Opinion ID: 197361
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Receiving Our Cues.

Text: A. Receiving Our Cues. To put this case into perspective, it bears remembering that the Act strives to limn a clear distinction between management and labor. To that end, supervisory employees are excluded from the bargaining process because they must represent the interests of their employer rather than the interests of their coworkers. See Stop & Shop Cos. v. NLRB, 548 F.2d 17, 19 (1st Cir. 1977). The Act defines a supervisor as any 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. 29 U.S.C. 152(11). Because the statute is to be read in the disjunctive, 7 any one of the enumerated powers may signify supervisory status. See Northeast Utils. Serv. Corp. v. NLRB, 35 F.3d 621, 624 (1st Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 1356 (1995); Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. v. NLRB, 624 F.2d 347, 360 (1st Cir. 1980). Nonetheless, as the definition's final clause reflects, Congress intended to exclude `straw bosses,' `lead men,' and other lowlevel employees having modest supervisory authority from supervisor status.1 NLRB v. Res-Care, Inc., 705 F.2d 1461, 1466 (7th Cir. 1983) (quoting legislative history). Thus, even an enumerated power must involve the exercise of independent judgment in order to brand the holder of the power as a supervisor. 1The derivation of the term straw boss bears mentioning: In the early days of logging in mountainous country straw was spread upon slopes too steep for horses to hold back a sled load of logs but not so steep as to require bridling, i.e., looping a short length of chain around a sled runner to drag underneath it, or holding the load back by means of a long rope attached to the rear of the sled and wound once or twice (snubbed) around a stump at the top of the slope to provide friction. After each passage, sometimes at full gallop to keep the horses ahead of the load, the straw was naturally displaced so a man with a pitchfork was posted at each slope to keep the straw evenly distributed. Although teamsters were men of consequence in the lumber camps, the rule was that they were not to start down a slope until the far humbler functionary with a pitchfork, using his independent judgment, passed word that the slope was prepared. Hence the term straw boss. NLRB v. Swift & Co., 292 F.2d 561, 563 n.2 (1st Cir. 1961). 8 Given the myriad iterations of authority that are possible and the subtle distinctions that easily can be drawn, courts must afford great deference to the Board's expert determination of which workers fall into which classification. See Goldies, Inc. v. NLRB, 628 F.2d 706, 710 (1st Cir. 1980); Maine Yankee, 624 F.2d at 360; see also Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 488 (1951) (describing the Board as an agency presumably equipped or informed by experience to deal with a specialized field of knowledge, whose findings within that field carry the authority of an expertness which courts do not possess and therefore must respect). Consequently, we must accept the Board's findings as to which employees are supervisors and which are not unless those findings fail to derive support from substantial evidence in the record as a whole. See Universal Camera, 340 U.S. at 488; Providence Hosp. v. NLRB, 93 F.3d 1012, 1016 (1st Cir. 1996); see also 29 U.S.C. 160(e), (f).