NLRB ruled late last month that Operating Engineers Local 3-represented Cemex Construction Materials L.P. employees are entitled to operate a bucket loader on an aggregate barge serving a San Francisco ready mixed plant, thus rejecting an International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 jurisdictional claim
Sources: National Labor Relations Board, Washington, D.C.; CP staff
NLRB ruled late last month that Operating Engineers Local 3-represented Cemex Construction Materials L.P. employees are entitled to operate a bucket loader on an aggregate barge serving a San Francisco ready mixed plant, thus rejecting an International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 jurisdictional claim. The loader transfers material from the barge deck to a hopper, also on the vessel, which feeds aggregate to Cemex’s Port of San Francisco Pier 92 batch plant.
Cemex inherited the former RMC Pacific Materials operation from its early-2006 RMC Group takeover. In late-September 2006, shortly after the plant opened, Cemex began supplanting dump truck hauling with aggregate delivery by barge, prompting Longshoremen officials’ claim of jurisdiction of Pier 92 vessel-based work. Local 10 picketed the property, but agreed in mid-October to cease such activity until a jurisdictional dispute was resolved through the NLRB.
Last month’s ruling stemmed from November 2007 hearings that led Board officials to acknowledge a Cemex-Operating Engineers collective bargaining agreement, and conclude that Local 3 employees interchangeably perform barge unloading and other functions at the ready mixed plant, while a Longshoremen-represented worker would be confined to bucket duty. NLRB also found that within the San Francisco Bay area, assignment of aggregate and cement unloading to Operating Engineers or Longshoremen varies by employer.