General Electric Co., 662 (1969)

General Electric Company (Ohio Lamp Plant) and International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, AFL-CIO-CLC. • Case 8-CA-5376

November 21, 1969 DECISION AND ORDER

BY CHAIRMAN MCCULLOCH AND MEMBERS

FANNING AND JENKINS On September 9, 1969, Trial Examiner Samuel M. Singer issued his Decision in the above-entitled proceeding, finding that the Respondent had engaged in and was engaging in certain unfair labor practices and recommending that it cease and desist therefrom and take certain affirmative action, as set forth in the attached Trial, Examiner's Decision.

Thereafter, the Respondent filed exceptions to the Trial Examiner's Decision and a supporting brief, and the Charging Party filed an answering brief.

Pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor Relations Board has delegated its powers in connection with this case to a three-member panel.

The Board has reviewed the rulings of the Trial Examiner made at the hearing and finds that no prejudicial error was committed. The rulings are hereby affirmed. The Board has considered the Trial Examiner's Decision, the exceptions, the briefs, and the entire record in this case, and hereby adopts the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the Trial Examiner, as modified herein.

ORDER

Pursuant to Section 10(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the National Labor Relations Board adopts as its Order the Recommended Order of the Trial Examiner, as modified below, and hereby orders that Respondent,

General Electric Company (Ohio Lamp Plant);

Warren, Ohio, its officers, agents, successors, and assigns, shall take the action set forth in the Trial Examiner's Recommended Order, as herein modified.

1. Delete from paragraph 1(a) that part thereof which reads 'relevant or necessary to the processing of employee grievances or complaints,' and substitute 'relevant and necessary to the processing of employee grievances.' 2. Delete from paragraph 2(a) that' part thereof which reads 'or complaints.' 3. Delete from the first indented paragraph of the Appendix that part which reads 'relevant or necessary to the processing of employee grievances or complaints' and substitute 'relevant and necessary to the processing of employee grievances.' TRIAL EXAMINER'S DECISION SAMUEL M SINGER, Trial Examiner: This proceeding was tried before me at Warren, Ohio, on June 19, 1969, pursuant to a charge filed on March 6 and complaint issued on April 18, 1969 The issue litigated was whether Respondent violated Section 8(a)(5) and (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, by refusing to permit the Charging Party, as representative of its employees, to timestudy an operation which was the subject of a grievance. All parties appeared and were afforded full opportunity to be heard and to examine and cross-examine witnesses Briefs were received from Respondent and Charging Party.

Upon the entire record in the case' and from my observation of the witnesses, I make the following FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

I BUSINESS OF RESPONDENT AND LABOR

ORGANIZATION INVOLVED

Respondent, a New York corporation, manufactures and sells lamps and related products at its plant in Warren, Ohio Its annual interstate sales there exceed $50,000. I find that Respondent is engaged in commerce within the meaning of Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act The Charging Party (the Union) is and has at all times been a labor, organization within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act.

11. THE UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES A Sequence of Events 1. Introduction The issues here are similar to those considered by the Board in General Electric Company, 173 NLRB No' 22, affd 414 F 2d 918 (C A 4), involving Respondent's Hickory, North Carolina, plant S The national agreement covering that plant also covers the production and maintenance employees at the Warren, Ohio, plant involved in this proceeding One of the issues in Hickory - the Union's right to conduct an independent timestudy at the plant to enable the Union to assess the accuracy of Respondent's timestudies of an operation involved in a grievance - is also involved here 2 The change in piecework rate based on Company timestudies The Warren lamp plant manufactures, among other products, 300-and 500-watt rough service lamps, or light bulbs Part of the process of making the inside of the bulb is the putting together of the 'stem' (containing the lead wires) and the 'button' (containing the wire supports for the filament coils) by heating the 'cane' (inner end of the glass stem) so that a piece of music wire extending out of the button may be inserted into the glass in the cane end of the stem This operation is known as 'arboring' and the combined piece (stem and button) as an 'arbor ' 'Transcript corrected by my order on notice dated August 19, 1969 'That decision will hereafter be referred to as Hickory At the parties' request I have taken official notice of the record in that case, portions of which have been physically incorporated here 179 NLRB No 122

The arboring is a piece-work job and during the period here involved was assigned to only one operator who worked at it on a part-time basis. The job was classified as R-9, with an anticipated earned rate (A.E.R.) or expected production per hour price two 'R' levels above the job rate, or R-1l This means that the operator would make the equivalent of two steps above the R-9 rate if she attained expected production and for production above the rate she would earn additional compensation over the R-1 1 rate. The R-1 l rate was $2.525 per hour prior to October, when it was increased as part of a general wage increase to $2 645 per hour During the period here involved Sophie Peck, an R-l I classified worker, performed the arboring operation, along with day-work fobs.' Because of her R-I1 classification she was in effect guaranteed a minimum equal to the A E R , i.e , the R-1 l rate If she exceeded the expected production level, she could earn far in excess of that rate.

Company records show that during August 5-October 4, 1968,' Mrs. Peck never exceeded an average production of 142 arbors an hour, except once - well below the expected production rate of 220 per hour S At the hearing Mrs. Peck explained that during this period she was 'quality-conscious,' concentrating on quality at the expense of production It is undisputed that quality was indeed a problem at that time, both Peck and General Foreman Robinson testifying that when production was speeded up too much the glass end of the stem (the cane) would be heated too rapidly, causing strain cracks to develop Between October 7 and 16, however, Peck drastically increased production - averaging as much as 300 per hour, but sacrificing quality because, as she put it, 'I was told I was going to be changed in my classification,' possibly dropping as, many, as two steps, unless her production improved 6 This increased output resulted in considerable quality deterioration, with as many as 10 cracked pieces in a tray of 50.

Because it became 'clear that the limiting factor on production of arbors 'was a quality problem' (Resp. br.

3), Respondent's 'glass specialist' was given the task' 'to analyze the crack problem' and bring in recommendations As a result of his report, Respondent, at the end of October or early November, added an annealing operation to the arboring process. Explaining this change, Mrs. Peck testified Well, before the change I took a stem from the .,table and held it in a fire and held it until I would insert it in what is called an arbor . Now, -I must take the stem from the table, place it on a pre-heating fire which we call annealer and it must pre-heat this arbor. Then I take . it from the annealer, place it into the inserting • fire and heat it the rest of the way and then insert the wire the same as before On December 23, after timestudying the arboring operation with the new added annealer, the Company placed into effect a revised expected production rate ' 'Mrs Peck also was the department Union steward 'All dates refer to 1968 unless otherwise indicated 'Actually, 1959 timestudies under the Company 's system known as Motion Time Survey (MTS), established an average ,expected production of 251 per hour Respondent in its brief (p 3) defines MTS as 'a General Electric system consisting of predetermined time values applied to specific motions, predetermined from numerous tests under numerous conditions The values are preprinted on the M T S forms ' See also the , Hickory' case supra, fn 2 'General Foreman Robinson admitted that ' From time to time, [employees] are talked to about their low production and the make-up pay we are giving them ' Respondent's timestudy engineer (Smith) testified that at first he attempted a stopwatch timestudy of only the new annealing process; but, finding that he- could not accurately separate this from the whole arboring job, he decided to restudy the entire operation. Representing the Union at this timestudy were Chief Steward-Greenfield and Department Steward Peck (the observed operator), but Greenfield had to leave after Smith made some preliminary observations. General Foreman Robinson also was present.

Smith testified that he began to time by his watch as the operator picked up a stem, and ran it until 79 arbors were completed by placing them in the rack. This took 20 93 minutes. He jotted down the time (seconds) it took to complete each arbor consecutively, noting ' such movements as getting more stems; changing trays, and removing cardboard. He then determined the seconds between each noted reading (the interval' between completions of arbors), and the total number completed in 3,600 seconds (I hour) and in 3,414 seconds (the-hour, less allowances for breaks, etc ) coming up with an expected production level- of 215 per hour based on Peck's performance.

Smith further testified that in addition to timing the operation by stopwatch, he made a...