Precision Cast Parts Corp.

382 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Precision Cast Parts Corp. and Teamsters Local Union #255, International Brotherhood of Team- sters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, Petitioner I and Pattern, Mold and Model Makers of Portland and the Vicinity, affiliated with Pattern Makers League of North America, Peti- tioner.2 Cases 36-RC-3542 and 36-RC-3545 June 7, 1976 DECISION ON REVIEW BY CHAIRMAN MURPHY AND MEMBERS FANNING AND JENKINS On December 2, 1975, the Regional Director for Region 19 issued his Decision and Direction of Elec- tion in the above-entitled proceeding The Regional Director concluded that the amended unit of jour- neyman metal mold makers, intermediates, and trainees sought by Petitioner Pattern Makers is not a "readily identifiable group whose similarity of func- tions and skills create a community of interest which would warrant separate representation either as a craft or departmental unit " The Regional Director accordingly directed an election in a unit including all production and maintenance employees, placing Petitioner Pattern Makers on the ballot in such unit together with Petitioner Teamsters and the Interve- nor3 Thereafter, in accordance with Section 102 67 of the National Labor Relations Board Rules and Reg- ulations, Series 8, as amended, the Pattern Makers filed a timely request for review with a statement in support thereof on the question of the appropriate unit or units By telegraphic order, dated December 23, 1975, the Board granted the request for review and stayed the election pending decision on review 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 considered the entire record, in- cluding the parties' briefs 4 on review, and concludes i Herein called Teamsters 2 Herein called Pattern Makers 3 District 24 of the International Association of Machinists and Aero- space Workers , AFL-CIO, herein called Machinists or Intervenor, was per- mitted to intervene in these proceedings 4 Petitioner Pattern Makers motion to dismiss appellee's (Teamsters) brief, opposed by Employer, is hereby denied Both the Teamsters and the Employers briefs were accepted by the Board as timely mailed on January 2, 1976, with respect to the January 5 due date, though actually received on January 6 that the record herein does not support the Regional Director's findings that a unit of all production and maintenance employees of the Employer is alone ap- propriate The Employer is an Oregon corporation engaged in the design and manufacture of cast metal objects at its Portland facility, utilizing the investment case molding or "lost wax" process The record also shows that the Employer is the only company pos- sessing the capability to produce certain large struc- tural castings, which may weigh several hundred pounds Working from blueprints or drawings of the ultimate casting desired by the customer, the mold making department produces a metal mold with an interior cavity equal to the outside shape and dimen- sions of the desired end product The mold then is taken to the wax molding department where wax is injected into the cavity in the mold After the wax hardens, the mold is taken apart The wax pattern is then dipped in a ceramic slurry, and sand and stucco are added to form a ceramic mold or shell The shell is subsequently put through an autoclave combining pressure and temperature, and the wax is melted out After the shell is cured, hot metal is poured into the shell cavity Then the ceramic shell is removed, leav- ing the desired metal casting After completion and customer approval, the mold is stored for the cus- tomer for use in the casting process After continued use, repair work by moldmakers is frequently re- quired At the time of hearing the number of molds in stock was estimated as 3,000 Petitioner Pattern Makers seeks to represent a unit of 19 journeyman moldmakers including leadmen, 3 intermediate moldmakers, and 1 trainee moldmaker This unit of skilled craftsmen constitutes the Employer's tooling department Although Petitioner Teamsters urges that the Board affirm the Regional Director's decision and dismiss the petition herein, it is willing to participate in an election with respect to the unit sought by Petitioner Pattern Makers, as is Intervenor Machinists There is no history of bar- gaining in the plant Employer concedes that the tooling department is not the sort of tool and die department the Board has dealt with in the past-that "tooling" actually refers to "molds" and that the "molds are made by mold- maker employees " Both witnesses for the Employer agree that the three classifications in the tooling de- partment are as above journeyman moldmaker, in- termediate moldmaker, and trainee There is no for- mal trammg,5 but the on-the-job training is described as follows "The trainees work with the journeymen mold makers They are given most of their mstruc- 5 At the time of hearing, the Employer was considering a request for an apprenticeship program 224 NLRB No 23 PRECISION CAST PARTS CORP 383 tion by the leadmen, and, even some of the journey- men mold makers give them their instructions As they become an intermediate, they are left more on their own than they have been in the past as a trainee although they are still given very close instruction by the leadman and the tool foreman (The latter is the immediate supervisor of all three classifications ) When they become a journeyman, they still receive leadman's instruction although many times they are left to themselves He will tell them that he wants them to do this segment of the die, and he will pretty much leave him alone at that point " Employer's pro- duction engineering manager testified that the aver- age time to journeyman status from entry into the department was 3 to 5 years, having also said "prob- ably four to five " "General machinist backgrounds" seem to be the norm, including one witness with a 5-1/2-year apprenticeship in England as a machinist Three moldmakers have had experience as mainte- nance machinists and five had apprentice training as toolmakers Employer's vice president in charge of manufacturing testified that employees who bid in as trainees "necessarily come from wax molding, main- tenance, or the machine shop " He conceded that a journeyman moldmaker "is one of the more skilled people" in a plant having "extremely highly skilled people " Metal mold making is a highly skilled craft, which is essentially a specialized branch of tool and die making It requires holding to very close tolerances, working with different types of steel, aluminum, and brass In many instances, to produce a one-piece pat- tern having internal or undercut detail, it is necessary to construct a series of molds Tooling methods used to form complex areas of a mold include the machin- ing and fitting of collapsible metal cores and inserts The intricate compound angle setups which the moldmaker must devise to produce these inserts re- quires superior skills and a thorough knowledge of mathematics in addition to experience in normal diesinking techniques Moldmakers apply dimen- sional shrink factors, based on alloy type and config- uration of the end part, to blueprint dimensions, and possess knowledge of what metals can be fitted to- gether under heat and pressure so as not to chafe Because of their size and complexity, such molds fre- quently are not mounted on standard die sets, which means the moldmaker must construct, as an integral part of each mold, any mechanical features necessary to disengage loose inserts or eject the pattern To ac- complish such assignments, moldmakers acquire in- struments and handtools costing up to $2,500 When blueprints come to the tooling department from de- sign engineering, they are given to the tooling fore- man He in turn works with the leadmen and mold- makers who are going to be doing a particular job, assigning and discussing the various sections to be completed There may be as many as six moldmakers and a leadman working on a particular mold, which may take 12 to 16 weeks to construct and may con- sist of 100 different pieces Here the moldmakers spend about 95 percent of their working time within the "tool room," a large room locked at night 6 However, when a mold is complete and ready for wax injection, moldmakers help transport the mold either on carts or with a fork- lift and assist the wax molding employees in de- termining how to set up the job on the wax injection presses This tooling department is immediately supervised by Foreman Foster, who supervises no other employ- ees, and by Supervisor Hepburn, who also supervises salaried employees in tool design engineering but no other hourly rated employees The moldmakers are the highest hourly paid employees in the plant and the department has the highest average wage On this record, we do not agree that moldmakers are an integral part of the production process as the Employer contends,' or indistinguishable as a craft or a department simply because there are other em- ployees with skills with whom they come in contact, or that they are not a "recognized" craft inasmuch as Employer's process is unique Accordingly, we find that, whether this group of metal moldmaking em- ployees is considered a functionally separate tooling department as the Employer denominates it, with a craft nucleus distinct from that of other employees and a common special interest in bargaining, or whether it is deemed a skilled group of craftsmen and trainees primarily engaged in the exercise of their craft skills of metal moldmaking, it may constitute a e At the end of this room is an enclosure where three plastic moldmakers work Like the one wood moldmaker who works in other parts of the plant they have entirely separate supervision and different skills from those of the metal moldmakers The Employer testified that the plastic and wood mold- makers were not part of the tooling department The plastic "mold makers" are also referred to by the Employer as plastic `pattern makers and are admittedly not journeymen There is no evidence that the work of these three employees and of the wood moldmaker-also referred to by the Employer as a patternmaker-includes actual moldmak- ing These four employees work only on `gate " devices or orifices for wax injection into the mold itself As described by Employer's vice president in charge of manufacturing gating is nothing more than a runner from a cup to pour metal into " In the circumstances, these four employees do not exercise the same skills as the metal moldmakers who constitute the tool- room, and we shall exclude them from the unit See Remington Rand, Inc, 109 NLRB 622 625 (1954) 7 As these employees are clearly not engaged in "the repetitive predefined performance of limited special skills particularly adapted to the Employer's productive process, we distinguish our dismissal in Monsanto Company 172 NLRB 1461 (1968) relied upon by the Regional Director we find no merit in Employer's contention that the unit we find appropri- ate should be denied upon grounds of national defense This case is one of initial organization , and craft or departmental units , as well as plant units, are specifically contemplated in Sec 9(b) of the Act 384 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD separate appropriate unit and should be given a self- determination election to that end 8 Accordingly, we shall direct election in the two fol- lowing groups of employees at the Employer's Port- land, Oregon, facility Group 1 All production and maintenance em- ployees, excluding journeyman metal mold makers, intermediates, and trainees, as well as office clerical employees, professional em- ployees, guards, and supervisors as defined by the Act Group 2 All journeyman metal mold makers, intermediates, and trainees (constituting Employer's tooling department), including leadmen, but excluding supervisors and all other plant employees We shall place the names of Teamsters Local Union #255, International Brotherhood of Team- sters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, and of District 24 of the International As- sociation of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO, on the ballot in the election among the employees in voting group 1 In addition to these two Unions, on the ballot in the election among the em- ployees in voting group 2, we shall place the name of Pattern, Mold and Model Makers of Portland and the Vicinity, affiliated with Pattern Makers League of North America If a majority of the employees voting in group 2 select the Pattern Makers, they will be taken to have indicated their desire to constitute a separate unit, and the Regional Director conducting the elections is hereby instructed to issue a certification of represen- tative to the Pattern Makers for such unit, which the Board in such circumstances finds appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining If, however, a ma- jority in voting group 2 does not vote for the Pattern Makers, such group will appropriately be included with the employees in voting group 1 and their votes will be pooled with those in voting group 1 9 The Regional Director is instructed to issue a certification of representative to the labor organization selected by the majority of the employees in the pooled group, which unit the Board in such circumstances finds to be appropriate for purposes of collective bar- gaining Accordingly, these cases are hereby remanded to the Regional Director for Region 19, in order that he may conduct elections pursuant to his Decision and Direction of Election, as modified herein, except that the period for determining eligibility shall be the pay- roll period ending immediately before the date of this Decision on Review [Excelsior footnote omitted from publication ] v If the votes are pooled they are to be tallied in the following manner The votes for the labor organization seeking a separate unit in group 2 shall 8 We do not consider the temporary assignment of one journeyman mold- be counted as valid votes but neither for nor against the labor organizations maker to do machining in maintenance, or the assignment of one to wax seeking to represent the production and maintenance unit All other votes molding in order to avoid returning some molds to the toolroom for repair, are to be accorded their face value, whether for representation by the as impinging upon their appropriate inclusion in the unit Unions seeking the more comprehensive group or for no Union