Triangle Tanning Co.

TRIANGLE TANNING CO. 271 Upon the entire record in this case, we find that the Petitioner's objections fail to raise substantial and material issues with respect to conduct affecting the"results-4-tke-election. Accordingly, we over- rule.all the Petitioner's objections.14 As we find no merit in any of the Petitioner's objections, and as neither the Petitioner nor the Intervenor secured a majority of the valid votes cast, we shall certify the results of the election. [The Board certified that a majority of the valid ballots was not cast for Sears Roebuck Employees' Council (unaffiliated) or for Sears Roebuck Employees' Council, Local #1635, Retail Clerks Interna- tional Association, AFL-CIO, and that these labor organizations are not the exclusive representatives of the employees of the Employer, in the unit heretofore found appropriate.] . u petitioner alleges that the Regional Director was handicapped in his investigation of the objections by. the fact that the employees had been intimidated , but that they would be willing to testify under the protection of a subpena . The Board has consistently held, however, that a party filing objections is obligated to furnish evidence in support of its. charges, and that, unless such evidence is produced , the Regional Director is not required to further pursue his investigation of such objections . The Board is fully able to protect against retaliatory action individuals who may aid it in its investigations . See Hinoher Manufacturing Company, 106 NLRB 1314, and cases cited therein. Triangle Tanning Co. and Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America and International Broth- erhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers- of America, AFL-CIO, jointly,' Petitioner Lister Tanning Co. and Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America and International Brotherhood, of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of Amer ica, AFL-CIO, jointly, Petitioner. Cases Nos. 13 RC-4.609 and; 13-RC-4610. January 31,1956 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION Upon separate petitions duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the Na- tional Labor Relations Act, and thereafter consolidated, a hearing was held before Jewel G. Maher, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and are. hereby affirmed .2 Upon the entire record in these cases ,3 the Board finds: 1 The AFL and CIO having merged, we are amending the identification of the petition- ing labor organizations ' affiliation accordingly. 9 Certain motions which the hearing officer referred to the Board are treated in para- graph numbered 3, infra. 8 The requests for oral argument , made by the Intervenor and the Employers in their briefs, are hereby denied, as the record and briefs , in our opinion, adequately set forth the issues and positions of the parties. 115 NLRB No. 46. 272 DECISIONS OF, NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD 1. The Employers 4 are engaged in commerce within the meaning of the Act. 2. The labor organizations involved claim to represent employees of each of the Employers.' 3. The Intervenor and the Employer in each case filed motions to dismiss the petition therein on the ground of contract bar.6 The Intervenor executed its latest contract with each Employer covering employees involved herein on August 9, 1955. These contracts have a termination date of September 30, 1958. As the present petitions were filed on September 29, 1955, it is clear, under the Board's con- tract-bar rules, that they would be untimely, absent other factors rendering the existing contracts inoperative as bars. The Petitioner contends that the contracts are no bar on the ground, among others, that the contracts contain union-security provisions which are illegal because of the Intervenor's noncompliance with the filing require- ments of the Act. To counter this contention, the Employers and the Intervenor argue that the contracts contain identical deferral clauses which defer the effectiveness of the union-security provisions until the Intervenor's achievement of compliance, and that, in any event, the deferral clauses are at best ambiguous, and extrinsic evidence adduced at the hearing shows that the union-security provisions have never been enforced by the parties. The Petitioner disputes these contentions. The Intervenor, which was certified in 1951 as bargaining represent- ative for the, employees of Triangle here involved, allowed its com- pliance to lapse on September 30, 1951. At no time since that date has the Intervenor renewed its status as a complying union. The provi- sions in question were first negotiated in substantially their present form in the Intervenor's 1951 contract with Triangle, executed No- vember 30, 1951, and have been carried over in all subsequent contracts between the Intervenor and the Employers? The disputed deferral clause in each of the current contracts reads as follows: Section 7. The foregoing [union-security] provisions ... shall become effective immediately if permissible under the rules and regulations adopted by the National Labor Relations Board pur- suant to the Labor Management Relations Act as amended. If, however, an election is necessary, said provisions shall not become 4 Hereinafter sometimes referred to as Triangle and Lister 5 The Intervenor, Triangle Tanning Co Employees' Association, was granted interven- tion on the basis of its current contracts with the Employers. 6 Each Employer, as further ground for its motion, contends that the Petitioner's show- ing of interest is inadequate. This contention is without merit, as it is well settled that the adequacy of a petitioner's showing is administratively determined by the Board and not open to collateral attack by the parties Moreover, we are administratively satisfied that the Petitioner has made an adequate showing to support its petitions herein I The Intervenor has bargained for the Lister employees here involved since 1952, when Lister was established TRIANGLE TANNING CO. 273 effective until the receipt by the Company of a notice from the National Labor Relations Board that the employees have duly signified their desire for a "union shop" in accordance with the provisions of the Labor Management Relations Act as amended. Although the above clause contains no express deferral conditioned upon the Intervenor's compliance, the Employers and the Intervenor contend that such deferral may be inferred from the first sentence of the clause which conditions effectiveness of the union-security pro- visions upon their permissibility under the Act. However, we do not believe that the first sentence of the clause may be interpreted in isolation from the second. The first sentence states that the union- security provisions "shall become effective immediately if permissi- ble." [Emphasis supplied.] Clearly, this language, when read in conjunction with the second sentence of the above clause, relates only to the contingency that a union-authorization (UA) election may be required by law to validate the union-security contracts. Nor do we believe that any ambiguity exists in the deferral clause herein to warrant our looking to extrinsic evidence to determine the intent of the parties to the contracts. In Sterling Faucet Company, 108 NLRB 776, relied upon by the Intervenor and the Employers as precedent for permitting resort to extrinsic evidence herein, the de- ferral clause stated, "This [union-security agreement] shall not be effective if it is now prohibited by law, but in such case shall become effective if and when such an Agreement shall later become lawful." There, where an express deferral conditioned upon validity was pro- vided, the Board, in view of the ambiguity of the union-security clause, considered the deferral clause as at best ambiguous and looked at extrinsic evidence to determine whether the clauses in question violated the Act.8 .In the present proceedings, the only express deferral relates to the possible requirement of a UA election, which requirement was elimi- nated in a 1951 amendment to the Act. Although the Intervenor, at the date of its latest contracts and to the knowledge of the parties thereto, was not and had not for 4 years been in compliance, the dis- puted deferral clauses make no mention of the Intervenor's disability as further reason for deferring the union-security agreements. Under the circumstances, we conclude that the contracting parties' express mention of one possible basis for deferral was intended to exclude any reliance upon other bases not referred to but within the contemplation of the parties. For this reason, we shall not consider extrinsic evi- dence alleged to show the intent of the contracting parties to con- dition effectiveness upon the capacity of the Intervenor to execute Sterling Faucet Company, supra, at 781. 390609-56-vol. 115-19 274' DECISIONS OF' NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD union-security agreements. In the absence of any ambiguity in the deferral clauses as to this element of legality, the principle of the Sterling Faucet case is clearly inapplicable herein." Accordingly, there having been no deferral pending the Intervenor's achievement of compliance, and as such status had not been achieved either at the time the contracts were executed or when the petitions herein were filed, we find upon this basis alone that the contracts do not bar the instant proceedings.'° We find that a question affecting commerce exists concerning the representation of the employees of the Employers within the meaning of Section 9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act. 4. The Petitioner filed its petitions seeking to represent separate units of production and maintenance employees at the plant of each Employer in Chicago, Illinois. However, at the hearing the Peti- tioner amended its request to a single unit of such employees employed by both Employers. The Intervenor and the Employers contend that the separate units confined to employees of each Employer are appropriate. Triangle and Lister are subsidiaries of William Greiner Company." Triangle processes raw hides, green hides, pickled hides, and blue chrome splits into finished leather products. Lister processes, for the most part, blue chrome splits. The raw materials are owned by the parent company and processed and sold by Triangle and Lister. The management and control of the three companies is in the hands of a single family. E. B. and Jerome Weinstein are the president and secretary, respectively, of all three companies. Herbert Wein- stein is the treasurer of Triangle and vice president of Lister, and he has complete charge of the operations of both subsidiaries, including the formulation of labor relations policy and the negotiation of col- lective-bargaining agreements. The Triangle and Lister plants are but 1 city block apart. The general office for both subsidiaries is at the Triangle plant where employment and payroll records are compiled and kept. Although integration between the operations of the two plants is minimal, the Triangle plant has the same work classifications as the Lister plant, both Employers have employees at a common warehouse, and on occasion there has been interchange of employees between the plants for specific tasks. • The Intervenor has bargained for a unit of the production and maintenance employees involved herein at the Triangle plant since prior to its certification for such unit in 1951. As aforesaid, the In- 1 As,we have concluded that extrinsic evidence may not be resorted to herein, we find it unnecessary to pass upon the motions of the Intervenor and the Employers to strike certain testimony of this nature 10 Carsbc Plastics Corp. , 107 NLRB 7; see also Specialty Woodcraft, Inc., -107 NLRB 1066 Cf Northwest Magnesste Company, 101 NLRB 85 11 The employees of the parent company are in no way involved herein. AMERICAN RICE GROWERS COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION 275 tervenor has bargained for the Lister production and maintenance 'employees involved herein since 1952 when Lister began operations. Since 1952, contract negotiations for the two plants have been con- ducted at the same time by the Intervenor and Herbert Weinstein for the Employers, and although separate contracts for each Employer have been executed pursuant to such negotiations, they have contained uniform provisions as to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. Upon the foregoing, and the entire record in these cases, we con- clude, in view of the close proximity of the two plants, the common ownership and control, the similarity of working conditions, the uni- fied control of labor relations, and especially the institution of joint bargaining in 1952, which was tantamount to the establishment of a single unit for both plants, that the only appropriate unit herein com- prises the production and maintenance employees of both Triangle and Lister.'2 We find that the following employees of the Employers constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9 (b) of the Act : 11 All production and maintenance employees at the Employers' Chi- cago, Illinois, plants, including stationary engineers,14 but excluding office clerical and plant clerical employees, professional, sales and ad- ministrative employees and their assistants, watchmen, guards, and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication.] ss See Aircraft Engine Service, Inc., 102 NLRB 1326 ; Syracuse Rendering Company; 112 NLRB 163. is The composition of the unit described below is in substance the same as set forth -in the existing contracts and as stipulated by the parties herein. 14 As the record shows that the night engineers make watchman rounds as part of their duties, we shall , in accord with our definition of guards, exclude them under the watch- men category which the parties have agreed to exclude. See General Shoe Corporation, 113 NLRB 905. American Rice Growers Cooperative Association, Beaumont Division and International Union of United Brewery , Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers of America, AFL- CIO, Petitioner. Case No. 39-RC-955. January 31, 1956 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 C. L. Stephens, hearing officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free -from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed. 115 NLRB No. 49.