Laclede Steel Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

May 26, 1943

49 N.L.R.B. 1116 (N.L.R.B. 1943)

In the Matter of LACLEDE STEEL COMPANY and LOCAL 649, INTERNA-
TIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, A. F. OF L.
Case No. R_52025.-Decided May .196,1943-
Mr. J. E. Evans, for the Board.
Rice, Tucker, Allen and Chubb, by Messrs. Milton H. Tucker and
Robert T. Burch, of St. Louis, Mo., for the Company.
Mr. Theo. C. Sheppard, of Alton, Ill., for the I. B. E. W.
Mr. James L. Reed; of Edwardsville, Ill., for the Association.
Mr. Robert Silagi, of counsel to the Board.
DECISION _
AND
ORDER
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Upon a petition and amended petition duy-filed by Local 649, Inter-
national Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, A. F. of L., herein called
the I. B. E. W., alleging that a question affecting commerce had arisen
concerning the representation of employees of the Laclede Steel Com-
pany, Alton, Illinois, herein called the Company, the National Labor
Relations Board provided for an appropriate hearing upon due notice
before Howard Myers, Trial Examiner. Said hearing was held at
Alton, Illinois, on April 23 and 24, 1943.' The Company, the
I. B. E. W., and Alton Works Employees Association, herein called the
Association, appeared and participated. All parties were afforded
full opportunity to be heard, to examine and cross-examine witnesses,
and to introduce evidence bearing on the issues. The Trial Exam-
iner's rulings made at the hearing are free from prejudicial error and
are hereby affirmed. On May 6,1943, the I. B. E. W., the Association,
and the Company filed briefs which the Board has considered.
Upon the entire record in the case, the Board makes the following :
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. THE BUSINESS OF THE COMPANY
Laclede Steel Company is a Missouri corporation maintaining sev-
eral plants for the manufacture of steel. We are concerned here only
49 N. L . R. B., No. 161.
1116
LACLEDE STEEL, COMPANY 1117
with the plant located in Alton, Illinois. The Alton plant manufac-
tures open-hearth steel, ingots, billets, blooms, strip steel, bar steel,
iron, and pipe. The principal raw materials used are pig iron, scrap,
limestone, coke, oil, and various alloys. During the 6 months preced-'
ing the date of the hearing the raw materials purchased by the Com-
pany for its Alton plant amounted to approximately $2,000,000, a
substantial portion of which was received from points outside the
State of Illinois. During the same period finished products valued
at approximately $6,000,000 were produced at the Alton plant, a sub-
stantial portion of which was shipped to points outside the State of
Illinois. The Company is almost entirely engaged in producing for
the war effort.
The Company admits that it is engaged in commerce within the
meaning of the National Labor Relations Act.
II. THE ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED
Local 649, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, affili-
ated with the American Federation of Labor, is a labor organization
admitting to membership employees of the Company.
Alton Works Employees Association is an unaffiliated labor organ-
ization admitting.to membership employees of the Company.
M. THE ALLEGED QUESTION CONCERNING REPRESENTATION
In the spring of 1938 the Association was organized at the Alton
plant. The Association took into membership all the employees in
the plant and from its inceptioji handled grievances for the entire
plant and all departments thereof. Each year thereafter members
of the Association elected representatives from the various depart-
ments to represent them on their grievance committee. Among the
departments that participated in the elections was the electrical de-
partment which is the subject of the unit discussed hereinafter.
`In January 1942 the Company and the Association each hired a firm
of certified public accountants to conduct an examination of member-
ship cards of the Association. The reports of the accounting firms
revealed that the Association had 644 members out of 1015 hourly paid
employees (63.45 percent). As a result of these findings, on February
18, 1942, the Company entered into a contract with the Association for
1 year on the basis of a plant-wide unit covering all hourly paid em-
ployees, but excluding supervisory employees. The contract provided
for its automatic renewal from year to year, subject to termination
upon 30 days' written notice by either party. On December 16, 1942,
the I. B. E. W. notified the Company of its claimed majority among
the following employees : electricians and helpers, electric crane oper-
1118„ DE'CTSIONS OF,-NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ators, electric charging car operators; electric motor operators, electric
shopmen, electric crane mechanics and helpers. A conference was re-
quested to•negotiate an agreement with the Company on behalf of these
employees. The Company refused the request on the ground that the
employees sought to be bargained for were part of the unit already
represented by the Association. Thereafter, neither party to the con-
tract gave notice of intention to terminate or amend, although' on
March 2, 1943, an amendment to the contract was executed setting forth
in detail a new vacation policy.
Since the I. B. E. W. gave notice of its claims in due time, under the
Board's well-established practice there 'is no merit in the Company's
contention that the contract is a bar to a present determination of rep-
resentatives." However, since we find in Section IV, below, that the
bargaining unit sought to be established by the petition is inappropri-
ate for the purposes of collective bargaining, we also find that no ques-
tion has been raised concerning the representation of employees in an
appropriate bargaining unit. I
IV. THE ALLEGED APPROPRIATE UNIT
1. The contention of the parties ,
In its original petition the I. B. E. W. sought a unit composed of the
employees mentioned above. The unit comprises the following ap-
proximate members :
23 out of '23 employees in the electrical department
37 out of 198 employees in the open-hearth department
15 out of 110 employees in the blooming mill and billet mill and
yard
2 out of -82 employees in the finishing mills
8 out of 175 employees in the shipping, warehouse, and prepara-
tion departments
8 out of 82 employees in the iron mill
8 out of 87 employees in the tube mill,
At the close of the hearing the I. B. E. W. amended its petition so as to
limit the unit to those employees above enumerated who punch their
time cards in the machine shop and whose time cards are signed and
approved by the chief electrician. This amendment eliminates the
employees in the finishing mills, the shipping, warehouse, and prepa-
ration departments, and the iron and tube mills, thus cutting the pro-
posed unit from about 100 to 7^ employees.
I See Matter of Pressed Steel Car Company, Inc and Steel Workers Organizing Com-
mittee, 41 N. L. R B 6; also Matter of Service Wood Heel Company, Inc, doing business
under style and trade name of Russell Heel Company and United Shoe Workers of
America, Wood Heel Turners Local 12-A (C I. 0.), 41 N. L. R. B 45, and cases cited therein.
LACLEDE STEEL COMPANY 1119
The Association and the Company contend that an industrial unit
is appropriate and that small craft units should not be carved out of
the contract unit.
2. The Company
• The Company is engaged in what is known as the "continuous proc-
ess" of 'manufacturing steel. The Alton plant is divided into about 15
departments, and each succeeding department is dependent for its raw
or semi-finished materials upon the operations of the preceding depart-
ment. There are no stock piles accumulated and only sufficient 'semi-
finished material is manufactured in the various operations to provide
for the continuous operation of the business. The plant has about 74
structures spread over 76* acres and has a capacity of about 20,000 tons
of finished steel per month. The Company's policies with respect to
wages, hours, working conditions, and benefits by way of savings con-
tracts and group insurance, have been put into' practice uniformly
throughout the plant and not on a departmental or group basis. All
employees are hired under one central authority and through a single
employment office. They are all subject to the same company rules
and discipline.
3. Prior attempts at organization by other labor organizations
During 1942 the United Steelworkers of America, District 50,
U. M. W. A., and the American Federation of Labor conducted
organizational campaigns at the plant. All campaigns were conducted
on an industrial basis. On September 8, 1942, the A. F. L. advised
the Company that it represented a majority of all hourly paid produc-
tion employees and requested recognition on their behalf. In view
of the contract held by the Association, this request was refused and
a conference was held at the Board's Regional Office to arrange for a
consent election to settle the matter. The Association; U. S. A.,
A. F. L., and I. B. E. W. all participated in the conference, District 50
having previously indicated its intention to withdraw from organiza-
tional activity at the plant. A tentative solution' was worked out
whereby the U. S. A. withdrew and a representative of the A. F. L.
signed an agreement for the holding of a consent election on the basis
of an industrial unit. As a participant in the conference, the
I. B. E. W. acquiesced in this agreement. Subsequently, a disagree-
ment arose among the parties over matters unrelated to the unit and
the consent election was never held. The A. F. L. then withdrew, and
only the I. B. E. W. and the Association presently are interested in
organizing the employees of the Company.
-' 1120' . DE'CTSIONS * OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
4. Functional considerations
The evidence clearly shows that the charging car operators and
cranemen employed in the open-hearth department, and the crane
operators and pulpit operators employed in the blooming mills, billet
mill and yard, sought to be represented by .the I. B. E. W., are under
the complete supervision of the superintendents of their respective
departments. These employees are permanently assigned to their de-
partments. Some of them participate in production bonuses, while
those' employed in the electrical department do not. The Company
does not consider its crane operators to be exceptionally skilled em-
ployees nor are their hourly wage-rates, any higher than those of the.
average production employees: There is evidence that a female em-
'ployee recently learned to' operate a crane in 3 days. Because of the
weight of the commodity dealt with, the Company has cranes of dif-
ferent types in nearly all of its departments, and • at times some em-
ployees who are not regularly assigned cranemen operate them.t The
record -likewise reveals that it is considered an advancement (and also
better paid) tb be taken from operating a crane and put to work'on
certain kinds of production work; particularly those involving melting;
heating, or rolling. During slack seasons cranemen are sometimes
transferred to production work entirely unrelated to crane operation
or repair, merely to keep them on ,the pay roll.
The maintenance employees in the electrical department work in all
departments of the plant and their pay is charged to the departments
in which they perform their services. They ring in at the machine
shop and receive , assignments from the chief electrician. The
I. B. E. W. attempted to demonstrate a similarity of function through-
cut the unit it claims, and to set it apart from the remainder of the
plant, by showing that the employees therein operate or repair elec-
trical equipment. However, over 75 percent of the production staff,
operates electrical equipment of one sort or another. Furthermore,
..repair work is sometimes performed by supervisors or others who are
not within the claimed unit. The I. B. E. W. admits that some of
the employees in the claimed unit have different tasks or functions
to perform, but states that this would not "detract from their com-
munity of interest as a unit of workers" in view of the fact that they
have "mastered the art of the electrical trade." The Company, how-
ever, asserts that many employees in the electrical department have.
not undergone apprenticeships but have simply learned all the
electrical" knowledge that they need to know while on the job.
LACLEDE STEEL COMPANY 1121
5. Collective bargaining in the industry
In the- Tennnesse Coal, Iron and Railroad Company case we found,
citing voluminous economic data,' that collective bargaining in the
steel industry has been conducted on an industrial basis. This, con- -
elusion is confirmed by testimony introduced by the Company herein.
with respect to the type of unit established by' various contracts coy Br-
ing employees of other steel manufacturer,s. The contracts referred
to.by the Company's witness are made-on an industrial basis, with the
occasional exclusion of the crafts of die sinkers, pattern makers, and
bricklayers. Ina recent case, involving a 'steel plant,3 the Board,
established an industrial unit, but excluded the bricklayers. 'In-hat
case there was a long history of separate bargaining by the 'brick-
layers; moreover, the petitioning union had no objection to the estab-
lishment of this separate craft unit. In the Tennessee Coal, Iron and
Railroad Company case, the Board was confronted with a situation
which is substantially parallel to the instant case. In that case we
determined that a unit of "electrical workers," in the absence of a
showing that they constitute a well-defined craft or a definable func-
tional group of employees, should not be carved out of a broad
production and maintenance unit. In several recent cases,4 we have
found that crane operators do not comprise a peculiarly skilled craft
but are capable of being trained in from 21/2 weeks to 4 months. The
evidence in the instant case supports-this finding.
For all these reasons we are of the opinion and find that the unit
now sought by the petitioner is not appropriate and the petition, ac-
cordingly, will be dismissed.5
ORDER
Upon the basis of the foregoing findings of fact, the National Labor
Relations .Board hereby orders that the petition for investigation and
certification of representatives of employees of Laclede Steel Com-
pany, Alton , Illinois, filed by Local 649, International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers, A. F. of L., be, and it hereby is , dismissed.
2 Matter of Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company and Local B-287, International
Brotherhood of Electrical Wor7,ers, 39 N. L. R. B 617, 624
8 See Matter of Republic Steel Corporation and United Steelworkers of America, C. 1., 0.,
47 N L R B 37.
4 See Matter of ,Sheffield Steel Corp. of Texas and United Steelworkers of America,
Local No. 8!08, 43 N L R B 956; Matter of Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing
Company (Louisville Ordnance Dtivaston) and , International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers,•Local Union #369, A F of L , 49 N. L. R. B., No. 59.
a See cases cited in the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company case, supra.