Paramount Press, Inc.

586 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Paramount Press, Inc., and Lithographers and Pho- toengravers International Union, Local 218, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 12-RC-3545 December 31, 1970 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY MEMBERS FANNING, BROWN, AND JENKINS Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing was held before Hearing Officer William E. Franke. Following the hearing and pursuant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series 8, as amended, and by direction of the Regional Director for Region 12, this case was transferred to the National Labor Relations Board for decision. Briefs have been timely filed by the Petitioner and the Intervenor.' Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member panel. The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing and finds that they are free from prejudicial error.2 The rulings 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 and it will effectuate the purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction herein. 2. The Petitioner and the Intervenor are labor organizations within the meaning of the Act, and both claim to represent certain employees of the Employer. 3. A question affecting commerce exists concern- ing the representation of certain employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section 9(c)(1) and Section 2(6), (7), and (11) of the Act. The Intervenor contends that successive collective- bargaining agreements with the Employer and its I Jacksonville Typographical Union No. 162, AFL-CIO, moved to intervene claiming that it represents, and has had collective-bargaining agreements with the Employer which have covered, the employees sought in the petition. Ruling on this motion to intervene has been referred to the Board . We find that on the basis of its asserted contractual interest the motion should be, and hereby is, granted. 2 A motion to strike the testimony of a witness convicted of carrying a concealed weapon has been referred to the Board. We hereby deny the motion to strike as the crime did not involve one of moral turpitude and as the witness was, in all other respects, competent. 3 By its terms, the latest agreement between the Intervenor and the Employer expired some time before the petition herein was filed. Consequently, this last agreement is not asserted to be a bar to the petition. However, to substantiate its claim of a relevant bargaining history the Intervenor has called attention to the following portion of this last agreement: Jurisdiction of the Union begins with the markup of copy and predecessors have contained substantially identical language covering, among others, all of the litho- graphic preparation employees sought by the Peti- tioner, and that in view of a history of bargaining, dating as far back as 1940, the petition filed herein should be dismissed. However, while the contract language is susceptible to the interpretation being urged by the Intervenor,3 we find no evidence that the Intervenor has in fact ever bargained on behalf of, or even represented, the petitioned-for employees. Thus, the record shows that not one of the current employees sought by the Petitioner was ever told he was covered by the Intervenor's bargaining agreement until after the petition giving rise to this proceeding was filed. Further, although it is alleged that the Intervenor's bargaining agreements have been ap- plied to lithographic production employees since the introduction of that printing process in 1956-57 at one of the plants of the Employer's predecessor, it appears that at no time subsequent thereto did any lithographic preparation employee ever become a member of the Intervenor4 or serve on the Interve- nor's bargaining committees. Indeed none of the present lithographic preparation employees were ever consulted with respect to contract negotiation mat- ters. Finally, no grievances were ever filed under the bargaining agreements by the Intervenor on behalf of the employees sought in the petition. All of the above is entirely consistent with the testimony of several employees to the effect that, while they were aware of the existence of these agreements, they understood them to apply only to the composing room employees who were members of the Intervenor. In a similar vein, the Employer's president, although alleging that the agreements generally fixed the terms and conditions of all employees in its plant, nevertheless admitted that the agreements really applied only to members of the Intervenor all of whom were in the composing room. Under these circumstances, we find that the bargain- ing history, instead of supporting, actually contradicts the Intervenor's position. 4. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of continues until the material is ready for the Printing Press, and the appropriate bargaining units [sic] consists of all employees performing any such work. The only specific reference to an employee in the requested unit is contained in the agreement's apprenticeship section. There, along with the composing room operations, mention is made of the "paste-makeup" function. However, it does not appear that the paste-up employee in the art department had any actual connection with, or had any relation to, the Intervenor's collective-bargaining efforts with the Employer. Therefore, the following comments with regard to the absence of a bargaining history for the lithographic preparation employees are equally applicable to the art department's paste-up employee. 4 There was some testimony that a cameraman, no longer in the Employer's employ, was perhaps a member of the Intervenor because he was referred to the Employer by his father who was then in the composing room and belonged to the Intervenor. However, whether the son was also a union member is, at best, inconclusive. 187 NLRB No. 65 PARAMOUNT PRESS, INC lithographic production employees, including offset pressmen and lithographic preparation employees performing platemaking, stripping, camera, and paste-up functions. The Intervenor makes no claim to represent the offset pressmen. However, relying principally on bargaining history (discussed above), integration of operations, and employee community of interest, the Intervenor contends that all employees engaged in the preparation of material for the pressroom should be included in the same unit. Thus, it is the Intervenor's contention that a unit which does not include both the lithographic preparation opera- tions as well as the composing room functions of proofreading, hand compositing, and linotyping is inappropriate. The Employer takes somewhat the same position, but its main opposition to the request- ed unit appears to be that the future introduction of a form of typesetting, variously referred to in the industry as photo-typesetting or cold typesetting and not usually considered to be lithographic production, would substantially change the paste-up employee's present duties. Therefore, the Employer contends that the inclusion of this employee in the petitioned-for unit would be inappropriate. The Employer is engaged in the commercial printing business and utilizes standard equipment common throughout the industry for both its letter- press and lithographic printing processes. Likewise, there is the traditional departmentalization of em- ployees according to job skills. Preparation work for the letterpress, or hot metal, process is performed in the Employer's composing room department by a linotype operator, a floorman, and a proofreader. The lmotype machine simply drops molten metal into forms, one line at a time. The floorman or hand compositor takes the material produced by the linotype or other letterpress machine and sets the type in proper order in a galley or in another unit of metallic type. From this a proof is made which is checked for errors by the proofreader. Once locked by the floorman, the finished unit of type is ready for the pressroom. However, if the job calls for lithography, the composing room employees make a reproduction proof from the proofpress. The proof may then go directly to either the art department's paste-up employee or to the camera operator. The paste-up employee in the Employer's art department places image bearing material (that is, paper prints of reading matter, photographs, or art works) in proper position before all of these items are photographed in the lithographic preparation department. The paste- up employee receives most of the paper material from either the composing room, in the form of production 5 See The Lord Baltimore Press, Inc, 144 NLRB 1376, 1378-79, fn 8 6 See Lianco Container Corporation, 177 NLRB No 116, Court Square Press, The, 151 NLRB 861, The Lord Baltimore Press, Inc, supra, The 587 proofs, or from outside contractors, in the form of velox prints. Only a small percentage of original art work is performed in the art department. The paste-up employee's finished copy is then taken to the lithographic preparation department where it is photographed for reproduction by the lithographic cameraman. A film stripper then arranges the component filmed images into a final unit or "flat," and makes corrections by opaquing unwanted areas. The flat, after being checked by the proofreader, is then taken to the platemaker where it is placed in contact with a thin, light-sensitive lithographic metal plate and exposed in a vacuum frame . The resulting image-bearing plate is then ready for the lithographic press. The equipment used in the lithographic press department is, as mentioned above, the same standard equipment found throughout the industry. The Intervenor and the Employer contend that there is an integration of operations in the way work from the composing room reproduction-proof stage flows to the other departments in eventually produc- ing a metal image for the offset presses. This argument against the granting of a separate unit of lithographic production employees is not a novel one and has been consistently rejected by the Board, for it asserts no more than what is the obvious in the graphic arts industry; that is, that work progresses from skill to skill.5 More importantly, this contention overlooks the fundamental differences between the composing room hot metal typesetting operation and the litho- graphic process. Likewise, we are not persuaded by the attempts to analogize the job functions of the hand compositor to those of the paste-up and film stripping employees. Indeed, the record shows that there is virtually no interchange of composing room and lithographic preparation employees. Moreover, only one instance was recalled where an employee transferred from letterpress work to the requested unit, and that occurred only after he had undergone considerable training. We believe that under these circumstances the fact that all employees engaged in the preparation of material for the pressroom share the same plant facilities, such as timeclocks, rest- rooms, and the cafeteria, is of little significance. We accordingly find that a separate unit of lithographic production employees is appropriate .6 There remains to be considered the Employer's opposition to the inclusion of the paste-up employee in the requested unit. As mentioned above, the Employer at some unspecified time in the future expects to introduce a photo-typesetting, or cold- typesetting, process which would, it is alleged, substantially change the present paste-up operations. Plimpton Press, 140 NLRB 975, Tongg Publishing Co, Lid, 131 NLRB 174; Con P Curran Printing Co, 57 NLRB 185. 588 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD But that problem is not before us at this time, as the change is speculative at best, and in the absence of important facts concerning this technique (specifically, the equipment it uses, the new skills it may involve, and in what manner it will affect the present paste-up operation) we are unable to and need not resolve the problems that may arise when, and if, cold typesetting is introduced. As presently described in the record, we are satisfied that the paste-up operation is one normally considered part of the lithographic production unit.7 Finally, there remains the question of the superviso- ry status of several persons and the problem of whether they are included in the requested unit. The Intervenor and the Employer contend that the offset pressroom supervisor and the working foreman in the lithographic preparation department should be excluded. The Petitioner takes no position with regard to the status of these employees. We agree with the Intervenor and the Employer. Both employees have the authority to hire and fire, recommend wage increases and promotions, and report directly to the plant manager. It would appear that they also possess the authority to discipline and reprimand. According- ly, we find they are supervisors and excluded from the unit. We also agree with the Intervenor and the Employer 7 See The Standard Register Company, l20 NLRB 1361, Printing Industry of Seattle, Inc, 116 NLRB 1883 8 See The Lord Baltimore Press, Inc, 144 NLRB 1376, 1380 9 We shall place the name of the Intervenor, as well as the Petitioner, on the ballot However , should the Intervenor desire not to participate, it shall notify the Regional Director for Region 12 in writing of its decision within 10 days of the issuance of our Decision If the Intervenor exercises its option not to appear on the ballot, the Direction of Election shall be deemed amended accordingly is In order to assure that all eligible voters may have the opportunity to be informed of the issues in the exercise of their statutory right to vote, all parties to the election should have access to a list of voters and their that the working forelady in the art department is not a supervisor within the meaning of the Act. She possesses none of the indicia of authority set forth in the Act and with regard to virtually all matters must consult with the plant manager. It appears that the direction she gives to the other employee in the art department is routine and no more than that which might be expected of a more experienced employee.8 We therefore include her in the unit. Accordingly, having found that the petitioned-for unit is an appropriate unit, we shall direct that an election be conducted among the following employees at the Employer's place of business. All employees engaged in the lithographic prod- uction work at the Employer's place of business in Jacksonville, Florida, including offset pressmen and helpers, the lithographic preparation employ- ees, including the platemaker, film stripper, cameraman, and helpers and the pre-camera paste-up employees in the art department, but excluding all other employees, employees in the composing room and bindery, office clerical employees, guards, professional employees, and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Direction of election91° omitted from publication.] addresses which may be used to communicate with them Excelsior Underwear Inc, 156 NLRB 1236, N L R B v Wyman-Gordon Co, 394 U S 759 Accordingly, it is hereby directed that an election eligibility list, containing the names and addresses of all the eligible voters, must be filed by the Employer with the Regional Director for Region I within 7 days of the date of this Decision and Direction of Election The Regional Director shall make the list available to all parties to the election No extension of time to file this list shall be granted by the Regional Director except in extraordinary circumstances Failure to comply with this requirement shall be grounds for setting aside the election whenever proper objections are filed