Opinion ID: 198566
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evaluations and Effective Recommendation of Reward

Text: 34 Provident's keystone argument is that the district and charge nurses complete annual performance evaluations for the MHAs and that these evaluations directly determine the level of merit wage increases for the MHAs. This, Provident says, means that these nurses effectively recommend the reward for the MHAs, which brings them within the statutory meaning of supervisor. 35 The Board found that the evidence fails to establish that the evaluations performed by these nurses directly affect the employees' job status; therefore, the nurses' role in evaluating employees is insufficient to confer supervisory status. Hilliard Dev. Corp., Case 1-RC-20057, at 2 (NLRB Feb. 6, 1997). 36 We describe the Board's conclusions and the employer's rejoinders. The Board concedes that there is some relationship between the evaluations by the district and charge nurses and the award of merit pay in some instances, but says that this relationship does not suffice to create supervisory status. 37 First, the Board notes that the instances of influence over merit pay increases are neither universal nor inevitable. About half of the MHAs are per diem employees who do not receive merit pay increases at all. Even among the MHAs who are not per diems, another group does not receive merit increases because they are at or near the maximum wage or cap. There was evidence that these two groups combined constituted more than half of the MHAs in 1992. In 1993, nine of the nineteen MHAs who were otherwise eligible for merit increases -- that is, who were neither per diem employees nor had reached Provident's wage cap -- were nonetheless removed from the merit increase system by an across-the-board administrative merit increase, without any input from the district and charge nurses. 38 Provident presents the facts differently. Provident contends that in 1992, the majority of aides received raises based on evaluations by the district and charge nurses. Further, Provident says, in 1993, ten of twenty-three did; of the thirteen remaining, four were not eligible because they were per diem employees, and nine received the administrative merit increase, which was a one-time, atypical event. 39 Second, the Board found it was not clear how many of the district and charge nurses actually completed evaluations of MHAs or whether they knew what effect the evaluations would have on the aides. Nurses who testified said that they did not know their evaluations would affect the merit increases for the MHAs. 40 Provident says the subsidiary findings to the Board conclusions are wrong and are not supported by the evidence. As to the point that only a few nurses completed MHA evaluations (and did only one or two), Provident says that in 1992 and 1993 all but one of the nurses completed evaluations; many completed more than one. Further, Provident says the Board committed an error of law in considering the frequency with which evaluations were done. See Maine Yankee, 624 F.2d at 360 (noting that the question under § 2(11) is whether authority exists, not how frequently it is exercised). Regarding the Board's statement that it was unclear whether nurses knew the effect of rankings, Provident says this was contradicted by the nurses' testimony. 41 Third, and most significantly for our purposes, the Board found there was no consistent or direct correlation between the scores received on the evaluations by the charge and district nurses and the percentage of the merit increases (where awarded). There were several reasons for this. The increases awarded did not always match the evaluation scores given, and the range of merit pay increases awarded varied from time to time even within a year due to budgetary factors. In addition, the determination by the district and charge nurses of the evaluation score was subject to review by others and to independent assessment by the Director of Nursing. 42 With respect to the variance in range of increases received, the Board found that employees with the same ratings, but who were evaluated at different times of the year, received different percentage pay increases. The Board refers to several instances in which specific merit increases awarded by the administrator had no correlation to the ratings awarded, even under the formula in effect at the time: in 1992, two MHAs who received the same evaluation score were awarded different increases, and two MHAs with different evaluation scores received the same increase, contrary to the formula in effect at the time. 43 As to the responsibility of other supervisory personnel in the process, the evaluation form itself had a space for the Unit Manager to fill out. The job description for both the district nurse and charge nurse positions state that those nurses write the evaluations [w]ith the . . . Unit Manager. In fact, both the Unit Manager and the Director of Nursing review the evaluations. The Board relied on the testimony of the Director of Nursing, who said that while she had never changed an individual rating herself, if she disagrees with a rating, she will ask the unit manager to ask the nurse to redo it again to make sure that's the score they want to put in. There was also evidence that the independent evaluation made by the Director of Nursing resulted in higher pay raises for those who emerged with the same scores from the district and charge nurse evaluations but whom the Director gave a good evaluation. 44 As to the Board's conclusion that there was no consistent or direct correlation between scores received and percentage of merit increases, Provident responds that this is the inevitable result of a rolling (year by year) relationship between evaluation points and percentage increase. Regarding the potential for intervention in the evaluation process by the nurses' superiors, Provident says that such intervention rarely occurred. It also says this point is irrelevant, because the statute only requires the power to recommend reward. Provident relies on the Sixth Circuit's decision in Caremore to support this argument. See Caremore, 129 F. 3d at 369 (concluding that nurses had authority to recommend reward because they evaluated aides, even though the nurses' evaluations were subject to administrative review). 45 None of the various circuit cases in the wars of the nurses, described above, turned on the phrase in § 2(11) which is the employer's lead argument here - the authority effectively to recommend reward of other employees. We accept, arguendo, that the evaluation process requires the use of independent judgment. Whether independent judgment is involved in the translation of that evaluation to a pay increase is a different question. But before that question of independent judgment is reached there is the prior question of whether the nurse's authority in this area is the authority effectively to recommend a reward . . . [to] other employees. This combination of statutory phrases is not so precise as to rule out Chevron deference. 46 The Board, in turn, has appropriately noted that § 2(11) does not list evaluate as a supervisory function. The employee effectively recommends reward, the Board says, only when an employee's evaluation leads to pay changes, there is a direct correlation between the evaluations and merit increases or bonuses to the evaluated employees, and the employee's supervisors do not independently investigate or change the ratings. See First Healthcare Corp., 323 N.L.R.B. at 1171-72. The Board has thus interpreted effectively recommend to require a direct correlation. This standard is to be given deference because it is neither irrational nor contrary to the plain language of the Act. The question then becomes whether the Board's conclusion that the standard has not been met itself meets the substantial evidence standard. 47 Two themes undergird the Board's conclusion: that there is no direct link between the evaluations and merit pay and that management independently reviews and can change the evaluations. Our review of the record shows that substantial evidence supports the Board's findings on both points. We focus on those themes and do not reach each individual argument made by Provident. 48 There is some merit in Provident's reproach that the mere use by management of rolling performance evaluations cannot turn a supervisor into a non-supervisor. If the Board's conclusion rested on this point, we might well agree with Provident. But we understand the Board to have concluded something else - that there really is no direct connection between the evaluation of an MHA given by a charge or district nurse and the merit pay increase, if any, that the MHA receives. Management retained and exercised the power over several intervening factors. The 1993 across-the-board administrative merit increase serves as an example. Provident rightly says a one-year exception should not create a rule. We have no way of knowing, from this record, whether the 1993 administrative merit increase was unique. More importantly, even in 1992 there was adequate evidence to support the Board's conclusion that merit pay is not directly linked to the evaluations. Two MHAs received different merit increases although they received exactly the same scores; two receiving different evaluation scores received the same increase. The evaluation themselves are independently reviewed by the Unit Managers, the Director of Nursing and the home's administrator. At least once a nurse was directly told to change a rating; several other times mere diplomatic suggestions to that effect were made. Management in fact reviewed and signed every evaluation and the Director of Nursing entered her own comments on most of the evaluations based on her own observations. This combination of factors differs from that in the case relied on by Provident, the Sixth Circuit decision in Caremore, Inc., and, in our view, suffices. 49