Opinion ID: 198566
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Board's Interpretation of Independent Judgment

Text: 26 The Court in Health Care & Retirement Corp. rejected the Board's patient care analysis of the phrase in the interest of the employer, noting that [w]ith respect to that particular phrase, we find no ambiguity supporting the Board's position. Id. at 579. However, the Court was careful to point out that the case before it did not involve certain other phrases in § 2(11) which the Court recognized to be ambiguous. See id. (finding it no doubt true that phrases in § 2(11) such as 'independent judgment' and 'responsibly to direct' are ambiguous, so the Board needs to be given ample room to apply them to different categories of employees). The ambiguous phrase independent judgment, which was irrelevant in Health Care & Retirement Corp., id., is at issue here. 27 The ambiguity of this phrase stems in part from its similarity to the phrase consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in § 2(12) of the Act. See 29 U.S.C. § 152(12). The latter phrase describes the work of professional employees, who are covered under the Act. See 29 U.S.C. § 152(3), (12). The Act's simultaneous exclusion of supervisors and inclusion of professional employees creates an inherent tension which the Board and the courts have tried to resolve since enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. See D. Rabban, Distinguishing Excluded Managers from Covered Professionals Under the NLRA, 89 Colum. L. Rev. 1775, 1798 (1989); see also D. Barker, Note, NLRB v. Health Care & Retirement Corp.: Erosion of NLRA Protection for Nurses and Other Professionals?, 1996 Wis. L. Rev. 345, 346 (1996). 28 In the aftermath of Health Care & Retirement Corp., the Board found there to be a distinction between the independent judgment exercised by statutory supervisors and the judgment routinely exercised by professional employees. The Board found that making decisions requiring expert judgment is the quintessence of professionalism; mere communication of those decisions and coordination of their implementation do not make a professional a supervisor. Providence Hospital, 320 N.L.R.B. at 719. Accordingly, the Board held that where the judgment exercised by nurses in assigning and directing employees is indistinguishable from the judgment that professional nurses routinely exercise, independent judgment under § 2(11) has not been established. See id. at 730. 29 The Regional Director applied the Providence Hospital rule in her supplemental decision, which once again found Provident's district and charge nurses not to be supervisors. On review, the Board affirmed this conclusion. In arguing against enforcement of the Board's order, Provident suggests that the interpretation of independent judgment which the Board adopted in Providence Hospital should be rejected as unfounded. 30 We disagree. The Board's interpretation is not irrational or inconsistent with the statute. To the contrary, it harmonizes the Act's definitions of supervisor and professional employee in a sensible way, consistent with Congress's intent to exclude as supervisors only those employees with genuine management prerogatives. NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267, 280-81 (1974). Thus, we do not disregard the Board's interpretation of this phrase, as Provident urges. Instead we defer to that interpretation as a permissible construction of ambiguous language. Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843. 31