Super Valu Stores, Inc.

SUPER VALU STORES, INC. 55 latter employees have been separately represented since 1935 by the Washington-Oregon Shingle Weavers District Council, which is not a party to this proceeding. The Petitioner seeks to sever from the production and maintenance unit represented by the Intervenor, all licensed engineers and firemen employed in the Employer's powerplant. The Employer and the Intervenor contend that the unit sought is inappropriate and move that the petition be dismissed. It is apparent from the above facts, and we so find, that at its Seattle plant the Employer is engaged in a primary lumber manu- facturing operation. The Board has held that the only appropriate unit for this type of operation is a production and maintenance unit. See Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, 87 NLRB 1076, and E. C. Olson Lumber Company, 106 NLRB 856; and compare Burke Millwork Co., Inc., 100 NLRB 522. Recently, moreover, the Board announced that it would not entertain petitions for craft or departmental severance in certain highly integrated industries, such as the lumber industry, where plantwide bargaining prevails and where the Board had pre- viously refused to entertain severance petitions under the National Tube (76 NLRB 1199) doctrine. See American Potash & Chemical' Corporation, 107 NLRB 1418. Accordingly, we find that the only appropriate unit at the Employer's plant is a production and main- tenance unit, and that the unit sought by the Petitioner is not appropriate. In reaching this conclusion, we have considered and found without merit the Petitioner's contention that the singular appropriateness of the production and maintenance unit is negated by the fact that the shingle mill employees are separately represented. The record reflects that historically shingle mill employees at other cedar lumber manu- facturing plants have been separately represented. In these circum- stances the separate representation of the Employer's shingle mill employees appears as a minor deviation which is not of sufficient weight to cause a departure from the Board's well-established practice. See Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, supra, at page 1082. The Em- ployer's and Intervenor's motions to dismiss the petition are therefore granted. [The Board dismissed the petition.] Super Valu Stores, Inc. and Local 548, I. B. of T. C. W. & H. of America, AFL, Petitioner. Case No. 18-PC-315. April 6, 1955 DECISION AND DIRECTION On August 19, 1954, pursuant to a stipulation for certification upon consent election, an election by secret ballot was conducted in the 112 NLRB No. 10. 56 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD above-entitled matter under the direction and supervision of the Regional Director for the Eighteenth Region. Upon the conclusion of the election, a tally of ballots was furnished the parties in accord- ance with the Rules and Regulations of the Board. The tally shows that there were approximately 35 eligible voters and that 35 ballots were cast of which 17 were cast for the Petitioner, 16 were cast against the Petitioner, and 2 were challenged by the Petitioner. Inasmuch as the challenged ballots are sufficient in number to affect the results of the election, the Regional Director made an investigation of the issues raised by the challenges, and thereafter, on September 28, 1954, issued and duly served on the parties his report and recom- mendations on challenged ballots in which he recommended to the Board that the Petitioner's challenges to both ballots be sustained and that the Petitioner be certified as the exclusive representative for pur- poses of collective bargaining of all employees in the unit described in the stipulation. On October 11, 1954, the Employer filed exceptions to conclusions and recommendations of the Regional Director. After due consideration, the Board issued its order directing hearing on November 15, 1954, in which it ordered the hearing officer to prepare a report on such hearing containing resolutions of witnesses' credibility, findings of fact, and recommendations. Pursuant to notice, a hearing was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on December 7, 8, and 9, 1954, be- fore Robert Ackerberg, hearing officer. Counsel for both the Em- ployer and the Petitioner appeared and participated. Full oppor- tunity to be heard, to examine and cross-examine witnesses, and to in- troduce evidence bearing on the issues was afforded the parties. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. On January 11, 1955, in accordance with the Board order, the hear- ing officer issued and duly served upon the parties his report recom- mending that the Petitioner's challenges to both ballots be sustained on the ground that Hubert O. Carlson and James N. Dolan, who cast the challenged ballots, are supervisors within the meaning of the Act. He further recommended that the Petitioner be certified as exclusive bargaining representative of the employees in the appropriate unit. On February 7, 1955, the Employer filed exceptions to the hearing officer's findings and recommendations with respect to Hubert O. Carlson, and a supporting brief. The Petitioner filed no exceptions. As there are no exceptions to the hearing officer's recommendation that the Petitioner's challenge to the voting eligibility of James N. Dolan be sustained, we hereby adopt this recommendation. Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds: 1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. SUPER VALU STORES, INC. 57 2. The labor organization involved claims to represent certain em- ployees of the Employer. 3. A 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. 4. The following employees of the Employer constitute a unit ap- propriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the mean- ing of Section 9 (b) of the Act: All employees employed by the Employer in its manufacturing de- partment at its Hopkins, Minnesota, warehouse, but excluding office clerical employees, watchmen and guards, and all supervisors as de- fined in the Act. 5. With respect to the Petitioner's contention, denied by the Em- ployer, that Hubert O. Carlson is ineligible to vote because he is a supervisor, the record reveals the following facts. The Employer's manufacturing department employs approximately 35 employees on the first and second floors of the main warehouse at Hopkins, Minnesota. Operations on the first floor include coffee roast- ing and the weighing and packaging of about 116 different food items. Second floor operations, which involve about eight employees, include processing paper bags and cellophane sheets and imprinting prices and tax stamps on drugs and cigarettes. Many operations on the first floor are accomplished by machines which female employees operate. In addition there are three "hand-lines" where various items are hand weighed, packaged, and sealed by female employees who work along- side conveyor belts. The handful of male employees in the depart- ments do any necessary moving, lifting, or unloading of heavy bulk merchandise, sometimes with the aid of a forklift truck. Eberhart Rendahl, department manager, is in complete charge of the manufacturing department. He exercises authority to hire, dis- charge, discipline, and is responsible to top management for the suc- cessful functioning of the department. He spends about half of his time in his office on the second floor taking care of purchases and other administrative duties and the other half in overseeing operations in his department. The department was originally located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In January 1953, shortly after the department and its machinery were moved to nearby Hopkins, Rendahl placed on the de- partment bulletin board a notice he had prepared which stated that Carlson had been made "assistant superintendent," James Dolan, 4"working foreman," and Geralk K. Humphrey, "shipping and receiv- ing clerk." The notice remained on the board several months. Rendahl testified that the notice represented his decision to give these three men more responsibility and to put Carlson on a salary basis. He further testified, however, that top management vetoed the proposed change as to Carlson on the ground that his duties were those of a 58 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD mechanic and did not justify the proposed change. No change in the compensation of any of the three occurred at that time. Since Carlson was hired in 1946, his principal duty has been the maintenance and repair of the departmental machinery. As the hear- ing officer found, most of Carlson's time appears to have been spent in this manner. Prior to his present employment Carlson, a high school graduate, took some trade school courses in auto mechanics and has held jobs requiring skill and experience as a mechanic. He has a ma- chine shop in his basement which he uses from time to time for making or repairing parts for machines in the manufacturing department. He received a $200 Christmas bonus because of the use of his machine shop in this manner. There is considerable evidence that, prior to the move from Minneapolis and the posting of the January 1953 notice, Carlson responsibly directed the female employees who oper- ate the machines and work on the "hand-line" operations on the pro- duction floor. At that time, Dolan was a coffee roaster. But, after the move and posting of the notice on the bulletin board, as the hear- ing officer also found, Dolan assumed the supervisory duties previously exercised by Carlson who thereafter no longer regularly assigned or transferred employees from one machine to another. With reference to the period after the posting of the notice by Ren- dahl, employee Beulah Bartoszek testified that Carlson once gave her and another employee an "order" as to size of store bags and cello- phane sheets to be made that day. Another, Anna Kluge, testified that her orders came from Dolan and that she does not know what Carlson does, although she has observed him fixing a machine. Wit- ness Elaine Lodemeier testified that during her employment of about 1 year Carlson never told her what to do. Ann McCullen, who testi- fied at some length concerning Carlson's supervision of female em- ployees, made it clear that her testimony referred to the period prior to the date when Dolan began overseeing production operations. Witness Mary Korblick stated that she usually gets "orders on the sheet machine" from Manager Rendahl, but sometimes from Carlson too. Although she failed to explain what she meant by "orders," her other testimony, together with that of Rendahl, strongly indicate that she was referring to written production orders based on requisitions from the Employer's other warehouses, as to which Carlson was merely acting as a messenger and had not formulated them or exercised any discretion in their preparation. Carlson admittedly on numerous occasions has written the time of checking in or out on cards of employees who failed to punch the time clock. Once each week he puts new timecards in the rack and takes the old ones to Rendahl. On a number of occasions he has signed slips authorizing payroll advances. However, these were in amounts not exceeding wages which had been earned but had not yet been paid SUPER VALU STORES, INC. 59 because of the lag between the end of a payroll period and the prepa- ration of a payroll. As it is routine to permit employees to withdraw earned wages in this manner, Carlson's signature appears not to have been specifically for the purpose of authorizing the payment as the hearing officer found, but rather to establish, in the absence of the com- pleted payroll, that the employee had in fact been present at work dur- ing the time in question. Rendahl testified that he did not know, prior to the hearing, that Carlson had signed payroll advances. Referring to the period prior to the January 1953 notice, Mary Korblick testified that Carlson had granted her time off on several occasions. Ann McCullen said that once when she became ill she looked for Carlson to tell him she was going home, then asked another employee to inform Carlson. Also, there is testimony, sub- stantially admitted by Carlson, that more recently he used the term "we," identifying himself with management, when he reassured em- ployee Shoquist that she did not risk discharge for union activities during her vacation, and that active union people did run such a risk. Since a time before the move to Ilopkins and the posting of the notice, Carlson has been the highest paid of hourly employees. He now earns $2.14 per hour as compared with Dolan's $2.01 and the female em- ployees' range of $1 to $1.18. On these facts and the record as a whole we conclude that the evi- dence is insufficient to establish that Carlson has possessed supervisory authority at any time since Department Manager Rendahl's attempt to promote him to "assistant superintendent," almost a year prior to the hearing. His position with respect to the other employees seems in fact to have diminished at about that time, and Dolan since then has been exercising whatever supervisory authority may once have been exercised by Carlson. It is clear that Carlson has not responsibly di- rected others since January 1953, and his actions with respect to time- cards and payroll advances do not appear to involve discretion but rather routine notations such as might have been made by a payroll clerk or a time clerk. We therefore find that Carlson is not a super- visor within the meaning of the Act, and do not adopt the contrary finding of the hearing officer. Accordingly, we overrule the chal- lenge to Carlson's ballot and direct that it be opened and counted. [The Board directed that the Regional Director for the Eighteenth Region shall, within 10 days from the date of this Direction, open and count the ballot of Hubert O. Carlson and serve upon the parties a supplemental tally of ballots.] MEMBER LEEDOM took no part in the consideration of the above De- cision and Direction.