International Foundation of Employees Benefit Plans, Inc.

EMPLOYEE BENEFIT PLANS, INC. International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, Inc. and Local 277, Graphic Arts International Union, AFL-CIO, Petitioner. Case 30-RC-3054 January 16, 1978 DECISION AND ORDER BY MEMBERS JENKINS, PENELLO, AND TRUESDALE Upon a petition filed under Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hear- ing was held on April 29, 1977, before Hearing Officer Ken Rock of the National Labor Relations Board. Following the hearing and pursuant to Section 102.67 of the Board's Rules and Regulations and Statements of Procedure, Series 8, as amended, the Regional Director for Region 30 transferred the case to the Board for decision. Thereafter, the Petitioner and the Intervenor ' each filed briefs. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor Relations Board has delegated its authority 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 parties stipulated that the Employer, a District of Columbia corporation, is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to providing a forum for the exchange of information and the education of trustees and advisors who serve employ- ee benefit plans. During the calendar year 1976, a representative period, the Employer sold its services valued in excess of $1.6 million to customers outside the State of Wisconsin. During the same period, the Employer purchased and received goods valued in excess of $450,000 from points outside the State of Wisconsin. Accordingly, and in agreement with the stipulation of the parties, we find that 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 parties further stipulated, and we find, that the Petitioner and the Intervenor are labor organiza- tions within the meaning of the Act who claim to represent certain employees of the Employer. 3. No question affecting commerce exists con- cerning the representation of the employees of the I Office and Professional Employees International Union, Local 9, AFL-CIO-CLC, intervened based on (I) its recently expired collective- bargaining contract with the Employer covering in part the employees petitioned for herein, as well as (2) a certification in such unit issued November 5, 1971, by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. 2 The legal and legislative reporter, which is typeset by the composition 234 NLRB No. 51 Employer within the meaning of Section 9(cX)(1) and Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act for the following reasons: The Employer began its operation as the National Conference of Health, Welfare and Pension Plans in 1954 and currently has 19,000 individual members representing 2,120 trust funds and 925 professional firms. The Employer presents 30 or more educational meetings annually which are attended by more than 11,000 persons, with as many as 6,000 people registering for its annual educational conference. Among the programs are institutes for new and advanced trustees, administrators, and fund advi- sors; conferences on public employee benefit plans and benefit trends and problems in Canada; special sub-institutes; regional seminars; comprehensive mini-institutes; and workshops on money manage- ment fundamentals. The Employer also issues various publications containing information of value to benefit plan trustees. The various educational programs are an- nounced through general mailings at least four times annually. The mailings may be in the form of fliers or brochures to members and nonmembers which can total approximately 30,000 copies for each of the four mailings. Also published, usually in booklet form, are a gathering of the various presentations and texts by speakers at the various programs and these are mailed to all dues-paying members as well as to all who attend the programs. The Employer also pub- lishes a monthly informational booklet with news about the educational programs and articles of interest. Finally, the Employer also publishes a legal and legislative reporter on a monthly basis. The Employer employs 25 people who are current- ly represented by the Intervenor. Among the 25 employees are 5 people in the composition depart- ment and 2 people in the printing department who, respectively, perform all the typesetting and printing work for the Employer's publications. 2 The Petitioner, in its petition as amended at the hearing,3 seeks to sever the Employer's seven compo- sition and printing department employees from the existing unit of clerical personnel represented by the Intervenor. The existing unit has been represented by the Intervenor since 1972 and at the time of the hearing negotiations were in process for a successor collective-bargaining agreement to the one which expired in January 1977. The Petitioner seeks severance on the basis that the composition and printing departments enjoy craft department, is printed by an outside commercial pnnter because of the need for certain equipment for those publications which the Employer does not now have. 3 The amended petition seeks "all printing department and composition department employees of the Employer, excluding all other employees and guards and supervisors as defined in the Act." 277 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD status or, alternatively, constitute departments which are functionally distinct from the remaining depart- ments and are engaged in occupations for which a tradition of separate representation exists. The Peti- tioner further maintains that greater stability in labor relations would result from severance; that the printing and composing departments do not consti- tute part of an integrated production process; that there is no history and pattern of collective bargain- ing in the industry involved to consider; that the Petitioner is qualified to represent and, indeed, experienced at representing employees similar to those sought; and, finally, that severance would comport with the desires of the composing and printing employees. The Intervenor maintains that severance should be denied on the basis of bargain- ing history, adequate representation, common super- vision of the employees sought with the remainder of the people in the present unit, common benefits, some interchange, and the fact that the employees sought do not constitute a separate craft. The Employer has maintained a neutral position. As stated, the Employer presently has 25 employ- ees in the unit represented by the Intervenor, including 2 in the printing department and 5 in the composition department. The printing department is located on the lower level of the Employer's building in two rooms. In one room, all printing is done and in part of another room the collating and binding work is done. The composing department is presently located on the second floor of the building. At the time of the hearing, however, the Employer had plans to begin construction of a new building during 1977 which was scheduled for completion in April 1978. The new building, containing an additional 40,000 square feet of space, or twice the size of the existing building, was scheduled to contain both the printing and composition departments on the first level of the building, along with the offices of the research director and his staff and the office manag- er, as well as a cafeteria, library, and conference rooms. The printing department is, of course, responsible for fulfilling the Employer's printing needs and uses lithographic offset presses as well as other equipment to accomplish this. Specifically, the equipment in- cludes a multilith 2850 single-color press; a multilith 2675-a tandem press which will print two sides of a piece of paper at one time as well as several colors; a Baum folder which folds, perforates, scores, and cuts; a Triumph papercutter; an Ordibel collator and stitcher; binding machines to bind spiral bound books; an automatic paperpunch; a hand-fed paper- punch; a light table for checking and remasking negatives and doing opaquing work; a polychrome plate processor which develops metal plates for the offset press; a new arc plate burner where negatives are burned by high intensity light into light sensitive plates; and an electrostatic copier where typed copy is made into a paper master to be run off by one of the two offset presses. The actual process involved in the printing is a combination of using a chemical process of ink and water, together with metal plates which are inserted into the press. The amount of ink that is going into the press can be controlled and thus there is control over the quality of the finished product. The work of the printing department comes from the composition department. In the composition department, the employees proofread and typeset the materials which will be published. This includes selection of the size and style of print, physically setting the type, processing it through the phototype- setter, and doing the layout and pasteup work. The above process is accomplished through typesetting equipment which has a large keyboard and TV screen. The composing department employees punch paper tape, instructing the typesetter how wide the copy is to be, whether it is to be justified, and what point size type will be used. After the tape is completed, it is inserted into the phototypesetter, which produces a film cassette, which is then fed through a processor, resulting in a positive galley. The galley may then be run through a waxer and put into position on a keyline board. Photocopies may then be made for proofreading purposes, after which the composing department forwards the matter for printing, with instructions on how it is to be printed. In performing the above-described composing work, the composition department uses four key- board editing terminals, a Compugraphic 9001 pho- totypesetter, four light tables, two waxers, a proces- sor and dryer, and one IBM composer. While all of the composition work is prepared by the Employer, some of the printing is presently done by outside printing establishments. In the past few years the Employer has increased both its printing and composition departments in terms of personnel, machinery, and sophistication of the machinery. Thus, the composition department has grown from two to five people in the last few years while the printing department has grown to two people. The printing department formerly had only four pieces of equipment and has grown to the level enumerated above. The composition department has likewise grown. To facilitate the entire process being com- pleted in-house, the Employer will add further equipment and a darkroom in the new building. It is expected that when the new building is completed virtually all printing work will be completed in- house. As stated, however, the present machinery 278 EMPLOYEE BENEFIT PLANS, INC. does not permit the Employer to accomplish all of its work in-house. The printing and composition departments are commonly supervised, along with the other personnel represented by the Intervenor, by the office manager. The record reveals that there are lead people in both the composition and printing departments, but they report to the office manager. The record discloses that there is interchange between the employees sought herein and the other personnel in the existing unit. While the printshop employees spend 90 percent of their time working on the offset presses, they spend the remainder of their time working on the other equipment and also in unloading deliveries of printshop materials when those materials arrive several times a week. The printing department personnel also may, on occa- sion, be called upon to go to a conference to help hand out printed matter. Other employees sometimes work in the printing department. For example, three part-time high school students employed by the Employer run some of the printing department equipment and a regular employee of the mail department runs the collator on occasion. Also, at times, some other personnel may help collate printed items if there is a critical need to finish a job rapidly. Finally it is noted that many other employees come in and out of the press area to find materials which may be stored in the "back room." There also exists some interchange with respect to the composition department. One employee spends 75 percent of her time in the composition department and 25 percent of her time as a secretary. When the composition department experiences a heavy work- load, the Employer normally hires experienced type- setters on a temporary basis rather than seeking help from other personnel in the existing unit since those other employees are not qualified to operate the composition department equipment. However, the composition department employees sometimes work with employees of other departments-e.g., in pre- paring meeting registration cards or designing a membership promotion flyer. Most of the employees in both of the departments sought herein were experienced in their respective work prior to being employed by the Employer, although the record discloses that none of the employees took part in any formal apprenticeship training program. The employee referred to above who spends 75 percent of her time in the composition department received on-the-job training and did not have prior experience. The printing and composition department employ- ees sought herein share the same hours and benefits and use the same cafeteria as other employees in the unit represented by the Intervenor. They have been represented by the Intervenor for approximately the past 5 years and during that time no grievances were filed and both departments had representatives on the negotiating committee for previous contracts. The record also discloses that the Intervenor repre- sents employees in similar units in the Milwaukee area. While there was evidence that the employees in the composition and printing departments earn less than similarly situated employees who are represent- ed by the Petitioner, there was no evidence that the needs of the employees sought herein were ignored. Indeed, the record discloses that the assistance of the Intervenor was seldom sought. Further, as stated, representatives of the two departments for whom severance is sought served on the negotiating com- mittee during negotiations for the previous contracts. Any dissatisfaction with negotiations could certainly have been adequately voiced then. The record further discloses that while Petitioner's International parent, the Graphic Arts International Union, repre- sents 180,000 people in all facets of the printing industry, including employees who perform the same functions that are performed in the printing and composition departments herein and would therefore be qualified to represent the employees sought, the Intervenor represents several other units in the Milwaukee area similar to the existing unit. In Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Uranium Divi- sion,4 we indicated that craft severance petitions would be weighed on a case-by-case basis in terms of all relevant factors. These included whether the employees sought constituted a true craft or a functionally distinct department, the history of col- lective bargaining of the employees sought to be represented, whether the employees sought had established a separate identity during the period of their inclusion within the broader unit, the degree of integration of the employer's processes, and the qualifications of the union seeking to sever the employees. After considering these factors, we con- clude that the employees sought may not be severed from the existing unit. We note that there has been a 5-year bargaining history on a broader basis during which period the employees sought have been ade- quately represented. During the same period the printing and composition employees, whom we do not find under the facts herein are members of a craft, have not established any separate identity from other clerical personnel. They are all commonly 162 NLRB 387(1966). 279 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD supervised, share common benefits and working conditions, and partake in a substantial amount of interchange. Accordingly, we shall dismiss the peti- tion for severance. ORDER It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby is, dismissed. 280