Threads-Inc.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 28, 1971

191 N.L.R.B. 667 (N.L.R.B. 1971)

THREADS-INCORPORATED
Threads-Incorporated and District 16 of the Interna-
tional Association of Machinsts and Aerospace
Workers, AFL-CIO, Petitioner . Case 11-RC-3280
June 28, 1971
DECISION AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS JENKINS
AND KENNEDY
Upon a petition duly filed under Section 9(c) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, a hearing
was held before Hearing Officer Donald L. Dotson.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers
in connection with this case to a three-member panel.
The Hearing Officer's rulings made at the hearing are
free from prejudicial error and 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.
2. The Petitioner is a labor organization claiming to
represent certain employees of the Employer.
3. No question affecting commerce exists concerning
the representation 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 seeks a departmental unit comprised
of all production employees of the Employer's wet pro-
cess department (also known as the dye house) in a
thread manufacturing mill at Gastonia, North
Carolina. The Employer contends that the requested
unit is based purely upon the extent of the Petitioner's
present organization, after an unsuccessful attempt to
organize the entire plant, and that in any event the
requested unit is an inappropriate one for collective
bargaining. Neither party has filed a brief. There is no
bargaining history.
The exact number of employees employed at the
Employer's Gastonia, North Carolina, plant (the only
one here involved) is not disclosed by the record. Its
operations are organized into a number of departments,
including scheduling, storage, wet process (dye house),
synthetic, winding, quilling, glazing, inspecting, label-
ing, wrapping, and shipping, where cotton and syn-
thetic fibers are used primarily to manufacture thread.
About 95 percent of all fiber utilized by the Employer
goes through its wet process department, while the
remaining 5 percent goes to a winding department to
be wound in natural form or to the glazing room for
polishing and drying. All fiber moving through the
plant is accompanied by processing instructions issued
by a scheduling department to the storage area, from
which the yarn is released for manufacturing. The wet
process department operates on three shifts and has
191 NLRB No. 117
667
about 85 employees in four main sections, each with its
own supervisor: package dyeing; warp dyeing; fininsh-
ing, mercerizing and bleaching; and a laboratory. It
occupies a 35,000 square foot area which is not com-
pletely enclosed but which is separated from the quill-
ing and winding departments by a wall. Various clas-
sifications of employees work in the wet process
department, and such employees regularly interchange
with employees in the Employer's other departments.
Loaders obtain yarn from a prestorage area, manually
load it on trucks and position it near the dye machines.
Dye machine operators, supplied by dye weighers or by
employees in a mezzanine drug room, put the yarn into
the dye machines either in packages or in large steel
baskets, where it is dyed, and later dried by drying and
vacuum machine operators. The processed yarn is then
sent to finishing machines where it is washed and dried
by finishing machine operators. Haulers then carry the
yarn to the quilling department for further handling.
About half of the wet process department employees
have duties which are manual and routine, relating to
the repetitive process of placing yarn in racks or hold-
ers for the dyeing and drying operation, while most of
the remainder are machine operators. Employees in the
wet process department and other departments of the
Employer's plant achieve proficiency in a period rang-
ing from a few days to about 2 weeks depending upon
their classification, the machine operators requiring the
longer period. No particular skills or educational qua-
lifications are required of employees in any department.
Employees are all hired by the personnel department
and, after interview by department heads, assigned
where needed. The machines in the wet process depart-
ment (dye house) are maintained by employees from
other departments. Starting rates and vacation benefits
in the wet process department are the same as in the
Employer's other departments. Yarn originating in the
storage area flows through the wet process department
on a continuous basis, and a primary function of the
department's single supervisor is to coordinate product
flow with the other departments. A work stoppage in
the wet process department would cause other depart-
ments to cease operating in a period ranging from a few
hours to a few days depending upon the department
and backlog of material there available.
The Petitioner has not produced evidence of the ex-
istence of departmental units of wet process (dye house)
employees at other industrial thread manufacturing
plants, but contends that such a unit should be found
to be an appropriate one at the Employer's plant be-
cause the employees sought to be included in it consti-
tute a functional and homogeneous grouping of em-
ployees in a well defined department which is distinct
from the Employer's other departments. Petitioner,
while showing that in a number of textile plants it
primarily represents units of machine shop employees
668 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
in maintenance departments , concedes that it repre-
sents no separate unit of wet process (dye house) em-
ployees in thread manufacturing mills.
Wet process department (dye house) employees have
relatively short training periods . Whether they perform
manual or machine work, their duties are repetitive in
nature and unskilled . The functions they perform are
closely integrated with those of employees in other de-
partments whom Petitioner would exclude from the
requested unit , as is evident from the careful scheduling
which is required to keep all departments operating on
a continuous basis , and the impact upon other depart-
ments which a stoppage in the dye house creates. More-
over, no departmental units of wet process employees
have been shown to exist in other plants manufacturing
industrial thread . In view of the foregoing circum-
stances , we find that the wet process department em-
ployees do not constitute a distinct, separate group of
employees such as the Board finds appropriate for rep-
resentation on either a departmental or craft basis. Ac-
cordingly, we find that the requested departmental unit
of such employees is inappropriate . As the Petitioner
does not seek to represent a plantwide unit, or any
other appropriate unit , we shall dismiss the petition.'
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition in Case 11-RC-
3280 be, and it hereby is, dismissed.
' See Hanes Hosiery Mills Company, 133 NLRB 760, 762,