National Labor Relations Board v. Health Care & Retirement Corp. of America (511 U.S. 571, 1994)

Justice Kennedy

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The National Labor Relations Act (Act) affords employees the rights to organize and to engage in collective bargaining free from employer interference. The Act does not grant those rights to supervisory employees, however, so the statutory definition of supervisor becomes essential in determining which employees are covered by the Act. In this case, we decide the narrow question whether the National Labor Relations Board’s (Board’s) test for determining if a nurse is a supervisor is consistent with the statutory definition.

I

Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. Act of July 5,1935, ch. 372,49 Stat. 449. In the early years of its operation, the Act did not exempt supervisory employees from its coverage; as a result, supervisory employees could organize as part of bargaining units and negotiate with the employer. Employers complained that this produced an imbalance between labor and management, but in 1947 this Court refused to carve out a supervisory employee exception from the Act’s broad coverage. The Court stated that “it is for Congress, not for us, to create exceptions or qualifications at odds with [the Act’s] plain terms.” Packard Motor Car Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485, 490 (1947). Later that year, Congress did just that, amending the statute so that the term “ ‘employee’ . . . shall not include . . . any individual employed as a supervisor.” 61 Stat. 137-138, codified at 29 U. S. C. § 152(3). Congress defined a supervisor as:

“[A]ny individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.” 61 Stat. 138, codified at 29 U. S. C. § 152(11).

As the Board has stated, the statute requires the resolution of three questions; and each must be answered in the affirmative if an employee is to be deemed a supervisor. First, does the employee have authority to engage in 1 of the 12 listed activities? Second, does the exercise of that authority require “the use of independent judgment”? Third, does the employee hold the authority “in the interest of the employer”? Nortkcrest Nursing Home, 313 N. L. R. B. 491, 493 (1993). This case concerns only the third question, and our decision turns upon the proper interpretation of the statutory phrase “in the interest of the employer.”'

In cases involving nurses, the Board admits that it has interpreted the statutory phrase in a unique manner. Tr. of Oral Arg. 52 (Board: “[t]he Board has not applied a theory that’s phrased in the same terms to other categories of professionals”). The Board has held that “a nurse’s direction of less-skilled employees, in the exercise of professional judgment incidental to the treatment of patients, is not authority exercised ‘in the interest of the employer.’” Pet. for