Employer's sheet metal department. The I. B. E. W., the Petitioner in Case No. 13-RC-2907, and the Jewelry Workers each seeks to represent a unit of all the remaining production and maintenance employees. The U. E., the I. A. M., and the Employer contend that the only appropriate unit is one composed of 1 The hearing officer referred to the Board the Employer's motion to dismiss the petition filed by the Sheet Metal Workers and the U. E.'s motion to dismiss both petitions filed herein on the ground that the units sought are inappropriate. For the reasons stated in paragraph numbered 4, infra, the motions to dismiss are hereby denied. 101 NLRB No. 70. 278 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD all production and maintenance employees, including the sheet metal workers. The Employer and the U. E. assert that the integrated nature of the operations, the transfer of employees from the sheet metal department to other production or maintenance jobs, the asserted lack of craft characteristics of these employees, and the 6-year history of collective bargaining on a plant-wide basis 2 in which these employees have acquiesced, preclude the establishment of a separate unit of sheet metal workers. The Employer is engaged in the manufacture of industrial spray painting equipment and maintains its only plant in Chicago, Illinois. It carries on all its operations in a single, 2-story building. Depart- ment 5, its sheet metal department, is located in the northwest section of the first floor and, unlike the other 5 departments in the plant, is supervised by both a foreman and a superintendents There are 21 employees in this department, who, with the exception of 2 paint sprayers," are engaged in the manufacture of spray booths, automatic conveyors, and drying equipment, such as infrared ovens and steam- heated ovens. Over 90 percent of these products are custom built. Although some of these products require machining or incidental work by employees in other departments, most of the work performed in department 5 is independent of that done in other departments of the plant. Thus, these employees work from raw sheet metal, shearing and forming the metal, laying out the finished product from blueprints or sketches, and assembling it by riveting, welding, or bolting into the completed product. Moreover, although employees in other departments occasionally also perform certain tasks per- formed by department 5 employees, such as welding or pipe threading, these tasks are incidental to the work done in department 5 and do not require the wide range of skills exercised by the sheet metal workers. Because most of the products manufactured in the sheet metal department are custom built and because of intermittent temporary shortages of materials, there are occasions when there is insufficient work in that department to occupy all the employees. On these occa- sions, the Employer, instead of laying off any employees, transfers 2 In 1946, following a consent election, the U. E. was certified by the Regional Director as the bargaining representative of all production and maintenance employees employed at the Employer's Chicago , Illinois, plant. The Employer and the U. E. thereafter entered into a series of collective-bargaining agreements covering the employees in this unit, the most recent of which expired on September 15, 1952. s One foreman supervises the employees in departments 1, 3, and 4 , the automatie machines, miscellaneous assembly, and art gun assembly departments. Another foreman is in charge of department 2, which is engaged in commercial gun assembly and miscellaneous gun assembly. Supervision of department 6, which is a nonproduction department com- posed of stockroom employees , shipping and receiving employees , toolmakers and machin- ists, inspectors, and production control employees, is divided among several foremen. 4 There is one experienced paint sprayer in the department and one painter who works at night as a general utility man , neither of whom does any sheet metal work. As stated above, the Sheet Metal Workers would exclude both these employees from its proposed unit. PAASCHE AIRBRUSH COMPANY 279 them temporarily to sheet metal maintenance or other maintenance tasks or to production jobs in other departments. These transfers occur infrequently, however, and last only a short time, ranging from 1 day to a few weeks8 As stated above, the Employer and the U. E. oppose the establish- ment of a separate unit of sheet metal workers on the following grounds: (1) That these employees do not possess craft skills; (2) that these employees are transferred to other production and main- tenance jobs throughout the plant; (3) that the Employer's opera- tions are highly integrated; and (4) that there is a 6-year history of bargaining on a plant-wide basis. However, it is clear that the employees in department 5, with the exception of the 2 paint sprayers whom the Sheet Metal Workers does not seek to represent, are engaged in traditional sheet metal work, exercising the skills of the sheet metal trade, which the Board has consistently recognized as a craft.6 Thus, of these 19 employees, 12 are highly skilled journeymen 7 and the remaining 7 are less skilled sheet metal workers who are in various stages of learning the trade. These employees work from blueprints and sketches, using the stand- ard power machinery used in the sheet metal trade and their own personal hand tools. Although there is no formal apprenticeship pro- gram at the Employer's plant, the Employer either hires experienced sheet metal workers for these jobs or trains them .8 Moreover, the fact that some of the employees in the proposed unit may occasionally perform duties outside the limits of their recognized craft or work on products originating in other departments of the plant does not destroy their identity as a separate craft group, as a major portion of their time is spent within the recognized scope of their craft8 ' The Employer asserts that during May, June , and July, 1952, approximately 10 percent of the hours worked by department 5 employees was devoted to work outside the depart- ment. However, this estimate includes jobs performed outside the department by the two sprayers, one of whom works as a utility man. 4 Goodyear Synthetic Rubber Corporation , 99 NLRB 882; Air Conditioning and Refrig- erating Association of North Florida, 98 NLRB 1810 ; Campbell Soup Company, 98 NLRB 741; General Foods Corporation (Maxwell House Division ), 97 NLRB 1243 ; Armstrong Cork Company (Lancaster Floor and Closure Plants ), 97 NLRB 1057; Ford Motor Company, Aircraft Engine Division, 96 NLRB 1075. 7 The Employer contends that only seven of these journeymen are journeymen sheet metal workers because the remaining five do not have skills which are distinctive of the sheet metal craft. Two of these men, the power press operator and the shear operator, are highly skilled craftsmen who work exclusively on sheet metal . With respect to the other three craftsmen, who are classified as are welders, the Board has held that where, as in the instant case , skilled welders are regularly assigned to work with a particular craft and none of the welders in the plant works out of a general pool , they may properly be included in the unit of the craft to which they are permanently assigned . Jefferson Chemical Company, Inc., 98 NLRB 805; International Paper Company (Southern Kraft Division ), 96 NLRB 295 ; McCarthy Chemical Company, 86 NLRB 14. ' See Campbell Soup Company, footnote 6, supra; General Foods Corporation (Maxwell House Division ), footnote 6, supra; Detroit Hardware Manufacturing Company, 98 NLRB 366. ' Paciio Coast Shipbuilders and Ship Repairers, et at., 98 NLRB 196, Jefferson Chemical Company, Inc., footnote 7, supra. 280 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Furthermore, we do not find, on the record before us, that the Employer's operations are so integrated as to prevent craft sever- ance.10 We are convinced that the employees in the Employer's sheet metal department, excluding the two paint sprayers, are engaged in performing duties traditionally associated with their craft and that, although their skills are used for production purposes, they remain a separate distinct group of craft employees whose work is neither repetitive nor synchronized with assembly line operations 11 With respect to the contention that craft severance is precluded by the 6-year history of bargaining on a plant-wide basis, the Board has often held under the amended Act that a history of bargaining on a more comprehensive basis does not, of itself, render craft units inappropriate.- Accordingly, we find that the employees in the unit sought by the Sheet Metal Workers comprise a well-defined craft group and may, if they so desire, constitute a separate appropriate unit. However, a production and maintenance unit, including the employees in the sheet metal department, may also be appropriate, and the sheet metal workers may, if they so desire, remain part of the existing production and maintenance unit. We find further that the unit requested by the I. B. E. W. and the Jewelry Workers, that is, a residual production and maintenance unit, excluding the employees in the unit sought by the Sheet Metal Workers, may also be appro- priate for the purposes of collective bargaining. We shall direct separate elections among the following groups of employees employed at the Employer's Chicago, Illinois, plant, excluding office clerical employees, professional employees, guards, and all supervisors as defined in the Act : (a) All employees employed in the Employer's sheet metal de- partment, department 5, excluding paint sprayers and all other employees. (b) All remaining production and maintenance employees, in- cluding paint sprayers, but excluding all other employees employed in the Employer's sheet metal department. If a majority of the employees in each of the voting groups (a) and (b) select the same labor organization, the employees in voting group (a) will be taken to have indicated their desire to remain part of the production and maintenance unit, and the Regional Director conduct- ing the elections herein is instructed to issue a certification of repre- 10 See Air Conditioning and Refrigerating Association of North Florida, footnote 6, supra; Pacific Coast Shipbuilders and Ship Repairers, et at., footnote 9, supra; Fora Motor Company, Aircraft Engine Division, footnote 6, supra. 11 Air Conditioning and Refrigerating Association of North Florida, footnote 6, supra; Pacific Coast Shipbuilders and Ship Repairers, et al., footnote 9, supra. 12 The Reliance Electric i Engineering Company, 98 NLRB 488; Pacific Coast Ship- builders and Ship Repairers, et al., footnote 9, supra. PABCO PRODUCTS, INC. 281 sentatives to the labor organization selected by the employees in such groups, which the Board, under such circumstances, finds to be a single unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining. If, on the other hand, a majority of the employees in voting group (a) vote for the Sheet Metal Workers, they will be taken to have indicated their desire to constitute a separate appropriate unit, and the Regional Director conducting the elections is instructed to issue a certification of representatives to such labor organization for this group, which the Board, under such circumstances, finds to be a separate unit ap- propriate for the purposes of collective bargaining. Similarly, if a majority of the employees in either voting group (a) or voting group (b) select a labor organization which is not selected by a majority of the employees in the other voting group, the Regional Director conducting the elections is instructed to issue a certification of representatives to the labor organization selected by the employees in each of these groups, which the Board, under such circumstances, finds to be separate units appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining. In the event that the employees in either or both of these voting groups do not select any labor organization, the Regional Di- rector conducting the elections herein is instructed to issue a certificate of results of election with respect to such voting group or groups. [Text of Direction of Elections omitted from publication in this volume.] PABCO PRODUCTS, INC. and LOCAL 68, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERAT- ING ENGINEERS, AFL, PETITIONER. Case No. 4-RC-1721. Novem- ber 13,1952 Decision and Direction of Election Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Eugene M. Levine, hearing officer. 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 Act, the Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Murdock and Peterson]. 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 labor organizations involved claim to represent certain employees of the Employer. 101 NLRB No. 88.