Coplay Cement Co.

66 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Coplay Cement Company and Independent Workers Of North America, Petitioner. Cases 4-RC- 16397 and 4-RC-16398 March 16, 1988 DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER BY CHAIRMAN STEPHENS AND MEMBERS BABSON AND CRACRAFT On May 14, 1987, the Regional Director for Region 4 of the National Labor Relations Board issued a Decision and Direction of Election in the above-entitled proceeding.' In his decision, the Re- gional Director concluded that the two separate units set forth in the two petitions are appropriate. These consist, on the one hand (in Case 4-Re- 16397), of all production and maintenance employ- ees employed at the Employer's Nazareth II and Egypt, Pennsylvania plants, and, on the other hand (in Case 4-RC-l6398), of all production and main- tenance employees employed at the Employer's Nazareth I plant. Thereafter, in accordance with Section 102.67 of the Board's Rules and Regula- tions, the Employer filed a timely request for review of the Regional Director's decision. The Employer contended, inter alia, that the Regional Director's reliance on collective-bargaining history in fmding two previously uncertified units appro- priate, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, substantially departed from reported Board precedent; that the Regional Director's fac- tual fmdings to the effect that there have been no significant changes to overcome and negate the bargaining history and his failure to find the func- tional integration of the Employer's operations controlling, ignore undisputed testimony, are clear- ly erroneous and prejudicially subject the Employ- er to an unnecessary proliferation of bargaining units. The Employer's request for review also raised two other issues: that the hearing was con- ducted in violation of the Board's Rules and due process and that the Regional Director's findings and conclusion that the control room operators are not managerial employees and therefore are appro- priate members of the bargaining unit is clearly er- roneous and a departure from officially reported Board precedent. On June 11, 1987, the Board granted the Employer's request for review solely with respect to the unit scope issue.2 International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Black- smiths, Forgers, and Helpers, AFL-CIO, Local Lodges D14 and D18 in- tervened in this proceeding. 2 The Board denied the request for review in all other respects The Board denied the Employer's request for stay of the election and the Board has been administratively advised that the elections were conduct- ed on June 11, 1987, in the units found appropriate by the Regional Di- rector, and the ballots were impounded. The National Labor Relations Board has delegat- ed its authority in this proceeding to a three- member panel. The Board has reviewed the entire record in this case and makes the following findings. The Employer, a Pennsylvania corporation, is engaged in the manufacture of cement products at its two facilities located in Nazareth (Nazareth I and Nazareth II) and one facility in Egypt, White- hall Township, Pennsylvania. In Case 4-RC-16397, the Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of approxi- mately 77 production and maintenance employees, janitors, and truckdrivers employed by the Em- ployer at the Nazareth II and Egypt plants. In Case 4-RC-16398, the Petitioner seeks a unit of ap- proximately 97 production and maintenance em- ployees, janitors, and truckdrivers employed at the Employer's Nazareth I plant. The Employer and the Intervenor Locals argue that the appropriate unit should include all three plants. The employees at the Nazareth I plant, and at the Nazareth II and Egypt plants, have historically been represented in two separate units by Interve- nor Locals D18 and D14, respectively, with sepa- rate contracts. The historical units were apparently the result of voluntary recognition of the Interve- nor Locals. There is no record evidence concern- ing the dates or other circumstances of such recog- nition nor of the subsequent history of bargaining, except for the evidence of the most recently ex- pired contracts and the negotiations for new con- tracts. The most recent collective-bargaining agree- ments between the Employer and the Intervenor Locals expired on April 30, 1984. Prior to June 1984, collective-bargaining negotiations were con- ducted separately. From June 1984 through March 1986, the Intervenor Locals held joint negotiation meetings with the Employer. During the most recent negotiations between the Employer and the Intervenor the union representatives proposed one collective-bargaining agreement for all three plants, but no agreement had been reached as of the time of the hearing. Joseph Gaffney, the Employer's vice president of industrial relations, who is located at the Employ- er's corporate headquarters in Bath, Pennsylvania, heads the Employer's labor relations section. Gaff- ney has responsibility for labor relations policies for the three facilities, and the Employer's labor re- lations managers report to him. All hiring decisions for applicants for bargaining unit positions are made by Charles Pizzo, safety and personnel man- ager, and Frank Streitman, Pennsylvania operations manager. Similarly, Pizzo and Streitman make the final decision on disciplinary actions and termina- tions, which are "cleared" with Gaffney's office. 288 NLRB No. 21 COPLAY CEMENT CO. 67 Gaffney and the labor relations managers at the Employer's corporate headquarters establish work rules, handle grievances not resolved at the first step of the grievance procedure, administer pension benefits and insurance claims, handle safety mat- ters, and process the payroll for the three facilities. Employee wages and benefits are identical at the three plants, except that employees at the Nazareth I facility are paid slightly higher wages than em- ployees at the two other facilities because of addi- tional operations, including the production of "clinker," which are performed only at the Naza- reth I facility. The Nazareth II and Egypt plants are approxi- mately 14 miles apart, and the Nazareth I and II plants are less than a mile apart. Both the Nazareth: I and II plants have onsite quarries. Crushed lime- stone from the Nazareth II plant is transported from its quarry to the Nazareth I plant, where it is blended with crushed limestone from the onsite quarry at the Nazareth I plant. The crushed stone is further processed to produce "clinker," which is produced only at the Nazareth I plant. Some of the clinker is processed into finished cement at the Nazareth I plant, while the remainder is transport- ed to the Nazareth II and Egypt plants. At Naza- reth II, the clinker is stored in silos, where it can be shipped at a later date to customers. At the Egypt plant, clinker is processed into cement, and is either stored, or packaged and shipped as pack- aged goods. Additionally, the Nazareth II and Egypt plants store cement produced by the Naza- reth I plant. Various equipment is shifted from one facility to another to facilitate the frequent transfer of cement and clinker. There is some interchange of employees among the three facilities. In May 1984 the Employer and the Intervenor Locals entered into an agreement providing for the exchange of employees from Nazareth I to Nazareth II during downtime and maintenance periods. Subsequently, in November 1986, the Employer implemented a policy provid- ing for transfer and assignment of employees among its facilities. 3 The record shows that during the first week of December 1986, 13 to 14 employ- ees from the Nazareth II and Egypt plants worked at the Nazareth I plant, and a greater number of employees from Nazareth II and Egypt worked at the Nazareth I plant during the following week. Additionally, Nazareth I maintenance shop em- ployees occasionally made repairs at the Egypt and Nazareth II plants, and a Nazareth I electrician made a repair at the Nazareth II plant at least 3 The Regional Director found that prior to November 1986 there was some employee interchange but It was not routine. The petitions in this proceeding were filed on November 4, 1986. once. Millwrights and laborers frequently have been transferred to Nazareth II from the other two facilities. The Regional Director found that "the Employ- er has centralized control of labor relations and there is a certain degree of functional integration of the three plants, interchange of employees, supervi- sors and machinery and similarity of benefits and wage structure at all three plants." The Regional Director concluded, however, that the separate units sought by the Petitioner were appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining because of the "established history of collective bargaining in the separate units sought by the Petitioner" and the lack of significant changes which "would over- come and negate bargaining history in two separate units." We disagree with the Regional Director's con- clusion that the separate units sought by the Peti- tioner are appropriate for purposes of collective bargaining. Rather, contrary to the Regional Direc- tor, we conclude that in this case a single multi- plant unit is the only appropriate unit. In finding the multiplant unit to be the appropri- ate unit, we in no way depart from the long estab- lished rule of Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 153 NLRB 1549, 1550 (1965), that the Board "will not disturb an established bargaining relationship unless required to do so by the dictates of the Act or compelling circumstances" (footnote omitted). In Great Atlantic & Pacific, supra, the Board declined to direct elections in one or two units of a chain of stores on the petitions of the Meat Cutters because to do so would be to disrupt "the pattern of collec- tive bargaining" in a 20-store unit that has been maintained for "nearly 25 years" between the em- ployer and the incumbent union. In the present case, however, the record does not show how long the two Intervenor Locals of the Boilermakers Union have bargained in the one-plant unit and the two-plant unit. Furthermore, as noted above, it ap- pears that notwithstanding the history of separate bargaining, the two Intervenor Locals had held joint negotiations from 1984 through 1986 and had recently sought to bargain in a single multiplant unit. The other partner to this bargaining relation- ship—the Employer—seeks, in its request for review, to bargain on that same multiplant basis. The unit preferences of the partners to the bargain- ing relationship of course are not determinative of the question whether the multiplant unit is the ap- propriate one here. Given those preferences, how- ever, it is clear that our unit finding will not dis- rupt any established bargaining relationship. Fur- thermore, because the bargaining in the separate units apparently was originally initiated on the 68 DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD basis of voluntary recognition rather than on the basis of a Board election, there is no question here of disturbing a certification reflecting a prior Board determination of unit appropriateness. See J. C. Penney Co., 86 NLRB 920, 922 fn. 11 (1949). Thus, while we take into account the fairly sketchy history of bargaining in two units, we find that the following circumstances defming the char- acter of the three facilities, their work forces, and their interrelationships lead logically to the conclu- sion that the three-plant unit is the appropriate unit. First, hiring, discipline, and the general conduct of labor relations for all three facilities are highly cen- tralized at the Employer's corporate headquarters in Bath; and wages and benefits in the three are quite similar. The functions and capacities of the three facilities are complementary and highly inte- grated. This integration is in part reflected in the evidence of employee interchange. 4 Geographic proximity also supports a three-plant unit as against the two historic units. (The Regional Director's de- termination would place the two facilities in Naza- reth, which are less than a mile apart, in separate units, and the Nazareth II and Egypt plants, which are 14 miles apart, in the same unit) Considering all these factors, we find that the community of in- terest shared by the employees at the three facili- ties far outweighs the earlier voluntarily recog- nized partition of the three facilities into two units. Accordingly, we conclude that the two petitioned- for units are inappropriate, and that the only appro- priate unit is a single multiplant unit consisting of all production and maintenance employees em- ployed at the Employer's Nazareth I, Nazareth II, and Egypt plants.5 4 We note that the record shows clear evidence of at least some em- ployee interchange among the three plants even before the filing of the petitions. 5 See Mid-West Abrasive Co., 145 NLRB 1665 (1964), Kent Plastics Carp, 183 NLRB 612 (1970); Eastman West, 273 NLRB 610 (1984) Because the single multiplant unit which we have found appropriate is broader than the separate units in which the elections were conducted and because it is unclear whether both Intervenor Locals (as joint representatives), or only one, would seek to represent the broader unit, we shall, in the exercise of our discretion, vacate the elec- tions conducted on June 11, 1987. We further direct that a new election be held in the following unit, which we have found appropriate, whenever the Regional Director deems appropriate: All production and maintenance employees employed at the Employer's Nazareth I, Naza- reth II and Egypt plants, including control room operators, excluding all other employees, professional employees, office clerical employ- ees, salaried employees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act. We note, however, that the record is silent con- cerning whether the Petitioner wishes to proceed to an election in the broader unit found appropriate herein and concerning how the Intervenor Locals wish to be designated on the ballot in an election directed in the unit found appropriate. In these cir- cumstances, we direct the new election subject to the Regional Director's determination of these mat- ters. ORDER It is ordered that the elections conducted on June 11, 1987, in Cases 4-RC-16397 and 4-RC- 16398 are vacated. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this proceeding is remanded to the Regional Director for Region 4 for further appropriate action consistent herewith.