Sources: National Labor Relations Board; CP staff
The NLRB concurs with a regional hearing officer’s determination that Teamsters Local 853-represented employees at an Oakland, Calif., ready mixed site are entitled to batch plant work a prior owner assigned to Operating Engineers Local 3 members. In fall 2009, the latter union challenged staffing of Central Concrete Supply’s Embarcadero Road facility with Teamsters 853 members transferred from a second plant, on Peralta Street, the San Jose-based producer now uses as a satellite. In addition to the work assignment, Local 3 had also sought a nearly $1,600 pension fund contribution to presumably cover a mid-2009 window during which its members had been replaced by Teamsters 853 counterparts.
Operating Engineers had represented Embarcadero batch plant staff from the mid-1980s until May 2009, when Hanson Aggregates leased the property to Central Concrete. Hanson transferred some staff to another facility but laid off six Operating Engineers who ran the batch plant. Local 3 indicated the potential for picketing other Central Concrete ready mixed facilities where Operating Engineers represent batch plant staff. The producer has separate collective bargaining agreements with the Teamsters and Operating Engineers through the multiemployer Aggregates and Concrete Association of Northern California.
NLRB determined that employer preference and past practice entitled Central Concrete to honor at Embarcadero a collective bargaining agreement Teamsters 853 members ratified while running the Peralta site. Staff can interchange batch plant operations and driving duties at both operations. Central Concrete’s New Jersey-based sister, Eastern Concrete Materials, recently saw the NLRB settle a metro-New York ready mixed plant jurisdictional dispute with the awarding of driving and batch work to Teamsters- and Operating Engineers-represented staff over Laborers peers.