The Waterbury Tag Co.

THE WATERBURY TAG COMPANY 1005 of various customers of Respondent within a 12 mile radius of Respondent's plant. All other proposed findings are rejected. Proposed finding number 1 has been covered by other findings made herein. All other proposed findings are rejected either because they are not material to the issues presently under consideration, or are not supported by the evidence, or are mere conclusions of law and not the subject of findings of fact. All proposed conclusions of law are rejected because they are not the legal conclusions that can properly be drawn from the facts found herein. [Recommendations omitted from publication in this volume.] THE WATERBURY TAG COMPANY and WATERBURY PRINTING PRESSMEN AND ASSISTANTS' UNION5 LOCAL 150, AFL, PETITIONER. Case No. 1-1C-3035. February 4,1953 Decision and Order Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before Sidney A. Coven, 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 [Members Houston, Styles, and Peterson]. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds : 1. The Employer 1 is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 2. The labor organization involved claims 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 a unit described as printing pressmen, com- positors, stonemen, machine setup men, slittermen, and platemaker at the Employer's Waterbury, Connecticut, operations. The Em- ployer contends the proposed unit is inappropriate on the grounds that the employees involved are not craftsmen and that its operations are so integrated as to preclude other than a plantwide unit. There has been no history of collective bargaining with respect to the Employer's employees. The Employer manufacturers paper tags, some printed and some not, at the plant here involved. All operations are performed on I The name of the Employer appears in the caption as amended at the hearing. 102 NLRB No. 97. 1006 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD the third and fourth floors of a rented building. Large paper rolls are carted by a trucker from the receiving platform to the slitting machines on the third floor where a slitter cuts them into appropriate widths. Some rolls then go to blanking machines on the same floor where part of the unprinted tags are run off. Also on the third floor are a number of hand stringers who string and wire tags which cannot be strung automatically. On the fourth floor, in one large, unpartitioned room the cutting, printing, and automatic stringing and wiring operations are per- formed. For those tags which are to bear printing, there are em- ployees who prepare the type and plates and adjust them for setup on the machines. A compositor sets type by hand. The Ludlow machine operator, or occasionally the compositor, runs the machine which makes slugs to be inserted into a form by the stoneman, who also helps the machine operators lock the form in a chase for the printing operations. And a platemaker uses a rubber plate machine, which electronically duplicates original engravings that are pur- chased elsewhere 2 Actual printing is done by the tag machines with printing attachments-New Era presses, upright machines, and pinticket machines.3 Rolls of paper go to these machines, where the operator, or a helper, places the roll on the machine which stamps out the tag, prints on it if required, and makes the holes for stringing, or on the pintickets, stamps a pin into the tag. The New Eras account for about one-fourth of Employer' s volume and 50 percent of this is with printing. The uprights do approximately one-third of the overall volume and again 50 percent are printed, but these tags are less complicated than those coming off the New Eras. The pintickets do very simple printing, or just imprint ruled lines on the tickets. Three machine setup men prepare the pinticket machines and the nonprinting machines for operation. After all operations are performed on the tags, they are transported in blocks to employees on the third floor who prepare them for packing and shipping. There are 72 employees in this Employer's employ. Of these, the Petitioner seeks approximately 25 employees, namely the slittermen, the compositor, the Ludlow machine operator, the stoneman, the plate- maker, the combination stoneman-Ludlow operator, the machine setup men, and only the operators of the New Eras, Hydleburg, and hand- fitted platen. It appears that the compositor is a skilled worker. However, the balance of the requested employees are required to have little experience or training and generally can be trained in a month 2 There is also a combination stoneman and Ludlow operator who performs the duties of both classifications. E The Employer also has two printing presses, a Hydleburg and a hand -fitted platen, which are capable of doing fine printing but account for only 2 percent of Employer's entire volume. GOSHEN DIVISION OF GENERAL TIME CORPORATION 1007 or less .4 Almost all orders requiring fine printing are "farmed out" to job printing concerns. All employees of the Employer are subject to the same general and immediate supervision, and all appear to enjoy similar conditions of employment, except for variations in the hourly wage rate. The unit requested is clearly inappropriate on a departmental basis. The unit is also inappropriate on a craft basis as the employees, except possibly for the single compositor, are not skilled craftsmen. More- over, the requested employees not only perform diverse functions, but the Petitioner also seeks to exclude employees such as the upright and pinticket operators who perform functions related to those of the operators sought to-be included. Under all the circumstances, we find, as contended by the Employer, that the unit sought is inappropriate 5 and we shall, therefore, dismiss the petition. Order IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. 4 The slittermen. can be taught their job in a matter of hours. The Ludlow machine operator, stoneman, and platemaker jobs can be learned in less than a week. The machine setup men can do their tasks adequately with 2 weeks ' instruction and require about 6 months for top proficiency . As for the machine operators, the New Era attendants re- quire less than 1 month of instruction and the other machine tasks require a week or less. 6 See The Standard Register Company, 84 NLRB 93,9. GOSHEN DIVISION OF GENERAL TIME CORPORATION and DISTRICT No. 103, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS, AFL, PETITIONER. Case No. 13-RC-3068. February 4,1953 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 Frances P. Dom, 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 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 Act. 102 NLRB No. 89,