Georgia-Pacific Corp.

258 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Georgia-Pacific Corporation and International Broth- erhood of Pulp, Sulphite & Papermill Workers, AFL-CIO, Petitioner Georgia-Pacific Corporation and United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Cases 23-RC-3636 and 23-RC-3638 January 31, 1972 DECISION AND DIRECTION OF ELECTION BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS FANNING AND JENKINS Upon petitions duly filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a con- solidated hearing was held before Hearing Officer John P. Cearley of the National Labor Relations Board. Pur- suant to Section 102.67 of the National Labor Rela- tions Board Rules and Regulations, Series 8, as amended, and by direction of the Regional Director for Region 23, this proceeding was transferred to the Board for decision. Thereafter, the Employer and both Petitioners filed briefs in support of their respective positions. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na- tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its au- thority in this proceeding 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. They are hereby affirmed. Upon the entire record in this proceeding, 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 labor organizations involved claim to repre- sent certain employees of the Employer. 3. Questions affecting commerce exist concerning the representation of certain employees of the Employer within the meaning of Sections 9(c)(1) and 2(6) and (7) of the Act. 4. The appropriate unit. The employees sought by the Petitioners include "All production and maintenance employees at the Employer's Plywood Plant and Chip'n Saw Plant in New Waverly, Texas," and exclude "Forestry Division employees, office clerical employees, guards, watch- men, and supervisors as defined in the Act." This is the same unit covered in a Stipulation for Certification Upon Consent Election agreement between the Em- ployer and both Petitioners and approved by the Re- gional Director for Region 23 on June 4, 1971. This Stipulation for Certification Upon Consent Election was set aside by the Regional Director for Region 23 195 NLRB No. 38 on July 11, 1971, when there appeared to be some question as to the eligibility of certain employees. The Employer contends that the unit sought by the Peti- tioners is inappropriate and that the only appropriate units are separate plant units, i,e., for the plywood plant and the chip'n saw mill. The Employer's position rests primarily upon its contention that the plywood plant and the chip'n saw mill are separate and autonomous operations, and there is no commonality of interest among the employees of the two plants. There is no history of collective bargaining covering the employees involved. The Employer is a Georgia corporation with an office and place of business at New Waverly, Texas, where it is engaged in the manufacture and sale of plywood and related wood products. The Employer opened a ply- wood plant and a chip'n saw mill in New Waverly, Texas, on May 1 and June 15, 1971, respectively. Both New Waverly plants are part of the Employer's Cross- ett Division, a corporate-geographical division encom- passing Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The corporate division is divided into four main product line departments: forestry, lumber, paper, and wood products. The plywood plant is a subdivision of the wood products department and the chip'n saw mill is a subdivision of the lumber department. The plywood plant and the chip'n saw mill are located on a common site surrounded by a common fence. Each facility has its own parking lot and en- trance gate. A drainage ditch partially separates the two plants. At the closest point the plywood plant, which is all under one roof, is approximately 75 yards from a chip'n saw mill building. The plywood plant and the chip'n saw mill share a common powerhouse. Waste bark from the two plants is used as fuel in this common powerhouse. The Em- ployer's forestry department purchases raw materials for both plants. These materials are stored in a cen- trally located log yard. There is a regular exchange of raw materials and byproducts, most notably, some four to five thousand cores which the plywood plant sells, through an accounting transaction, to the chip'n saw mill each day. These cores constitute approximately 20 percent of production in the chip'n saw mill. There is also a common sprinkler system which a maintenance crew from the plywood plant maintains for use by both plants. The record shows there are approximately 225 ply- wood plant employees and 90 chip'n saw mill em- ployees. In the immediate future, the plywood plant will reach full production with a complement of ap- proximately 270 employees. When the chip'n saw mill is in regular production, the number of employees will be reduced and it will have 80 employees. Advertise- ments for job openings are handled by a central person- nel unit under a listing for "Georgia-Pacific Corpora- GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORPORATION 259 tion" and applicants are referred to the respective plants by the personnel office. Employees are hired by the respective plant managers . Identical starting and top rates of pay prevail in both plants. Fringe benefits are similar in both plants, in accord with Crossett Divi- sion standards. The same employee handbook is given to employees of both plants, albeit, there are some slightly modified provisions applicable to the chip'n saw mill employees. General labor relations policy is set at Crossett and each plant manager adapts these overall policies to his local plant. Employee grievances are handled by the respective plant managers. There are separate payrolls administratively processed by a central administrative unit in New Waverly which are sent to Crossett. The plywood plant has a lunchroom in which there is a commingling of employees of both plants. The plywood plant operates on a multiple-shift, 24-hour-day, 7-day-week, basis, and the chip 'n saw mill operates on a two-shift, 5-day-week, schedule. There has been no interchange of employees since the ply- wood plant and the chip'n saw mill opened in May and June 1971, respectively; however, there have been spo- radic work contacts between the employees of the two plants. The plywood plant and the chip' n saw mill use simi- lar types of raw materials and manufacture different products. The automated and high speed assembly of plywood, a technologically advanced process compared with the work done in the chip' n saw mill, does require the plywood plant employees to utilize more skill and dexterity than their counterparts in chip'n saw. How- ever, both plants employ persons in similar classifica- tions (electricians, millwrights, trimmers, graders, and maintenance workers, etc.), though the skill require- ments vary somewhat. Also, both plants have similar types of wood conveyors and other equipment, al- though there are some differences between the plants. In view of the above and based on: (1) the close geographical proximity between the plants which are located on a common site surrounded by a common fence; (2) the commonality of interest among the em- ployees in terms of their identical starting and top rates of pay, similar benefits, common plant rules, and a common employee handbook; (3) the operational over- lap between the plants as evidenced by a common pow- erhouse, common source of raw materials, centrally located log yard, mutual exchange of raw materials and byproducts, common sprinkler system maintained by plywood plant employees for the use of both plants, and a common administrative unit which handles person- nel, accounting, payroll, and insurance matters for both plants; and (4) the conforming limitations on the au- tonomy of the plant managers inherent in the control exercised by Crossett with respect to wages, benefits, and working conditions, and by the operational overlap of the plants; we are persuaded that single unit encom- passing the plywood plant and the chip'n saw mill is in all the circumstances an appropriate unit. There remains to be considered a question raised by the Employer concerning the status of so-called "stu- dent-employees." The Board has found that where a student is hired for the summer vacation and will ter- minate at the beginning of the school year, the student is a temporary employee and not included in the unit. O'Hara Metal Products Co., 155 NLRB 236; Sandy's Stores, Inc., 163 NLRB 728. All other such student employees shall be included in the unit, and are eligible to vote, including any such student employees who, upon returning to school, continue their employment on a regular part-time basis. Sandy's Stores, supra; The Horn & Hardart Company, 147 NLRB 654; Farmers Insurance Group, et al., 143 NLRB 240; and Giordano Lumber Co., Inc., 133 NLRB 205. Accordingly, we find that the following employees constitute an appropriate unit for the purposes of col- lective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Act: All production and maintenance employees at the Employer's plywood plant and chip'n saw mill in New Waverly, Texas, excluding forestry depart- ment division employees, office clerical employees, guards, watchmen, and supervisors as defined in the Act. [Direction of Election' omitted from publication.] CHAIRMAN MILLER, dissenting: I would find the requested unit inappropriate. The plywood plant and chip'n saw mill here involved obvi- ously do not comprise a companywide unit; neither are they the whole of the Employer's Crossett Division; nor do they constitute, together, either a single plant or any other identifiable administrative or operative subdivi- sion of the Employer's business. Instead, they are two separate plants, each engaged in different manufacturing processes-neither of which is essential for the other's continued operation-using different machinery, producing different products, and employing persons with different skills. Each has its own manager who is responsible for only his own plant operations, and who establishes, independently of the ' 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 ad- dresses which may be used to communicate with them Excelsior Underwear I n c . , 156 NLRB 1236; N.LR.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 23 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 extraordi- nary circumstances. Failure to comply with this requirement shall be grounds for setting aside the election whenever proper objections are filed 260 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD other, but admittedly within the scope of division policy, the labor relations policy for his own plant. There is no interchange of employees between the plants; few, if any, permanent transfers; and a mini- mum of contact between the employees of one plant and those of the other. Hiring is done separately by each plant. Each plant has a separate manufacturing process, differing from that in the other, and thus the hours of work for one plant differ from those of the other. Under these circumstances , to combine them into a single bargaining unit is justified neither by organiza- tional or functional factors, nor by any showing of a commonality of interests of the employees of the two separate plants. The most that is shown is that they are geographically close. The majority opinion speaks of a "centrally located log yard" and a common lunch- room, but the record suggests that even here there are differences-that there are indeed separate log yards, and that the use of the lunchroom at the plywood plant by the employees of the mill was only temporary, until the completion of a lunchroom scheduled to be built in the mill. On the record as a whole, I find precious little but geography to support a finding of appropriateness of the two-plant unit. That is not enough . I would direct a separate election in each of the two plants.