California Offset Printers

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 31, 1970

181 N.L.R.B. 871 (N.L.R.B. 1970)

CALIFORNIA OFFSET PRINTERS
California Offset Printers and Los Angeles Mailers'
Union No . 9, International Typographical Union,
AFL-CIO, Petitioner . Case 31-RC-1124
March 31, 1970
DECISION AND ORDER
BY MEMBERS FANNING, BROWN, AND .IJENKiNS
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of
the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a
hearing was held before Harry C. Kessel, Hearing
Officer' 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 31, this case was
transferred to the National Labor Relations Board
for decision. Briefs have been filed by the Employer,
the Petitioner, and the Intervenor.
The Board has reviewed the Hearing Officer's
rulings made at the hearing and finds they are free
from prejudicial error They 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 labor organizations involved claim to
represent certain employees of the Employer
3. No question affecting commerce exists
concerning the representation of certain employees
of the Employer within the meaning of Section 2(6)
and (7) of the Act, for the following reasons:
The Unit Sought
On May 29, 1969, the Petitioner filed a
representation petition requesting an election in a
unit comprised of "all mailing department
employees of the Employer " The Employer and the
Intervenor, which currently is certified to represent
the production and maintenance employees, moved
to dismiss the petition on the ground, inter alia, that
the classifications requested by the Petitioner are
covered by the contract between the Employer and
the Intervenor effective from November 1, 1968, to
October 31, 1971, and by a side agreement
incorporated into the present contract, signed by the
Employer on March 28, 1969, and by the Intervenor
on May 7, 1969, which set out Class A and Class B
warehousemen, shippers, and mailers wage
classifications.
'Offset Workers, Printing Pressmen and Assistants ' Union, Local 78,
herein referred to as Intervenor , was permitted to intervene at the hearing
on the basis of its current contract covering the Employer 's production and
maintenance employees
History of Collective Bargaining
,871
In 1963, shortly after the Employer began
business, the Intervenor filed a representation
petition with the Board seeking representation of all
production and maintenance employees. A
Board-conducted election was held at the
Employer's plant which resulted in the Intervenor
being certified as the representative of "all
production and maintenance employees at the
Employer's Glendale, California plant, including
offset pressmen and offset preparatory employees."
Subsequent to the election the Employer and
Intervenor entered into a collective-bargaining
agreement in October 1963. The initial agreement
ran until October 1965 and was followed by a
subsequent agreement which expired in October
1968. The current collective- bargaining agreement
between Employer and Intervenor was negotiated at
the end of October 1968 and continues in effect until
October 31, 1971.
During the negotiations in October 1968, leading
to the present agreement, the Employer proposed
the additional job classifications of Class A and
Class B warehousemen, shippers, and mailers. The
Intervenor agreed to the proposed wage
classifications but it wanted them in a separate side
agreement, because the proposals would allow Class
B mailers to receive a minimum of one-half shift's
pay rather than a whole shift's pay. The "side" or
supplemental agreement provides a higher hourly
wage rate for Class A mailers than it does for Class
B mailers. At the time these additional wage
classifications were proposed the Employer had two
full-time and one part-time employee in the shipping
and mailing department but anticipated an
expansion of such facilities when it secured the job
of printing a daily newspaper, the Christian Science
Monitor, herein called Monitor Before it began
printing the Monitor the Employer hired seven full
time mailer employees who began work on May 5,
1969, and it was on May 7, 1969, that the
Intervenor executed the supplemental agreement
encompassing the two mailer classifications. All the
newly hired mailers were classed as warehousemen,
shippers, and mailers, Class A, while the remaining
employees in the mailing and shipping room were
paid and classified as warehousemen, shippers, and
mailers, Class B.
The Employer's Operation
The Employer is engaged as a commercial printer
in the printing of newspapers, advertising circulars,
and periodicals for customers The Employer has
four major departments: preparatorial department,
press department, binding department, and
warehouse shipping and mailing department.
Presently there are 20 employees in preparatorial,
39 employees in the pressroom, 15 employees in
binding, and 15 employees in shipping, warehouse
181 NLRB No. 138
872 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
and mailing. Each department has a separate
supervisor and there is, in addition, a mailing
foreman. Each department supervisor is responsible
to the production manager. The Employer operates
in three adjoining buildings, referred to as Buildings
Nos. I, 2, and 3. The buildings are connected by
doorways. Building No. I contains the preparatory
department and a pressroom Building No. 2
contains the bindery department and the shipping
room. Building No. 3 contains a pressroom and a
mailroom. The Employer's bindery operations
consist of binding a Sunday TV supplement for a
Los Angeles newspaper. The two bindery employees
are represented by Los Angeles Bookbinders Local
No. 63-63A
Prior to May 5, 1969, the Employer employed
two full-time and one part-time employee who
worked in the shipping and mailing rooms. These
employees tied bundles, moved skids, applied labels,
wrapped or bundled printed material, folded, and
inserted circulars, and performed stamping work As
previously noted, on May 5, 1969, the Employer
began printing the Monitor for the Western part of
the United States. The newspaper, which has a large
subscription circulation, is printed 6 days a week
The Employer, in addition, prints another
newspaper, house organs, and circulars. Before May
5, 1969, the Monitor was printed by Compton
Printing Company, herein called Compton, another
printing company located in Los Angeles,
California.' The production and mailing employees
were represented by the Petitioner. On or about
April 29, 1969, Hedlund, the Employer's vice
president and general manager, met with most of
Compton's mailer employees who had been handling
the mailing of the Monitor at Compton and offered
to employ them to do the same work on the
Monitor at the Employer's Glendale plant.
Ultimately Hedlund hired seven former Compton
mailer employees to work full time for the
Employer on the Monitor, one of whom became the
mailer foreman. These employees were told prior to
their hire, that they would be covered by the terms
of the Employer's collective-bargaining contract
with the Intervenor and that they would have to
become members of the Intervenor in accord with
the contract. These 7 employees began work on
May 5, the date the Employer began printing the
Monitor. At about the same time, the Employer
hired two more employees for the shipping and
mailing rooms and some additional pressmen to
help with the printing of the Monitor, and also hired
several additional mailer employees (formerly
employees of Compton) on a part-time basis.
On or about September 6, 1968, a California corporation known as
Rodgers-McDonald Publishers, Inc purchased all the stock of both
Compton and California Offset Printers, the Employer herein Whether or
not Compton and California Offset constitute a single employer is not
material to our decision here inasmuch as a multipiant unit is not in issue
At issue is whether an election may be directed for the mailing department
employees at the Employer's Glendale, California, plant or whether they
are properly covered by an agreement with the Intervenor
The Employer has also leased from Compton a
special machine, known as the Magnacraft, which
folds, wraps, and affixes address labels to copies of
newspapers. This machine, located in the mailing
room, is used only for the Monitor. Four men spend
6 or 7 hours per shift working on the Magnacraft
machine. When printed matter, including the
Monitor, comes off the presses, the material is
taken by joggers (pressroom employees) to the mail
room. There the mail room employees perform all
the necessary mailing and shipping functions,
including stapling, labeling, and bringing the
prepared printed material to the shipping room and
the dock for pickup by outside carriers for delivery.
The former Compton mailer employees work almost
exclusively on the mailing of the Monitor. On a
number of occasions, however, other mailing or
shipping room employees work on the Magnacraft
or perform other mailing functions on the Monitor
As previously noted, there are now approximately
15 employees in the shipping, warehouse, and
mailing department of whom 7 are full time mailer
employees who were previously represented by the
Petitioner at Compton. The former Compton
mailers use the same facilities and are entitled to the
same benefits as the Employer's other employees
represented by the Intervenor, and are classed as
warehousemen, shippers, and mailers, Class A under
the Intervenor's contract.
Unit Finding and Conclusion
We find it unnecessary to consider whether the
"mailing department employees" can constitute a
separate appropriate unit inasmuch as we conclude
that the 1968 contract between the Intervenor and
the Employer as amended by a supplemental
agreement executed on May 7, 1969, includes the
mailing department employees and constitutes a bar
to this petition.
In so concluding we note that the record
establishes that the earlier contract of the Intervenor
covering the production and maintenance unit also
covered several mailer employees then employed
The supplemental agreement between these same
parties executed on May 7, 1969, contained the
additional employee classifications of Class A and
B, warehousemen, mailers, and shippers and was
intended to and did cover both the old group of
mailers and the mailers newly hired. In essence the
Employer expanded the mailing and shipping
department of approximately 15 employees to
handle the increased workload accompanying the
publishing of the Monitor and then executed a
supplemental agreement which clearly covers all its
mailing and shipping employees
As the present petition seeking a unit of mailing
department employees was not filed until May 29,
1969, we conclude that the 1968 contract, as
amended by a supplemental agreement executed on
CALIFORNIA OFFSET PRINTERS 873
May 7, 1969, is a bar and we shall, therefore, ORDER
dismiss the petition.'
'See Firestone Synthetic Fibers Company , 171 NLRB No 133, Solar It is hereby ordered that the petition filed herein
Manufacturing Company. 110 NLRB 1188 be, and it hereby is, dismissed.