Los Angeles Paper Box & Board Mills Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Dec 12, 1952

101 N.L.R.B. 1026 (N.L.R.B. 1952)

1026 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Los ANGELES PAPER Box & BOARD MILLS INC. and MANUFACTURING
MAINTENANCE EMPLOYEES OF THE Los ANGELES PAPER Box & BOARD
MILLS, FOLDING DIVISION, PETITIONER and PRINTING SPECIALTIES
AND PAPER PRODUCTS UNION No . 388, AFL. Case No. 91-RD-156.
December 12, 1952
Decision and Order
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before H. C. Bumgarner, hearing
officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free
from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3 (b) of the Act, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member
panel [Chairman Herzog and Members Houston and Murdock].
Upon the entire record in this case, the Board finds :
1. The Employer is engaged in commerce within the meaning of
the Act.
2. The Petitioner, a group of employees of the Employer, asserts
that the Union is no longer the representative of the employees desig-
nated in the petition as defined in Section 9 (a) of the Act. The
Petitioner is not a labor organization. The Union, a labor organiza-
tion, is the currently recognized representative of the Employer's em-
ployees in a multiplant bargaining unit which includes the plant in
which the Petitioner is seeking an election.
3. No questions affecting commerce exists concerning the repre-
sentation of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act, for the following
reasons:
The Petitioner requests an election in a unit limited to the employees
of the Employer's folding division. The Union contends that the
proposed unit is inappropriate, and that because of the over-all inte-
gration of the Employer's operations and the collective bargaining
history of its employees, only a unit embracing the employees of the
three divisions, folding, setup, and independent, is appropriate. The
Employer agrees with the Union. There is no contract bar.
The Employer makes boxes. It operates and owns directly two
plants called folding division and setup division, located 61/2 miles
apart in the city of Los Angeles, California. Setup makes boxes in
final, "setup" form, while folding makes folding boxes which must
be set up by the customer. In addition, the Employer operates a
wholly owned subsidiary called independent which has a plant located
1 mile from setup and 71/2 miles from folding, also within the city of
Los Angeles. Independent and folding are identical manufacturing
operations.
101 NLRB No. 170.
LOS ANGELES PAPER BOX & BOARD MILLS, INC. 1027
All three plants are under a central over-all management and the
Employer has a single employment office for them, although final
hiring and discharging authority rests with each plant. The per-
sonnel records for both setup and folding are kept together and both
have the same personnel director. Independent's personnel director
is the son of the Employer's president and independent keeps separate
personnel files. Some boxes are partially made at one of the three
plants and then sent to one of the others for completion. Some cus-
tomers' orders are filled with products of more than one of the plants.
There is some interchange of personnel between folding and independ-
ent, as necessity arises, where job classifications are identical. Al-
though the work is somewhat similar, the skills and job classifications
involved at setup differ from those of the other two plants and there
appears to be little or no personnel interchange between it and the
other two.
The record indicates that since the Union was first recognized by
the Employer's corporate predecessor in about 1941, collective bar-
gaining for folding and setup has been on a multiplant basis. Until
1947, folding and setup were at the same physical location and were
covered by a single contract, while prior to 1948 independent was
owned and operated by another corporation which also recognized
the Union as bargaining agent of its employees.
After folding moved to its new location, in about 1947, collective
bargaining continued on a multiplant basis. The scope of negotiations
was enlarged to include independent when the present Employer had
its corporate inception and acquired all three plants in the spring of
1948. A single contract covering both setup and folding was signed
a few months later. Signed at the same time was a three-paragraph
agreement stating that "all benefits, rates, and working conditions
shall be identical as between employees of . . . Independent . . . and
the L. A. Paper Box and Board mills . . . when the merger of the
two companies is completed...."
Since 1949, separate annual contracts have been signed for each of
the three plants. However these separate contracts are practically
identical, differing only with respect to the job classifications and
wage scale at setup, differences previously accounted for in a single
contract covering folding and setup. These separate identical con-
tracts were negotiated by the same negotiators at one and the same
time in exactly the same manner as a single annual contract had been
previously negotiated. The same parties signed all three contracts
and employees at the three plants ratified the contracts at a single
election without segregation of votes. Grievance machinery for the
plants remains unified, functioning since 1948 for independent as well
as for the other plants. The Union and the Employer applied to the
242305-53-66
1028 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
Wage Stabilization Board for a night differential and additional
holiday, treating the three plants as a single unit where common condi-
tions and contractual terms prevail.
Upon the foregoing facts showing a substantial operational and
administrative integration among the three plants and in view of the
history of multiplant collective bargaining, we find that a unit con-
sisting only of the employees in the Employer's folding division is
inappropriate for purposes of collective bargaining.' Accordingly,
as the unit sought by the Petitioner is inappropriate we shall dismiss
the petition.
Order
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition filed herein be, and it hereby
is, dismissed.
A Basalt Rock Company, Inc., 96 NLRB 1058.
UNION MANUFACTURING COMPANY and AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
HOSIERY WORKERS , AFL, PETITIONER . Case No. 5-RC-1103. De-
cember 12, 1952
Supplemental Decision and Order
On June 25, 1952, pursuant to a Decision and Direction of Election
by the Board,' an election was conducted in the above-entitled pro-
ceeding under the direction and supervision of the Regional Director
for the Fifth Region. At the close of the election, the tally of ballots
was issued and duly served upon the parties concerned. The tally
reveals that of approximately 158 eligible voters, 157 cast ballots, of
which 1 ballot was for the Petitioner, 46 ballots against the Petitioner,
and 110 ballots were challenged. On September 12,1952, the Regional
Director issued his report on challenges in which he recommended that
the challenges to 2 ballots be sustained and that the challenges to 21
ballots be overruled. He further recommended that a hearing be held
as to issues raised with respect to the ballots of 87 individuals. As
no exceptions were filed by any of the parties to the Regional Director's
report, the Board, on October 2, adopted the recommendations therein
and ordered that a hearing be held.
On October 23, the Petitioner filed a "Motion to Amend Order
Directing Hearing on Challenged Ballots." The facts upon which
this motion is based are as follows. Since on or about May 4, 1952,
a Union Manufacturing Company, 5-RC-1103, June 12 , 1952, not reported in printed
volumes of Board decisions.
101 NLRB No. 181.