Opinion ID: 4566273
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unit Supervisors

Text: The Board’s holding that unit supervisors do not “responsibly direct work” suffers from notable errors and deficiencies in reading the record. 7 6 In fact, it is undisputed that both groups possess superficial indicia of supervisory status: unit supervisors are considered “supervisory” by those under their charge and have considerable additional qualifications; maintenance supervisors have individual offices, spend only a portion of their time out and about the plant, and wear different attire; both groups are paid somewhat more than those they oversee. In this circuit, the existence of secondary indicia of supervisor status can reinforce the company’s argument. See Poly-Am., Inc. v. N.L.R.B., 260 F.3d 465, 479 (5th Cir. 2001) (“[S]upervisory status may also be found on the basis of various ‘secondary indicia’ of such authority.”). Nevertheless, we find it unnecessary to weigh these secondary indicia because the unit supervisors and maintenance supervisors each clearly exercise at least one of the statutorily enumerated functions. . 7 The Board’s conclusion conflicts with Maine Yankee Atomic, Etc. v. NLRB, 624 F.2d 347 (1st Cir. 1980), which held that a nuclear plant’s “shift operating supervisors,” a group functionally identical to STP’s unit supervisors, were statutory supervisors. Because applicable law has evolved in ensuing decades, this holding cannot be determinative. But we 10 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 11 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 Despite the deferential standard afforded the Board’s decisions, “we are free to disregard the agency’s findings when it ignores relevant evidence without explaining and justifying its decision to do so.” NLRB v. E-Sys., Inc., Garland Div., 103 F.3d 435, 439 (5th Cir. 1997) (holding the ALJ’s decision was not supported by substantial evidence because the record contained unaddressed, contradictory evidence despite the ALJ’s characterization of certain claims as “uncontradicted”). Further, we must review the Board’s decision “on the record considered as a whole,” 29 U.S.C. § 160(e)–(f), and the Board’s failure “to grapple with countervailing portions of the record” can support a conclusion that the Board’s decision is unsupported by substantial evidence. Dish Network, 953 F.3d at 377. A supervisor who “responsibly directs” others must have “the authority to direct the subordinate’s work and take corrective action when necessary, and the supervisor could be held liable for the subordinate’s performance of his job.” Entergy II, 810 F.3d at 295, citing Oakwood, 348 NLRB at 692. Thus, STP must show that (1) “the employer delegated to the putative supervisor the authority to direct the work,” (2) the employer also delegated “the authority to take corrective action, if necessary,” and (3) “there is a prospect of adverse consequences for the putative supervisor if he/she does not take these steps.” Oakwood, 348 NLRB at 692. “Direction” encompasses both monitoring employee performance to make certain that tasks are performed correctly and making discrete assignments of specific tasks. In Re Beverly EnterprisesMinnesota, Inc., (Golden Crest Healthcare Center), 348 NLRB 727, 730 (2006). must agree with our sister circuit’s conclusion, following a lengthy analysis of the shift operating supervisors’ (“SOS”) comparable duties, that “[t]he responsibilities of the SOS are too important, his duties too complex, and his authority over [other control room personnel] too clearcut to admit of another result.” Id. at 366. 11 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 12 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 Making discrete assignments includes deciding what job will be performed next or who shall do it, provided that such direction is both responsible and carried out with independent judgment. Oakwood, 348 NLRB at 694. The Board held that unit supervisors meet none of the three elements. Our independent review of the whole record reveals that substantial evidence, largely ignored by the Board, contradicts this conclusion. To begin, the Board inexplicably denigrated the role of unit supervisors by misstating their qualifications and failing to note the special role accorded them by federal regulations. As noted earlier, unit supervisors oversee reactor and plant operators because they must possess a Senior Reactor Operator license, which requires 18 months training, and STP requires them to take additional training and have at least three years’ experience at the reactor operator level. Not only did the Decision and Direction of Election err in describing unit supervisors’ qualifications, but it neglected to consider that by virtue of their superior license, unit supervisors are equipped both “to manipulate the controls of a facility and to direct the licensed activities of licensed operators.” 10 C.F.R. § 55.4. As federal regulations explain, The staffing rule requires the continuous presence of a senior operator in the control room to ensure the following: a. An individual is available who can provide the oversight function of the supervisor and improve the probability of correctly detecting abnormal events early enough to mitigate potential adverse consequences. b. The senior operator in the control room is aware of plant conditions before, and resulting from, an abnormal event. This helps ensure that the extra experience, training, and knowledge of the senior operator is available to aid in promptly mitigating the event. c. The operator at the controls can concentrate on performing the immediate actions necessary to mitigate the event 12 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 13 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 rather than having to brief the senior operator about the event if the senior operator was absent from the control room when the event occurred.” 8 Ultimately, all this means that STP’s unit supervisors have the authority to shut down the reactor in the event of an emergency based on their trained, independent judgment. It is peculiar that a senior reactor operator, despite possessing considerable additional qualifications and exercising the serious oversight responsibility accorded by one federal agency, should be deemed by another federal agency not to be a statutory supervisor of the reactor operators and plant operators whose activity he must oversee. Numerous employees, moreover, testified that unit supervisors use their own judgment, experience, and training to determine the order of tasks, delegate those tasks to employees, and respond to situations that arise in the facility. Bill Jefferson, the Operations Director over the unit supervisors, testified that “[t]he Unit Supervisor is the point person that provides approval of work that occurs in the power plant . . . . [T]he Unit Supervisor makes that decision as to whether [operators] can perform their job or not based on plant conditions and based on other activities that are going on at the time.” Unit supervisor Mark Hamilton, 9 when asked if he relied on preestablished procedures to make decisions, explained, “[O]bviously we do have procedures . . . my training is also involved. My experience, my own knowledge, all that goes into my decision-making process.” Hamilton also 8 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comm’n., Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, Regulatory Guide 1.114 Rev. 3, “Guidance to Operators at the Controls and to Senior Operators in the Control Room of a Nuclear Power Plant” at 3 (October 2008). 9 At the time of his testimony, Hamilton was a Shift Manager Up Release, but his testimony concerned his experiences as a unit supervisor. 13 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 14 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 spoke of assessing the “capabilities” and “stress levels” of the reactor operators under him when assigning work. Another unit supervisor, Jeremy Tillman, testified that his personal judgment played a role in evaluating plant conditions. Additionally, Hamilton and Tillman explained that unit supervisors delegate specific tasks from the AWS to particular employees and reassign, reorder, or delay work as necessary. Apparently in an effort to discount this evidence, which it otherwise ignored, the Board remarked only that “the role of the unit supervisor is procedure driven.” There are procedures and then there are procedures. Paraphrasing Oakwood, the unit supervisor’s assignment of tasks in safely operating and maintaining the controls of the nuclear reactor manifests his “authority to direct the work;” the existence of procedures for myriad devices, monitors and functions in the nuclear control room does not eradicate the discretionary choices the record shows unit supervisors must make. Substantial evidence does not support the Board’s contrary conclusion. 10 Next, the Board acknowledged that when an employee makes a mistake—called a “human performance event”—the unit supervisor must remove that employee from the task, but nevertheless found that unit supervisors do not exercise independent judgment when taking corrective action. 11 Substantial evidence does not support this conclusion. The Board completely ignored other corrective actions that unit supervisors take, such as 10 As indicated in the discussion of the maintenance supervisors, matching employees’ skills to discrete tasks indicates the exercise of independent judgment; and the testimony of the Operations Director shows that unit supervisors independently determine what work is accomplished. See Oakwood, 348 NLRB at 689. 11The Decision and Direction of Election appears to confuse the meaning of “corrective action” with the ability to discipline employees. 14 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 15 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 counseling employees on their mistakes, giving employees an “oral reminder” if the mistakes are pervasive, identifying and writing up the “lessons learned” for distribution to other crew members, and taking corrective action at the plant to rectify the mistake. While procedures may outline a menu of corrective actions open to unit supervisors, the unit supervisors decide which option or options to pursue. In the context of highly regulated industries, such as medical services or nuclear power generation, written protocols are nearly ubiquitous. But “the mere existence of company policies does not eliminate independent judgment from decision-making if the policies allow for discretionary choices.” Oakwood, 348 NLRB at 693; see also NLRB v. Quinnipiac College, 256 F.3d 68, 78 (2d Cir. 2001) (collecting cases holding that the mere existence of written policy does not preclude finding that supervisors exercise independent judgment). Instead, we inquire whether unit supervisors’ actions are “merely routine or clerical.” Id. They are not. In Oakwood the Board explained that even “the discretion to determine when an emergency exists . . . would involve the exercise of independent judgment.” Id. at 693–94. Unit supervisors have that discretion and more. From the testimony discussed above, unit supervisors must assign tasks from the AWS, prioritize work, judge whether an error has been made, decide how to correct the error, determine what lessons should be drawn from the mistake, decide whether to discipline the offending employee, judge whether an emergency exists, and even evaluate whether an emergency is severe enough to justify shutting down the reactor. These judgments are not only governed by complex procedures, but they involve significant discretion 15 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 16 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 on the part of the unit supervisors. 12 As the unit supervisors testified, they make these determinations “based on personal experience, training, and ability.” Id. at 693. Finally, the Board’s conclusion that unit supervisors are not held accountable for the actions of their subordinates is not supported by substantial evidence. When determining whether putative supervisors are accountable, we look for specific evidence of actual or possible adverse consequences the supervisors may face. In re I.H.S. Acquisition No. 114, Inc. d/b/a Lynwood Manor, 350 N.L.R.B. 489, 490–91 (2007) (employer had not shown that LPN nurses were held accountable for the actions of their subordinates). STP offers an Incentive Compensation Program (ICP) that provides a bonus to unit supervisors based on their performance and the performance of their crew. The Operations Director testified that “[i]f [a unit supervisor] had enough events or an event that is significant enough that you get a written warning, then your ICP is impacted.” In fact, a unit supervisor can lose some or all of a bonus because of a written reminder, and Jefferson discussed a chart indicating that the bonuses of some unit supervisors had been adjusted down because they were “involved in errors or events.” Jefferson explained that the amount of the bonus is affected by “[the unit supervisors’] individual performance and the performance of their subordinates.” STP also points to record evidence establishing that unit supervisors are required to correct their subordinates. Unit supervisors can “veto” decisions of reactor operators, they must write “human performance condition reports,” and they 12 Commenting on an incident, Operations Director Jefferson testified that the unit supervisor conducted “a prompt investigation,” “created Lessons Learned,” “removed the qualifications of the individual [who made the mistake],” and “took independent action and restored a system back to service.” 16 Case: 19-60071 Document: 00515567775 Page: 17 Date Filed: 09/16/2020 Nos. 19-60071 Cons. w/ No. 19-60152 must detect “abnormal events early enough to mitigate potential adverse consequences.” Thus, unlike the nurses in I.H.S. Acquisition, unit supervisors are responsible for the actions of their subordinates and can suffer repercussions for their own performance or the performance of their crews. The Decision and Direction of Election omitted all of this evidence. Instead, the Board made two assertions: “there is no evidence regarding what percentage the incentive compensation plan has on overall wages,” and there is insufficient evidence “whether unit employees are also impacted by crew performance.” These statements are flatly contradicted by the record. The Operations Director testified that unit supervisors could receive up to 15% of their salary as a bonus from the ICP. He further explained that the amount of the unit supervisor’s bonus was a function of both “their individual performance and the performance of their subordinates.” After considering the record as a whole, we are convinced that the Board’s decision that unit supervisors do not responsibly direct work is unsupported by substantial evidence. Because the unit supervisors are statutory supervisors, STP did not violate the NLRA by refusing to bargain.