General Shoe Corp.

GENERAL -SHO1 .CGRPMATiol - - - _ . 381' We therefore find that a question affecting commerce exists concern- ing the representation of employees of the Employer within the mean- ing of Section 9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act. 4. At the close of the hearing, the Petitioner amended its petition to request the following units, excluding from each professional em- ployees, clerical employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act : (a) A unit of all employees of the Employer at all its plants, in- eluding employees both at the- plants in Colorado County and at the plants at or near Romayor and Corrigan or, in the alternative, should the foregoing Employerwide unit be found inappropriate; (b) a, sepa- rate unit of all employees at the Employer's plants in Colorado County, including employees at Alleyton, Altier, and Eagle Lake; and (c) a combined unit of all employees at the Employer's plants at or near Romayor and Corrigan or, should this combined unit-be found inappropriate, (1) a separate unit of employees at the Em- ployer's plants at Romayor and (2) another separate unit of employ- ees at the Employer's plant near Corrigan. The Employer took the position that the Employerwide unit pri- marily sought by the Petitioner was inappropriate, on the ground that employees at the Romayor and Corrigan plants should not be included in the same unit with employees at the Colorado County plants. In view of the integration of the Employer's operations, we find, in accordance with Petitioner's primary unit request, that an Employer- wide unit, including employees at all the plants, is appropriate. Upon the entire record herein, we find that the following employees of the Employer constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9 (b) of the Act: all employees of the Employer at all its plants, including employees both at the plants in Colorado County, Texas, located at Alleyton, Al- tier, and Eagle Lake, and at the plants at or near Romayor and Cor- rigan, Texas, excluding professional employees, clerical employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication.] General Shoe Corporation and Boot & Shoe Workers' Union, AFL, Petitioner. Case No. 10-RC-3125. October 12,1955 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 Edwin R. Hancock, hear- ing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. 114 NLRB No. 76. 382- DECISIONS OF^:NATIONAL ;LABOR. RELATIONS -BOARD - 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 certain employees 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. The hearing officer referred to the Board a motion made by the Employer at the hearing to dismiss the petition on the grounds that : (1) The Petitioner is not a labor organization; (2) the Petitioner does not have a sufficient showing of interest; (3) The Shoe Industry Or- ganizing Committee, AFL, is a labor organization and is not in com- pliance with Section 9 (f), (g), and (h) of the Act; (4) the unit sought is inappropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining; and (5) the Petitioner's showing of interest is of doubtful validity. For the same reasons as stated in General Shoe Corporation, 113 NLRB 905, we find no merit in (1), (2), and (3), above. For reasons stated in paragraph numbered 4, infra, we find no merit in (4). With respect to (5), the Petitioner's showing of interest is an administrative matter not liti- gable by the parties at the hearing. Accordingly, the motion to dis- miss the petition is denied. After the close of the hearing, the Employer also filed a motion with the Board requesting the Board to reinvestigate the Petitioner's show- ing of interest and to dismiss the petition. The Employer contends that : (1) There were approximately 136 employees on the Employ- er's payroll at its Fayetteville, Tennessee, operations when the instant petition was filed; (2) after the petition was filed, about 70 of these employees signed the following statement : "I have not signed a card for the Union to represent me as a General Shoe employee;" 2 and (3) about 9 employees are in the armed services and could not have possibly signed authorization cards, and, therefore, the Petitioner's showing of interest is of questionable authenticity, citing Globe Iron Foundry, 112 NLRB 1200. In that case over 70 percent of the em- ployees in the unit sought signed an affidavit that they had not know- ingly signed any authorizations for the union to represent them. In view of the nature of that evidence, the Board concluded that reason- able cause existed for believing that the Petitioner's showing of inter= est was tainted by fraud, caused a further investigation concerning the adequacy of the showing of interest to be conducted, and, finally, dis- missed the petition upon being administratively satisfied that the Pe- iAt the hearing herein, the parties stipulated to incorporate by reference the entire records .of General Shoe Corporation, Cases Nos. 10-RC-2998 and 10-RC-3065 (not reported in printed volumes of Board Decisions and Orders). Eleven other employees who were not employed by the Employer when the petition was filed also signed this statement.' - GENERAL SHOE CORPORATION' 383 titioner's showing of interest was inadequate. In the instant case, however, based upon the Employer's figures, 57 employees or about 42 percent of the employees who were employed at the Fayetteville oper- ations when the petition was signed did not sign the aforesaid state- ment. Thus the evidence submitted by the Employer does not create a reasonable cause for believing that the Petitioner's showing of inter- est may have been tainted by fraud. We are administratively satisfied without further investigation that the instant Petitioner has made an adequate showing of interest. In these circumstances, the Employer's motion to the Board to reinvestigate the Petitioner's showing of inter- est and to dismiss the petition is hereby denied. 4. The appropriate unit : The Petitioner seeks a unit of all the Employer's truckdrivers, warehousemen, and processing and miscellaneous employees employed at the Employer's Fayetteville, Tennessee, plant. The Employer con- tends that, because its operations are highly integrated, the appropri- ate bargaining unit should consist of all shoe manufacturing plants, including processing and supply terminals, of its Southern Shoe Man- ufacturing Division, which is comprised of about 30 installations in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. The Em- ployer contends further that the appropriate unit should include at least the Fayetteville operations and the shoe manufacturing plants of the Southern Division which are serviced by it.3 As a third conten- tion, the Employer insists that the smallest appropriate unit must con- sist of the Fayetteville operations and the Cowan and McMinnville, Tennessee, plants. There is no history of bargaining in the Southern Division either on a single or multiplant basis. The Fayetteville supply and processing terminal began its opera- tions in September 1951. It receives, sorts, grades, and warehouses raw materials used in the manufacturing of shoes, performs certain preprocessing operations on some of the raw materials, and trans- ports them by Fayetteville trucks to certain plants in the Southern Division each week day according to schedules received from the cen- tral offices in Nashville, Tennessee. About 90 percent of the raw ma- terials received at Fayetteville is shipped from the Employer's main supply and processing terminal in Nashville. All of the raw ma- terials used by the Cowan and McMinnville plants are received from Fayetteville. Raw materials are furnished by the Fayetteville termi- nal to the remaining plants listed above in varying percentages. The Fayetteville trucks return the manufactured shoes from the various plants to Fayetteville where some of the shoes are stored for filling of customers' orders and others are consolidated for further shipment 3 These plants are located at Atlanta, Carrollton , and Lawrenceville , Georgia ; Ripley, Mississippi ; Huntsville, Alabama , and Cowan , McMinnville , Waynesboro, Pulaski, Lewis- burg, and Tullahoma , Tennessee. The 63d Avenue supply and processing terminal at Nashville;'Tennessee, also provides services for many of these plants. 384 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD to shipping terminals at Huntsville, Alabama, and Nashville, Ten- nessee. All of the shoes manufactured by the Cowan and McMinnville -plants are stored at Fayetteville after being spot checked for quality and are shipped to customers from that location. Some of the shoes manufactured by the other plants, which are partially serviced by the Fayetteville operations, are stored at Fayetteville for the filling of customers' orders but a majority of these shoes are consolidated for immediate shipment to other shipping terminals by Fayetteville trucks. The minor defects found by the spot checking of the shoes at the Fayetteville terminal are corrected at that location, while shoes with serious defects are returned to the manufacturing plant of their origin for correction. Although the record contains evidence which appears to support the Employer's unit contentions, there are many factors supporting the appropriateness of a unit confined solely to the employees of the Fayetteville terminal. The manufacturing plants which are sup- plied with raw materials and services by the Fayetteville terminal are located at distances from about 37 miles to several hundred miles from Fayetteville. The Fayetteville terminal is under the supervision of a separate local plant superintendent, who has the power to hire new employees, to recommend the discharge of employees, to lay off em- ployees for limited periods of time, to grant up to 30 days' leave of absence to employees, and to make individual purchases of equipment not exceeding $100 in value. Grievances may be settled at a local level at the Fayetteville terminal. The Fayetteville employees have separate plantwide seniority for certain purposes. In view of these circumstances, and the further facts that there has been no prior his- tory of collective bargaining at the Fayetteville terminal and that no .union is seeking a unit of larger geographical scope, we find that a single plant unit confined to the employees of the Fayetteville terminal is appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining.4 The parties are also in disagreement concerning the composition of the unit at the Fayetteville terminal. The Petitioner would exclude and the Employer would include the following employees : watchmen, ,loaders, schedulers, maintenance employees, standards men, and shoe inspectors. Watchmen: The watchmen are not armed or deputized and have no authority to discipline or report employees for violations of company rules. A watchman is on duty only at night during the workweek, but on the weekends and holidays a watchman is on duty 24 hours per day. They spend about two-thirds of their time putting in new light bulbs, sweeping floors, and performing general cleanup work. The remaining one-third of their time is spent making rounds of the plant and punching a clock in accordance with a prearranged schedule. It * General Shoe Corporation, 113 NLRB 905, and cases cited therein at footnote 9. GENERAL SHOE CORPORATION 385 is also a duty of the watchmen to call the proper authorities if they discover anyone breaking into the plant. We, therefore, find that they are guards within the meaning of Section 9 (b) (3) of the Act. Accordingly, we shall exclude them from the unit.' Loaders: Two employees called loaders work at the Tullahoma box plant loading primarily the trailers from Fayetteville with boxes. They, also load some trailers from the 63rd, Avenue terminal at'Nash- .ville. Their payroll figures are sent.to Nashville from Tullahoma but their pay is charged by the payroll office in Nashville .to the-Fayette- ville terminal operations. Tullahoma is.approximately 50 miles from Fayetteville. These two employees do not perform any work at Fayetteville,. and are not interchanged with any of. the employees at Fayetteville. They are under.the supervision of the superintendent at Tullahoma who also determines the number of hours for them to .work. In these circumstances, we find that the loaders do not have a substantial community of interests with the employees working at the Fayetteville terminal, and shall exclude them from the unit. Schedulers : Three of the nine schedulers employed by the Em- ployer schedule the casing of raw materials by indicating the, sizes ,and materials that should be cased. In the performance of their scheduling duties, these employees consult several times each day with the employees performing the casing work. These three schedulers are under the supervision of the findings, consolidations, and casings department manager. Four other schedulers work on summarizing customers' orders which they obtain from the employees working in the processing area, and checking back orders. Two of these four schedulers also perform some order-filling and consolidations work. All four of these sched- ulers are supervised by the shipping and processing department manager. Another scheduler writes receiving tickets for raw materials as they .are received from the check sheet and consult with the receiving men on the processing floor to ascertain the correct amounts and to correct errors. The remaining scheduler checks and summarizes requisitions .on materials. These two schedulers are supervised by the,manager of the findings, consolidations, and casings department. All of the schedulers are hourly paid, punch the same time clocks as the processing employees, and enjoy the same fringe benefits. In view of these circumstances, and the fact that they are in daily contact with and under the same supervision as certain processing employees whom the Petitioner seeks to include in the unit, we find that the schedulers are plant clerical employees, and shall also include them in the unit. Maintenance employees,, standards man,,and shoe inspectors,: Two maintenance employees from the 63rd Avenue supply and processing 5 Gene; at Shoe Corporatoon, supra. 386 DECISIONS,OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD 'terminal,at Nashville perform the major maintenance work'at •the Fay- etteville terminal. When the superintendent of the Fayetteville ter- minal needs their services, he calls the superintendent of the 63rd Ave- nue terminal who instructs the two maintenance employees to'-go to Fayetteville to perform the work. These two employees spend at Fay- etteville only the time needed to perform the required work and do not spend -a total of more than a few days each month working 'at the Fayetteville terminal. They spend the remaining portion of their time working at the 63rd Avenue terminal. They are on the payroll -of the 63rd Avenue terminal and are under the supervision of its superintendent. A standards man is attached to the 63rd Avenue terminal , is 'on its payroll and is under the supervision of its superintendent . He works 3 days per week at the Fayetteville terminal, those 3 days being deter- mined by the superintendent of the 63rd Avenue terminal. His duties consist of evaluating the efficiency of the processing employees in their work and establishing incentive quotas for those employees. His re- maining 2 days per week are spent at the 63rd Avenue terminal per- forming the same type of work. He does not punch a time clock at 'Fayetteville and does not interchange with any of the Fayetteville employees. He was trained for his job by taking a special training course at the Employer's expense. There is one shoe inspector from the central inspection staff at Nash- ville who is presently working at the Fayetteville terminal. His duty is to spot check shoes for quality. The central inspection department maintains a staff of about 6 of these inspectors who are assigned to work at the Employer's various plants and terminals for a period of from 2 to 6 months on a rotating basis. They are paid on a monthly salary basis, receive compensation equal to or slightly in excess of the department managers at Fayetteville, and are on the ,payroll of the central inspection department at Nashville. They do not punch a time clock at the Fayetteville terminal, do not interchange with any other employees working there, and are under the supervision of the central inspection department at Nashville. In view of these circumstances, especially the fact that these three categories of employees are not attached to the Fayetteville terminal, are not on its payroll , do not punch time clocks there, are not inter- changed with other Fayetteville employees, and are under the super- vision of supervisors located at Nashville, we do not believe that they have a sufficient community of interests with the Fayetteville -em- ployees to be included in the unit. We find that the following employees constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Sec- tion 9 (b) of the Act : - OWENS-ILLINOIS GLASS COMPANY - 387 All of the Employer's truckdrivers, warehousemen, and processing and miscellaneous employees employed at the Fayetteville, Tennessee, plant, including schedulers, but excluding the watchmen, loaders, and the maintenance employees, standards man, and shoe inspectors from the 63rd Avenue supply and processing terminal located at Nashville, Tennessee, office clerical employees, professional employees, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Text, of Direction of Election omitted from publication.] Owens-Illinois Glass Company, Petitioner and American Flint Glass Workers' Union of North America , and its Local 700; AFL and Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States and Canada, AFL, and its Local 59. Case No. 8-RM- 114. October 12, 1955 SUPPLEMENTAL DECISION AND DIRECTION . Pursuant to a Decision and Direction.of Election 1 in the above- entitled proceeding, dated April 15, 1955, an election by secret ballot was conducted on May 5, 1955, under the direction and supervision of the Regional Director for the Eighth Region, among the employees in the forming department of the Employer's Toledo, Ohio, plant. At the conclusion of the election, the parties 2 were furnished a tally of ballots. The tally showed that 84 ballots were cast for the Flints, 94 were cast for GBBA, and 44 were challenged. As the challenged ballots were sufficient in number to affect the results of the election, the Regional Director investigated the issues raised by the challenges. On June 15, 1955, the Regional Director issued his report on chal- lenges. On June 24, 1955, Flints filed timely exceptions to the report. GBBA has filed no exceptions to the report. In the report on challenges, the Regional Director divided the names of the challenged voters into three groups.' He recommended that the challenges to the voters in groups 1 and 2 be overruled and that the challenges to group 3 be sustained. 1112 NLRB 172. O The Unions in the above caption are herein referred to as Flints and GBBA, respectively. 8 Group 1 consists of employees Burford, Grames, Grzeyorczyk , Lehman, McGee, and Shumante. Group 2 consists of employees Carpenter, C. McCourt, M. McCourt, and Mingione. Group 3 consists of employees Arnold, Blowers , Clendenin , Dixon, Dyer , Ellis, Gobell, Graces, Hardison, Hehl, Helmet, Hoxtell, Jones, Lee, Lemmon, A. Luna, B. Luna, Mack, Marguerat, Maxuchowski, Ocker, K. Shope, M. Shope , Sine, Swiczkowski , Thomasson, Thompson , Thurman, Thomaszewski, V111aneal , White, Wlodarski, Yates, and Aywicznzki. 114 NLRB No. 59. 387644-56-vol' 114-26