Kearney & Trecker Corp.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Mar 21, 1951

93 N.L.R.B. 890 (N.L.R.B. 1951)

890 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
KEARNEY & TRECKER CORPORATION and TECHNICAL ENGINEERS
AssoCIATION, AFL, PETITIONER. Case No. 13-RC-1649. March 21,
1951
Decision and Direction of Election
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9 (c) of the National Labor
Relations Act, a hearing was held before Edward T. Maslanka, hear-
ing 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 Reynolds].
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 organization involved claims to represent certain em-
ployees of the Employer.
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. The Petitioner seeks to represent a unit of time-study men, time-
study analysts, the time-study engineer, tool control men, process
planners, and process engineers in the standards and process engineer-
ing departments, excluding technical clerks, stenographers, and super-
visors. The Employer contends that time-study men, time-study
analysts, and the time-study engineer should be excluded from the
proposed unit as managerial employees. The Employer would also
exclude tool control men as production employees.
The Employer is a manufacturer of machine tools. It has recently
installed a new incentive system for its production employees and in
connection therewith has established the standards department. It
has also newly organized a process engineering department. The
employees involved in this proceeding work in these two departments.
There is a history of bargaining for production and maintenance
employees, including the tool control men, but none -for the other
employees whom the Petitioner seeks to represent.
Employees in the Standards Department
There is one time-study engineer. He is responsible for installing
the new incentive system. He directs both the time-study men and the
time-study analysts and has authority to change their employment
status. We find that the time-study engineer is a supervisor. We shall
therefore exclude him from the unit.
93 NLRB No. 144.
KEARNEY & TRECKER CORPORATION 891
There are 28 time-study men and 5 time-study analysts. Time-
study men make the initial time studies which are used in establish-
ing standards. They also set the rates on individual jobs, applying
the derived standards. Time-study analysts develop into standards
the data collected in time studies. They also review the rates set by
the time-study men.
Both the time-study men and the time-study analysts are like the
time-study men who, the Board has found, are not managerial em-
ployees.' We shall therefore include them in the unit.
Employees in the Process Engineering Department
Process planners analyze parts of machines to be manufactured in
order to determine what tools are needed for the manufacturing opera-
tion. They then route the tools to the appropriate department. Proc-
ess engineers perform essentially the same task on groups or units of
machine parts. The engineers are distinguished from the planners
by their greater experience.
There are three tool control men. They work with the machine
operators, listing the tools that are needed for various operations.
These lists are used by setup men on subsequent operations. They
spend all of their time in the shop, whereas the process planners and
process engineers spend at least half their time at a desk in a room
separate from the production workers. The tool control men were
recently transferred on the Employer's records to this department
from production departments, solely to avoid a seniority problem.
Despite the transfer, their duties and working conditions have re-
mained unchanged. Although the Employees Independent Union,
which represents the Employer's production and maintenance em-
ployees, asserts that the tool control men are no longer part of the
plant-wide unit, we consider that they are still included therein, as
contended by the Employer. We shall therefore exclude them from
the present unit.
We find that all time-study men, time-study analysts, process engi-
neers, and process planners 2 in the standards and process engineering
departments at the Employer's Milwaukee, Wisconsin, plant, exclud-
ing tool control men; technical clerks, stenographers, time-study engi-
neers, and other supervisors as defined in the Act, constitute a unit
appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining within the mean-
ing of Section 9 (b) of the Act.
[Text of Direction of Election omitted from publication in this
volume.]
i Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co , 87 NLRB 1031, enforced 183 F. 2d 259 ( C A. 1) ; Minne-
apolis-Moline Company, 85 NLRB 597
2 There is no contention , nor does the record show , that any of these employees are
professional employees within the meaning of the Act.