United Pacific Insurance Co.

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Apr 30, 1971

190 N.L.R.B. 218 (N.L.R.B. 1971)

218 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
United Pacific Insurance Company , Employer-Peti-
tioner and Local 87, International Brotherhood of
Bookbinders , AFL-CIO. Case 19-RM-861
April 30, 1971
DECISION ON REVIEW AND ORDER
BY CHAIRMAN MILLER AND MEMBERS BROWN
AND JENKINS
On October 26, 1970, the Regional Director. for Re-
gion 19 issued a Decision and Direction of Election in
the above-entitled procceding in which he found appro-
priate, in accord with the Union's position, a unit
confined in scope to the printing section employees of
the Employer's general services department at its
Tacoma, Washington, headquarters office. Thereafter,
in accordance with the National Labor Relations
Board Rules and Regulations, the Employer-Petitioner
filed a timely Request for Review of the Regional
Director's Decision on the grounds that, in reaching his
unit determination, he departed from established
Board policy and made findings of fact which are
clearly erroneous.
On November 20, 1970, the National Labor. Rela-
tions Board by telegraphic Order granted the request
for review and stayed the election pending Decision on
Review. Thereafter, the Employer filed a brief on re-
view.
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the Board
has delegated its powers in connection with this case to
a three-member panel.
Upon the entire record in the case, including the
Employer's request for review and its brief on review,
the Board makes the following findings:
The Employer contends that the appropriate unit
should embrace employees in the printing section plus
those in the distribution and mailing sections of its
general services department, together with the secre-
tary to the department's manager. There is no history
of collective bargaining at the Employer's Tacoma
facility and no labor organization is seeking to repre-
sent a unit broader than the printing section.
The Employer is engaged in underwriting multiple-
line insurance. Its Tacoma headquarters office is
housed in a single building, except for the aforemen-
tioned three sections of the general services department
which are located in the basement of an adjoining
building.' Of the approximately 475 employees and
supervisory personnel at its headquarters office, the
Employer alleges to be appropriate herein a unit of the
22 employees who work in the basement: 11 employees
in the printing section; 6 employees in distribution; 4
employees in mailing; and the secretary to the depart-
ment's manager. Each section has its own supervisor or
working foreman who reports to the department
manager, whose office is also in the basement.'
The basement is an open area, except for three en-
closed rooms: the manager's office; the office in which
the addressograph machine is located; and the dark-
room. The three sections of the department there
located are otherwise separated only by waist-high
walls or racks or tables.
The primary function of the printing section is to
print and bind a mass of forms, brochures, advertising
pieces, and other documents which are then distributed
throughout the Employer's operations, including its 21
branch offices. The printing section does no commer-
cial printing. In the printing section, there is a press
area with six employees; a bindery area with two em-
ployees; a composition area with two employees; and a
camera and platemaking area with one employee.
The pressmen use a multilith, an envelope press and
duplicators of two sizes, 10- by 15-inch machines
(which are called 1250's), and 15- by 18-inch machines
(which are called 1850's). The Employer has no ap-
prenticeship program for its pressmen or for any other
classification in the printing section.' The Employer
tries whenever possible to promote people into the
pressmen's position from other sections of the general
services department, usually from supply or mailing,
first to the bindery, and then to the presses. It takes
approximately 4 to 6 weeks for such an employee to
learn to operate the basic machines in the press area.
The Employer also hires employees with minimal ex-
perience from outside as pressmen.
The pressmen seldom perform any repair work on
the machines and they perform no maintenance work
on them as the Employer has a maintenance contract
with the company which supplied it the machines." The
Employer contracts out the more complicated printing
it occasionally needs to job shops, assertedly because its
pressmen cannot adequately perform such printing to
the desired quality. The Union contends that the reason
is, rather, the small size of the Employer's machines.
The two bindery employees make the pads used in
assembling 85 percent of the printed material in tablet
form; cut paper stock to size for the pressmen; trim
paper stock and copy; drill holes in the paper; operate
a folder machine; pick up printed material and assem-
ble it in part; and stock the final product for pickup by
the supply employees. The only part of their work re-
quiring any training longer than a week is the operation
The Regional Director found that one other basement employee who
does the scheduling is managerial. No request for review was filed as to this
determination.
' The fourth section of the department, the supply section, is located in The pressmen admittedly are not journeyman craftsmen.
the main office building and is not involved here. What little repair work the pressmen may do is very simple.
190 NLRB No. 39
UNITED PACIFIC INSURANCE CO. 219
of the folder machine, which takes about I month to
learn.
The employees in the composition area operate IBM
typesetting equipment and they do the pasteup work
for the cameraman. A 1- to 2-week period of training
is prescribed for operation of the IBM equipment.
The cameraman produces negatives and stats and
makes plates for the presses. It takes 1 month to learn
the basic camera work and another month or so to
learn the more complicated work done by the section.
In the distribution section, there are four distribution
clerks, an addressograph operator, and a photocopy
machine operator. The four clerks gather material, sta-
ple and collate it, and then insert it into envelopes for
mailing . They also make up manuals and insert
material into binders. Significantly, they also run a
stitching machine to stitch reports together and operate
a binder to bind booklets. The collating which they
perform is done either manually or by machine. One
machine is located in the distribution section while the
other is in the bindery area. It takes 1 week to train a
distribution clerk.
The addressograph operator prepares the plates for
the addressograph and addresses envelopes, mailing la-
bels, and galley sheets for the Employer's agents. The
photocopy machine operator runs the photocopiers
and at times does some stitching and binding.
The four mail clerks receive and sort all mail coming
into the headquarters office and send out the outgoing
mail. They deliver to the proper offices the incoming
mail and intraoffice papers. They also pick up the
finished products of the printing section for delivery or
mailing to the designated offices. Twenty percent of
their workday is spent in delivering material that comes
from the Employer's presses. It takes I week to train
a mailroom employee.
The secretary to the manager does secretarial work
10 percent of the time, works on purchase orders 40
percent of the time, checks bills against purchase orders
20 percent of her time, and does work such as collating
or folding for the remaining 30 percent of the time.
In the course of a normal workday, there is much
contact between employees of the printing section and
other employees in the basement. The bindery em-
ployees are constantly bringing material into distribu-
tion to be collated and the mail clerks daily pick up
finished printed matter from the bindery and deliver it.
The distribution clerks are in and out of the bindery
area many times a day either to pick up loose pages for
collating or to use the collator in the bindery.' Addi-
tionally, distribution clerks also do some binding.
There have been temporary transfers from both the
mail and distribution sections into the bindery. In
emergencies, such as a large mailing, all the depart-
ment's employees, including the pressmen, may be as-
signed to assist in the operation to be performed. Fur-
ther, the Employer tries to train the employees in
various phases of its operations, rather than in only one
position, and, moreover, it encourages the relatively
unskilled mailing and supply section employees to ad-
vance to pressmen positions.
All the employees in the general services department
are salaried and all share the same fringe benefits. The
employees in the basement have common coffeebreaks
and a common lunch hour. The employees usually eat
their lunch in their own general work areas and then
mingle with each other during the lunch period. The
hours of work for the department are generally 8:30
a.m. to 4:45 p.m., with the exception that five of the six
pressmen and the two composition clerks have been
granted permission by the Employer to work from 7
a.m. to 3 p.m.
In view of the foregoing facts, we find that the print-
ing section employees do not constitute an appropriate
lithographic process unit of the type the Board has
approved in the past. The case of Bank of America,
National Trust and Savings Association, 174 NLRB
No. 51, relied on by the Regional Director, is inappos-
ite. In that case, a unit of the employer's design and
format control and reproduction department em-
ployees was found to be an appropriate unit. The Board
was satisfied that the considerable skills required of
employees in the department to perform the necessary
work was sufficient to constitute them as a lithographic
process unit. Here as above indicated, inexperienced
pressmen require but 4 to 6 weeks to achieve compe-
tence in the operation of the Employer's basic printing
machines. Also, the quality of the work produced by
the employees is not as high as was required in Bank
of America. Further, the Union here seeks only a part
of the larger department, and the facts show that the
employees in the basement are in frequent contact with
one another and that distribution employees have on
occasion performed some of the work of the bindery
employees in the printing section.
Accordingly, we find, contrary to the Regional Di-
rector, that a unit limited to printing section employees
is not appropriate. As the Union does not claim to
represent a broader unit, we shall dismiss the petition.
ORDER
It is hereby ordered that the petition herein be, and
it hereby is, dismissed.
' This same collator can be attached to a press and run automatically.
When this is done, the collator is operated in the same bindery area by a
pressman.