Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jul 11, 1952

100 N.L.R.B. 107 (N.L.R.B. 1952)

KAISER ALUMINUM & CHEMICAL CORPORATION 107
unit. At a membership meeting of Intervenor's Local No. 2626, at
the Tacoma plant, strong opposition was expressed to this contract.
Later that year, on September 1, 1950, another contract was executed
by the Intervenor and the Employer codifying the preceding agree-
ments affecting the multiplant unit, which, at that time, consisted of
employees at the Mead, Trentwood, and Tacoma, Washington, plants,
and the Newark, Ohio, plant. The dissatisfaction evidenced at the
February meeting of the Tacoma local intensified and resulted in an
ineffective attempt to withdraw that Local from the multiplant agree-
ment and unit. When this attempt was unsuccessful, the instant
petition resulted.
The Petitioner contends that the dissatisfaction of the Tacoma
employees over their representation by the Intervenor as a part of
the multiplant unit, and the fact that the employees at the Tacoma
plant are outnumbered and outvoted by the employees at other plants
with which they have little contact, are valid grounds upon which to
sever the Tacoma plant from existing multiplant unit. We do not
agree. The Board has carefully considered the history of bargaining
at the Employer's plants and the conditions affecting the multiplant
unit. We find that the integration, interdependence, and centralized
control of the Employer's operation and management, the history of
multiplant bargaining, and the uniformity of interests, skills, and
working conditions in the multiplant unit militate against severance
of the Tacoma plant.4 Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition
filed herein.
Order
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition filed in this case be, and it
hereby is, dismissed.
4 See Lever Brothers Company , 97 NLRB 1240 ; International Paper Company, Tona-
wanda Mill, 97 NLRB 764, and cases cited therein . See also Kaiser Aluminum & Chem-
boal Corporation, 100 NLRB 107.
KAISER ALUMINUM & CHEMICAL CORPORATION as INTERNATIONAL
BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, AFL , PETITIONER. Cabe
No. S -RC-1487. July 11, 1962
Decision and Order
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Charles A. Fleming, hearing
officer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free
from prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.
100 NLRB No. 18.
108 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
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 labor organizations involved claim to represent employees
of the Employer 2
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion 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 that the Board find appropriate a unit con-
sisting of all production and maintenance employees at the Employer's
Newark, Ohio, aluminum fabrication plant including shop clerical
employees, timekeepers, chauffeurs, inspectors, physical testers, chem-
ical analysts, and mill clerks, but excluding executives, administrative
and professional employees, office and clerical employees, guards, full-
time first-aid and safety employees, foremen, and all supervisors as
defined in the amended Act. The Employer and the Intervenor con-
tend that the only appropriate unit is one embracing the Newark
plant together with four other plants of the Employer, and now
represented by the Intervenor.
The Employer is a multistate enterprise operating under a Dela-
ware corporate charter. Its organizational structure may be broken
down into two divisions consisting, respectively, of the aluminum
division and the chemical division. The instant case is concerned
entirely with plants in the aluminum division. This division may be
further divided into reduction and fabrication operations. There
are three plants devoted to reduction processes located at Tacoma,
Washington, Mead, Washington, and Chalmette, Louisiana. Three
fabricating plants are located at Trentwood, Washington; Newark,
Ohio, and Halethorpe, Maryland. The Employer also operates a
small foil plant at Permanente, California, which, although a fabri-
cating plant, has been operated as a type of pilot plant and has not
been completely integrated into the organizational structure of the
remainder of the aluminum division.
The'r'eduction plants of the Employer receive raw alumina from
the Employer's Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bauxite 'processing plant.
(The Baton Rouge plant is a part of the chemical division of the
company and is not concerned in the instant case.) The raw alumina
-is reduced by electrolytic processes at the reduction plants to aluminum
pig of varying purity or alloys. The Mead and Tacoma reduction
'The Employer's motion for oral argument in this case is denied inasmuch as the
record and the briefs filed by the parties adequately present the issues and positions
.of the parties.
2 At the hearing, United Steelworkers of America, CIO, herein termed the -Intervenor,
was granted intervention for itself and on behalf of its Local 341, upon showing of
a contractual Interest in the representation of these employees.
KAISER ALUMINUM & CHEMICAL CORPORATION 109
plants have capacities, respectively, of about 25 million pounds and
3.5 million pounds of aluminum pig per month. The Tacoma plant
produces a type of high purity pig not produced at Mead. The
Chalmette plant has been recently built and is not yet in full operation
but will eventually produce about 16.5 million pounds of pig a month.
The Employer's fabrication division is almost completely dependent
upon the operations of the Mead, Tacoma, and Chalmette reduction
plants and procures almost 95 percent of its pig aluminum from those
sources 3 The fabrication di"vision consists of a flat rolled products
plant at Trentwood, Washington; a rod, bar, wire cable, and ingot
billet plant at Newark, Ohio; and an extrusion products plant at
Halethorpe, Maryland. These plants have about 2,100, 950, and
375 production and maintenance employees, respectively.
The integration and interdependence of the Employer's operations,
which are heavily stressed by both the Employer and the Intervenor,
are dual in nature, pertaining both to actual production functions
and to the managerial control of that production. Despite the con-
siderable geographical separation of plants involved in the coast-to-
coast enterprise of the Employer, the functioning of each plant,
whether reduction or fabricating, is dependent in some degree upon
the operations of one or all of the remainder. Thus, absence of the
supply of pig from the reduction plants would completely shut down
the fabricating plants. Because each of the reduction plants does
not produce all types of pig, a shutdown of any one of the three
reduction plants (after integration of the Chalmette plant upon its
reaching full production) would cripple the fabricating plants. In
the reverse situation, the productive capacities of the reduction plants
are such that the cessation of operations at any of the fabricating plants
would shortly cause a stoppage, partial or whole, of activity at the
reduction operations' There is also considerable intershipment of
material and finished products among the plants, both fabricating and
reduction, besides the supplying of basic pig.
Again, notwithstanding the extreme geographical separation of the
plants, the Employer has developed an exceptionally high degree
of integration and centralized control over practically all managerial
functions of the individual plants and the system as a whole. The
Employer's organizational structure is based upon a central head-
quarters located at Oakland, California. The head of the aluminum
division, and the manager of fabricating operations and the manager
$ At the present time, with the Chalmette plant just coming into production, about
85 to 90 percent of the aluminum pig used by the fabricating plants is produced by the
Employer's reduction facilities . The remainder is obtained from outside sources in-
eluding thekederal Government stock pile.
* A number of factors enter into this situation including the financial structure of
the Company , the storage problem, the lack of a large market for aluminum pig during
normal conditions , and the economics involved in the operation of reduction plants at
partial capacity.
110 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
of reduction operations reporting to the head of the division, are,
located at Oakland along with the comptroller, chief engineer, indus-
trial relations manager, chief metallurgist, chief purchasing agent,
chief traffic agent, and the chief of public relations. In some instances,
the latter executives also are active in the chemical division. Through
a comparatively complex chain of command these individuals exercise
immediate and controlling authority over practically all functions of
the plants. Each plant has a plant manager reporting to the opera-
tions managers.5 These plant managers, however, act primarily as
conduits for the transmission and correlation of direction and have
little or no independent authority or discretion. Thus not only major,
but comparatively minor, questions of policy or operation are con-
trolled and decided by the -Oakland managements The accounting,,
traffic, public relations, purchasing, engineering, and labor relations
(the latter more fully discussed hereinafter) policy is set at the
Oakland level and the administration and execution of such policy is.
rigidly controlled from that level. A corollary of this extreme cen-
tralization has been a consistent interchange of supervisory and
executive employees among the plants and the Oakland office.
The labor relations history of the Employer's plants is closely
related to the growth of the Company. The Employer, then operating
as the Permanente Metals Corporation, purchased the Mead reduction
plant and the Trentwood fabricating plant from the Defense Plant
Corporation in early 1946.7 Shortly thereafter the Employer and the
Intervenor executed a collective bargaining contract covering all pro-
duction and maintenance employees at the two plants." In 1946 the
Tacoma reduction plant was purchased and was put into operation
the next year. On December 6,1947, the Employer and the Intervenor
executed a contract for the production and maintenance employees
at that single plant and in June 1949 merged the three plants into one
unit. The Newark fabricating plant was acquired in 1948 and com-
menced operations in 1949. On November 15, 1949, the Employer and
the Intervenor entered into a contract extending the provisions of the
Mead, Trentwood, and Tacoma agreement to cover the Newark plant.
5 An exception to this general situation occurs in both the Tacoma and the Newark
plants . The latter temporarily has two plant managers , apparently coequal . A works
manager is in charge of both the Tacoma and Mead plants , while a plant manager
at Tacoma reports to him rather than directly to Oakland.
Indicative of this close control is the fact that all discharges mast be submitted to.
and approved by the Oakland office before being made by the individual plants.
7 Most of the Employer ' s plants were acquired from the Defense Plant Corporation.
The source of the Halethorpe plant is not shown by the record but the Chalmette
plant is the only one constructed by the Employer for its own use.
8 For a detailed examination of the bargaining history preceding this purchase see
Permanente Metals Corporation , 89 NLRB 804 . The two-plant unit promptly accepted
by the Employer and the Intervenor had previously existed under wartime ownership
by another company.
KAISER ALUMINUM & CHEMICAL CORPORATION 111
This contract was succeeded and amended in February 1950 to put
into effect a uniform system of wage rates and job classifications for
the four plants as well as a pension system. A further codification of
the preceding contracts was executed by an agreement between the
Employer and the Intervenor dated September 1, 1950. The Hale-
thorpe plant, acquired in early 1951, was then merged into the over-all
unit by agreement dated October 19, 1951. At the present time, the
Chalmette plant, the latest addition to the Employer's chain of plants
and now coming into production, has no representation insofar as
collective bargaining is concerned .9
The present five-plant unit thus developed by a process of adding
new plants, as the Employer acquired them, to the basic Mead-Trent-
wood unit covering the initial operations of the Employer. Prior to
the Employer's acquisition of its first plants at Mead and Trentwood,
the Intervenor had been certified by the Board as representative of
employees at both plants. Single-plant elections were held thereafter
in the Tacoma, Newark, and Halethorpe plants, the elections in each
case preceding the absorption of the plant into the multiplant unitle
On the other hand, in October 1946, after the Employer and the Inter-
venor signed their first two-plant unit contract for the Mead and
Trentwood operations, a consent election was held for the Trentwood
plant alone?i The election was won by the Intervenor and the two-
plant contract continued in effect. Again, in mid-1949, when a three-
plant unit of the Tacoma, Mead, and Trentwood plants was contractu-
ally operative, the Intervenor and the Employer took the position
before the Board that the original two-plant unit at Mead and Trent-
wood was still the only appropriate .12 In that case the Board
found that the Mead-Trentwood unit was the "most appropriate"
0 The Board , however, has recently directed an election for the employees of the
Chalmette plant upon a petition filed by the International Council Aluminum Workers
Unions, AFL. Kaiser Aluminum ii Chemical Corporation, Case No. 15-RC-655 (April
24, 1952 ), not reported in printed volumes of Board decisions . The United Steel-
workers of America, CIO, also intervened in that proceeding
10 At the Tacoma plant, the petitioning union was Aluminum Workers Federal Labor
Union No. 24335, AFL. The Aluminum Workers did not secure a majority and the Em-
ployer thereafter recognized the United Steelworkers of America , CIO, as representative
of the employees at the plant, although that organization did not appear on the ballot
because of noncompliance with the provisions of Section 9 (f), (g), and (h) of the amended
Act. Permanente Metals Corporations, Case No. 19-RC-16 (August 18, 1948 ), not reported
in printed volumes of Board decisions. At the Newark plant, a consent election was held
in Case No. 8-RC-542, in September 1949, on a petition filed by the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL. The election was won by the United Steelworkers
of America , CIO. At the Halethorpe plant, the United Steelworkers of America, CIO, won
a consent election held on September 7, 1951, in Case No. 5-RC-898.
ii This election was held in October 1946 on a petition filed by the International Brother-
hood of Electrical Workers, Local B-73, AFL, in Case No. 19-R-2046.
as Permanente Metals Corporation, 89 NLRB 804. This was a case arising upon certain
craft petitions, as well as a petition for a production and maintenance unit limited to the
Trentwood plant filed by the Spokane Aluminum Council , AFL. ,The Board denied craft
severance and further held that a unit limited to the Trentwood installation was
inappropriate.
112 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
grouping and dismissed petitions for units of employees at the Trent-
wood plant alone. Finally, the Employer and the Intervenor have
participated in several union-security authorization elections in units
smaller than the multiplant grouping.18
The pattern of bargaining, accordingly, while holding to the steady
accretion process noted above, has also contained some variations in
the positions of the Employer and the Intervenor. Nevertheless the
record clearly shows that the parties have created a multiplant unit.
which now consists of all the reduction and fabrication facilities of
the Employer with the exception of the foil plant at Permanente,
California, and the recently built Chalmette plant. The results of
this grouping are also in the record. The five constituent plants
are covered by a single job evaluation system leading to standardiza-
tion and uniformity of classifications, rates, and duties. It was
testified by the Employer that this evaluation system and its
results have cost the Employer approximately $1,000,000 a year.14
Likewise, a standard pension program has been adopted.
Above and beyond these specific features just noted, the labor
relations policy of the Employer is centrally controlled and uniform
in application throughout the multiplant unit. A director of indus-
trial relations, located at the Oakland headquarters, superintends
all labor relations matters for the five plants.15 Also stationed at
Oakland, and reporting to the director of industrial relations, is the
industrial relations manager and his subordinates - the superintend-
ents of industrial relations for the fabrication plants, the Mead
and Tacoma plants, and the southern area. Each plant, further, has
a labor relations superintendent. Grievances, other than those of
a minor nature, are subject to the close scrutiny of the Oakland office,
and may be determined at that level if necessary. Grievance settle-
ments in one plant may be used as precedents for those arising in
other plants and are used as the basis for a uniform unit-wide
grievance policy. Likewise safety policies and personnel procedures
are standardized throughout the five plants. Over-all seniority policy
is governed by the contract covering the entire unit while details
are worked out at the plant level within the framework of the
contract provisions. Contracts are negotiated between the director
of industrial relations at Oakland and his top assistants for the
18 On June 277 1950, a consent election was held in Case No. 19-UA-2213 In a unit
consisting of the employees at the Mead and Trentwood plants. On December 1, 1949y in
Case No 19-UA-2040, a consent election was held in a unit of employees at the Tacoma
plant. In both these elections the United Steelworkers of America , CIO, won union-
security bargaining authority.
14 A corollary to the adoption of this program , which was instituted in mid-1949 for the
three-plant unit then existing , was the Intervenor's agreement not to bargain further on
wage inequities among job classifications for a period of 5 years.
'6 The director of industrial relations also serves in the same capacity for the chemical
division , as do other high echelon executives of the aluminum division.
KAISER ALUMINUM & CHEMICAL CORPORATION 113
Employer and representatives of the Intervenor with a committee
of representatives from the individual plants.
Finally, the record shows that the job classifications , rates, and
working conditions of employees at the five plants are predominantly
the same, although certain minor variations exist at the Newark -plant
as well as at the other plants . These variations consist in the main
of some job classifications at individual plants which are not found
in the remainder of the unit, some differences in production processes,
and wage differentials resulting from differences in area costs of
living."' Due to the geographical separation of the plants there is
little if _ any interchange of production and maintenance employees
among the five plants.
The Petitioner contends that the employees at the Newark plant
should be allowed to constitute a separate appropriate unit, despite
this past inclusion in the multiplant unit, on a number of grounds.
The Petitioner contends that the original agreement of the parties
in 1949 to a consent election in a unit restricted to the Newark plant
alone establishes the appropriateness of the requested unit and bars
any contrary position on the part of the Employer and the Intervenor
at the present time . The Petitioner further argues that the inclusion
of the plant in the multiplant unit was without recourse to Board
procedure ; that the working force at Newark has increased substan-
tially since the original election ; 17 that the history of multiplant
bargaining is too short to bar severance of one of the constituent
plants; that the large unit does not include all the Employer's
fabrication and reduction facilities and thus does not conform to any
administrative or operational standard ; and, finally, that the opera-
tions and working conditions at the Newark plant differ from those
in the remainder of the unit.
The Board has carefully considered these grounds and is of the
opinion that they do not constitute sufficient reason for overturning
the multiplant bargaining unit now in existence. The Board has
frequently held that units stipulated by the parties for purposes of
consent elections are not binding upon the Board 18 Nor does the fact
that the Employer and the Intervenor merged additional plants into
the growing multiplant unit without recourse to specific Board ap-
proval of that action , destroy the effectiveness of the multiplant bar-
gaining history thus created . 19 While the existing broad unit does not
ae Thus employees in the Washington plants receive higher rates for certain classifies,
tions than do employees in the remainder of the unit because of the higher cost of living
in that area. Plants in the same area , however , pay the same rates for the same
classifications.
77 There were approximately 230 eligible production and maintenance employees at the
Newark plant at the time of the first consent election in 1949. There are now approxi.
mately 950 employees at the plant.
18 See Illinois Cities Water Company , 87 NLRB 109 , and cases cited therein.
18 See, for example, Robert (fair Company , Inc., 77 NLRB 649.
114 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
include the Permanente and Chalmette plants, also in the aluminum
division, the Board has not required that units in all instances com-
pletely conform with administrative lines.20 The record shows no
appreciable difference in the working conditions, interests, duties, and
skills of the employees at the Newark plant in comparison to the re-
mainder of the unit. On the contrary, the record is replete with evi-
dence of conformity of those conditions throughout the entire unit.
While it is true that the Newark plant has been merged into the
broader unit for a relatively short period of time and that the per-
sonnel at the plant has increased in some measure since the 1949 elec-
tion, we do not believe these factors alone provide sufficient basis for
severence. As the Board noted previously in dealing with the Em-
ployer's Mead and Trentwood, Washington, operations : 21
The history of collective bargaining . . . would not alone ade-
quately establish the appropriateness of a single multiplant unit.
But when to such history there are added the fact that the Trent-
wood plant is the natural outlet for all of Mead's production, the
further fact that under normal- circumstances both plants would
be a part of a single integrated industrial unit, and the fact of
this Employer's centralized management and common labor poli-
cies, we are persuaded that a single multiplant unit would be most
appropriate.
The conditions the Board found existing at the Mead and Trentwood
operations are the same factors now applying to the five plants in-
cluded in the broad unit. This is particularly true with regard to the
interdependence of the fabricating and reduction plants as noted supra
in detail. While the geographical separation of the plants in the
present unit is considerably greater than that existing between Mead
and Trentwood, this separation, caused -by security factors involved in
the plants' construction, has not decreased the dependence of one plant-
upon the remainder of the operations, or affected the community of
interests arising therefrom.
On the entire record, the Board finds that that integration, inter-
dependence, and centralized control of the Employer's operations and
management, the history of multiplant bargaining, and the uniformity
of interests, skills, and working conditions within the multiplant unit
20 In this regard, we note that the Peimanente plant is not completely integrated with
the remaining plants in the unit. The Board has granted an election at the Chalmette
plant in accordance with its consistent policy of allowing employees at a new plant to
indicate their desires as to inclusion in a larger unit or separate representation. See
Thatcher Glass Manufacturing Company, 97 NLRB 238; Sylvania Electric Products, Inc.,
87 NLRB 597, and cases cited therein. Under these circumstances, the Board does not
consider the fact that the unit is not coextensive with the boundaries of the aluminum
division to be indicative of its inappropriateness.
a Permanente Metals Corporation, 89 NLRB, 804.
WOOD PRODUCTS COMPANY 115
make a unit restricted to employees at the Employer's Newark, Ohio,
plant iiiappropriate.22 Accordingly, we shall dismiss the petition
filed herein.
Order
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition in this case be, and it hereby is,
dismissed.
22 See Lever Brothers Company, 97 NLRB 1240; International Paper Company, Tona-
wanda Mill , 97 NLRB 764, and cases cited therein. See also Kaiser Aluminum & Chem-
ical Corporation , 100 NLRB 107.
H. S. SACKETT, J. B. KNAPP, AND J. D. ROBERTS , A COPARTNERSHIP
D/B/A WOOD PRODUCTS COMPANY 1 and INTERNATIONAL WOODWORK-
ERS OF AMERICA , LOCAL 2-21, CIO, PETITIONER . Case No. 19-RC-
994. July 11, 1952
Decision and Direction of Election
Upon petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Paul E. Weil, hearing offi-
cer. The hearing officer's rulings made at the hearing are free from
prejudicial error and are hereby affirmed.2
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 Styles and Peterson].
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 labor organizations involved claim to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer.3
3. A question affecting commerce exists concerning the representa-
tion of employees of the Employer within the meaning of Section
9 (c) (1) and Section 2 (6) and (7) of the Act.4
4. The Petitioner seeks, and the Employer does not oppose, a pro-
duction and maintenance unit at the Employer's sawmill . The Inter-
1 The caption is amended to reflect the correct name of the Employer.
2 The hearing officer referred to the Board the Intervenor 's and Corporation 's motions
to dismiss the petition . For the reasons set forth hereinafter , the motions are hereby
denied.
3 Wood Preservers Union Local No. 3078, AFL, herein called the Intervenor , was per-
mitted to intervene on the basis of a claimed contractual interest.
4 The Intervenor and Olympia Wood Preserving Co. Inc ., contend that their current
contract is a bar to this proceeding . The petition herein was filed about 1 month before
the "Mill B" date of that contract , and the contract ' s anniversary date was reached
during the pendency of this proceeding . Accordingly, we find, apart from any other con-
siderations , that this contention is without merit . Micamold Radio Corp., 94 NLRB 1193.
100 NLRB No. 27.
227260-53-vol . 100E--9