NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

180 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
all of the company's production employees, including its craft workers,
constituted a single unit. Another labor organization, to which
three craft miions were affiliated, claimed that the employees in the
three crafts covered by those unions constituted one unit. The
Board said :
* * * The three crafts, however, have no more in common with each other
than with five or six other crafts in the Company's plant. The only bond between
these three crafts which is not common to all of the more highly skilled
crafts in the Company's plant is the membership of their unions in the Council.
In the Company's River Rouge plant there are 18 or 20 different crafts, of which
at lea st'five or six are as highly skilled as those organized in unions affiliated
with the Council and have the same basic minimum wage. Other crafts could
be organized in craft unions eligible to membership in the Council. Its membership
is not confined to the craft unions petitioning here.
'The function of trade councils, such as the Council here, in collective bargaining
has always been to act as the representatives of their member craft
unions, and not as representatives of the Individual members of those craft
unions. They have never sought to take the place of the unions.
In the light of the above facts, it is clear that the unit requested by the Council
is not the proper unit.
The Board then rejected the contention that all of the production
employees constituted a single unit, and found that since the craft
workers in question were highly skilled, they constituted three separate
units."
Where the Board finds that a craft unit is appropriate, it is sometimes
called on to determine the exact limits of the craft. In Matter
of Great Lakes Engineering 'Works," a separate unit was requested for
the company's welders. The Board held first that although welders
and burners ordinarily do not constitute a craft, since their work is
done in connection with various other skilled operations, in this case
they did constitute a separate unit, because of the unusual amount of
welding and burning done in the shipbuilding and repair industry,
and the fact that the company's welders and burners had been segregated
in a separate department for 20 years. It held, second, that the
union's contention for the exclusion of burners from the unit was not
warranted, in view of the similarity of the work, and the lack of a
sharp dividing line between welders and burners."
(D) FOREMEN AND OTHER SUPERVISORY EMPLOYEES
The exclusion of supervisory employees from bargaining units
composed of ordinary employees is based on their connection with the
management, with which collective bargaining is to take place. The
dividing line between supervisory and nonsupervisory employees,
however, is not always clearly defined. Generally, the Board has held
7° See also : Matter of Schick Dry Shaver Company and Ledge No. 1557, International
Association of Machinists, 4 N. L. R. B. 246, and Matter of M. H. Birge and Sons Company
and United Wail Paper Craftsmen and Workers of North America, 5 N. L. R. B.
314.
TT Matter of Great Lakes Engineering Works and Welders International Association,
5 N. L. R. B. 788.
78 See also : Matter of The Novelty Steam Boiler Works and Local 101 Welders, Burners,
Apprentices, A. F. of L., 7 N. L. R. B. 969, where welders were held not to constitute
a separate unit because of the absence of factors present in the Great Lakes case;
Matter of Waterbury Manufacturing Company and International Association of Machinists,
Local 1535, 5 N. L. R. B. 288, where the Board excluded from the appropriate
unit for machinists certain tool setters which the craft union did not wish to include.
and certain unskilled laborers, which it did want included ; and Matter of Fairbanks,
Morse t Company and Pattern Makers Association of Beloit, 7 N. L. R. B. 229, where
certain unskilled employees were excluded from a unit limited to pattern makers.