Skip to main content

Panel OK's bill overturning NLRB's 'workers are supervisors' ruling

Date Posted: September 28 2007

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Ultimately, it's a vote whose purpose will probably only illustrate the difference between typically union-friendly Democrats and anti-union Republicans.

By a 26-20 party-line vote 11 months after the rulings were issued, the Democratic-run House Education and Labor Committee voted Sept. 19 to overturn the National Labor Relations Board's "workers are supervisors" decisions.

If approved by Congress and signed by anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush - an unlikely prospect - the legislation would bar companies from arbitrarily declaring up to 34 million U.S. workers as "supervisors," who would be unprotected by labor law and open to harassment, firing, arbitrary management decisions and even forced participation in anti-union campaigns.

Nurses who assign other nurses and employees to tasks were the focus of the NLRB's "Kentucky River" rulings, but it's widely anticipated that job assignments made by foremen and even journeymen in the construction industry could also result in their being labeled a "supervisor," and ineligible for union representation.

The legislation, HR 1644 by Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) says any worker who "assigns" another worker to do something for short periods of time - such as charge nurses assigning aides or construction workers teaching apprentices - or "has a responsibility to direct" another worker is not a supervisor. HR 1644 also says a person has to be a supervisor a majority of his or her working time to be considered a supervisor, unprotected by labor law.

Andrews said his bill "will overturn the misguided decision of the NLRB in the Kentucky River trilogy and restore the law back to Congress' original intent. The affirmative vote of all of my Democratic colleagues will protect the right to organize and collectively bargain for millions of American workers."

Right Wing Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.), the panel's top Republican, called the legislation "a transparent attempt by Big Labor to increase the ranks of dues-paying union members."

The Bush-named Republican majority on the NLRB, in the Kentucky River decisions, named for the nursing home that first claimed its nurses are supervisors, said nurses could be supervisors if they undertook supervisory duties as little as 10%-15% of the time.

And any one of 12 duties, including hiring, firing, evaluation, ordering a lower-ranking staffer to do something, and so on, could make a worker a supervisor.