General Insurance Co. of America

80 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA' and SEATTLE BUSINESS PRINTING MACHINE OPERATORS, LOCAL NO. 602 AFFILIATED WITH THE INTERNATIONAL PRINTING PRESSMEN AND ASSISTANTS UNION OF NORTH AMERICA, AFL,2 Petitioner. Case No. 19-RC-1406. March 26, 1954 DECISION AND ORDER Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before William Nowell, hearing officer . The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby af- firmed. 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 organization involved claims to represent em- ployees of the Employer. 3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representation 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 Employer, together with its affiliated and subsidiary companies , is engaged in the business of writing fire and casualty insurance . It maintains its home office in Seattle, Washington , and does business in 47 States . It employs in excess of 400 employees in its home office to process insurance policies , accident reports, and reports of claims which come into the office daily, and to prepare various reports required by State regulatory bodies, and travel vouchers , dividend checks, and the like. The Petitioner seeks a unit composed of the 12 tabulating machine operators , herein referred to as IBM operators, who work in the machine accounting department of the home office. It contends that these IBM operators are craftsmen and there- fore constitute a unit appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining . The Employer contends that these employees are not craftsmen and that the only appropriate unit is a unit of all office clerical employees in its home office . There is no past history of collective bargaining . In a number of cases the Board has found operators of IBM equipment to be office clerical employees .3 However, in none of those cases has the Board had before it the precise issue involved herein, or as comprehensive a record dealing with the skills and functions of the IBM operators. lAs amended at the hearing. 2 As amended at the hearing. 3See for example, Welding Shipyards , Inc., 81 NLRB 936; Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 100 NLRB No. 147. 108 NLRB No. 11. GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA 81 The IBM operators perform their work through the use of various business machines leased by the Employer from the International Business Machine Corporation . These machines include sorters , interpreters , collators , tabulators , types 517, 513, 521, and 523, an electronic calculator, type 604, repro- ducers, and automatic carriages used in conjunction with some of the machines . Except for the sorters , all these machines are controlled by plugboard panels which must be wired by connecting entry and exit hubs on the control panel by means of insulated wires of various lengths . The wires used for this purpose are tipped so that they fit in the hubs, much in the same manner as are telephone plugs used by telephone switchboard operators. The control panels contain over 2,200 exit and entry hubs, of which approximately 1,500 may be active for any one operation and thus mast be wired before the machine can perform the required operation. After the panel is wired , it is fitted into a machine and cards are then run through the machine , which picks off selected information and calculates , multiplies , adds, collates , tabulates , interprets, or reproduces the data upon a sheet of paper. The manner in which the machine is wired determines what information it will select from the IBM cards and thus limits and controls the nature of the result performed. The "heart of the craft" skill, to use the Petitioner's phrase, is the knowledge and skill required correctly to wire the machines so that they will transpose coded information contained on IBM cards into terms of accounting entries and statistical reports. The operation of the machines after they have been wired is a matter of routine. This is borne out by the fact that 2 routine clerical employees operate 2 tabulating machines which have panels that are permanently wired, although they are incapable themselves of wiring the machines, and by the fact that various employees outside the group involved herein operate machines located in the tabulating machine operator section. Of the 160 control panels maintained by the Employer, 60 are permanently wired and are used for reports of a repetitive nature, 60 are partially wired and can be used for different reports with only partial rewiring, and 40 are unwired and are used for unique and unrepetitive reports. Although only the tabulating machine operators have the nec - essary skill to wire the control panels, they spend less than 50 percent of their time engaged in that function. This is true of the most highly skilled tabulating machine operators as well as the less experienced and less skilled operators . The re- mainder of their time is spent in operating the machines by feeding IBM cards into them and checking the results by balan- cing them against various control figures. In support of its position that the 12 tabulating machine operators are skilled craftsmen , the Petitioner relies on the following facts contained in the record: (1) They are capable of transferring to other plants and industries with only a 339676 0 - 55 - 7 82 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD temporary loss of efficiency caused by the need to become familiar with technical terminology in the new industry; (2) the International Business Machine Corporation maintains a place- ment bureau for experienced tabulating machine operators; (3) 3 to 4 years of experience and training are necessary be- fore an employee can become a completely skilled tabulating machine operator; and (4) although there exists no formal apprenticeship program for tabulating machine operators, the Employer sends its operators to training classes run by the International Business Machine Corporation and maintains an informal on-the-job training program. We are unable to agree with the Petitioner's contention. Even if the skill required to wire and setup office business machines be found to be craft in nature, a point we find unnecessary to decide in this case, the fact remains that the IBM operators spend less than 50 percent of their time exercising such skill. Though the craft concept is dynamic, nevertheless one pre- requisite for a craft unit is that the craft employees must spend the major portion of their time in activities requiring the use of their craft skills.' That standard is not met in the case before us. We find, therefore, that the IBM operators do not constitute a craft unit within the meaning of Section 9 (b). Nor are we persuaded that this group of employees has in- terests sufficiently distinct from the other employees in the machine accounting department to warrant setting them apart for collective-bargaining purposes.5 The Employer's opera- tions are centrally controlled and there is a high degree of integration and interdependence among the various departments. All employees work the same number of hours under similar working conditions and are paid on a salary basis. They all receive the same fringe benefits, including profit sharing, retirement fund, bonuses , group life insurance , sick benefits, and vacations. Except on the immediate supervisory level, the employees in the machine accounting department are under common supervision and are all hired in the same manner. There is daily contact between the employees in the tabulating machine operators section and the other employees in the machine accounting department. Other employees though lack- ing the skill to wire the machines use some of the machines in the IBM operators section. IBM operators must go into the routine clerical section to use the electronic calculator, and all employees in the machine accounting department have occasion to use the files in the several rows of filing cabinets which constitute the only partition between the employees of the IBM operators section and the employees of the key punch section and the routine clerical section. We find that the em- 4Eg. Butler Mfg. Co., 91 NLRB 217; Kimble Glass Company, 102 NLRB 933, 936; Columbia Southern Chemical Corporation, 97 NLRB 1565, 1557; Phillips-Jones Corporation, 96 NLRB 150. 5 Cf. Angelica Hosiery Mills, inc., 95 NLRB 1285. MISSISSIPPI LIME CO. 83 ployee ,s sought by the Petitioner constitute but a segmant of a broader group of clerical employees with similar skills, duties, working conditions , and interests . These factors together with the fact that the insurance business is closely regulated by the States and is affected with the public interest in much the same manner as are public utilities all militate against the appropriateness of the unit claimed by the Petitioner. Upon the entire record we find that the unit requested by the Petitioner is inappropriate for purposes of collective bar- gaining and we shall dismiss the petition. c [The Board dismissed the petition.] Member Beeson took no part in the consideration of the above Decision and Order. 6Crowell Collier Publishing Company, 102 NLRB 1236 ; Sperry Gyroscope Company, 94 NLRB 1725 ; Boeing Airplane Company, 94 NLRB 344; Consolidated R. Vultee Aircraft Corp., 92 NLRB 1290. MISSISSIPPI LIME CO. and INTERNATIONAL HOD CARRIERS, BUILDING AND COMMON LABORERS UNION OF AMERICA, LOCAL 829, A.F.L., Petitioner . Case No. 14 - RC-2470. March 26, 1954 DECISION AND ORDER Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor Relations Act, a hearing was held before W.F. Trent, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hear- ing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. 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. 3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representation 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 Employer is engaged at Ste. Genevieve , Missouri, in the manufacture, sale, and distribution of lime and related products . Its business is divided into 3 divisions , namely, the Mississippi division , the Peerless division , and the Ste. Genevieve division , which together employ some 700 employees. The Mississippi division and the Peerless division each has, among other facilities , a lime plant and a chalk plant., t These plants are hereinafter referred to as Mississippi Lime and Mississippi Chalk and Peerless Lime and Peerless Chalk, respectively. 108 NLRB No. 18.