Opinion ID: 2966885
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Charge Nurse

Text: Additionally the Board determined that charge nurse duties of RNs and LPNs were not supervisory because the charge nurses, although they had the additional authority to file incident and accident reports, otherwise had little, if any, extra responsibility. This finding is not supported by substantial evidence or this Circuit's precedent. See St. Mary's Home, Inc., 690 F.2d at 1065-66. In St. Mary's Home, we repeatedly emphasized the importance of the designation charge nurse at a nursing home that operated on a twenty-four hour schedule. We held that that designation was important because the charge nurse was the highest ranking official present 21 at the home during her shift. Id. at 1067. At Point Pleasant, the charge nurse's job description tells the charge nurse that she may be responsible for all staff in the entire facility.The . . . charge nurse . . . plans, organizes, directs and supervises the activities of all employees assigned to his/her tour of duty. This may be a unit, or may be the entire facility on holidays, weekends, evenings or nights. (J.A. at 1010.) As we said in St Mary's Home, Inc., charge nurse brings with it the responsibility of handling day-to-day crises that might arise with staff or patients at the home. See 690 F.2d at 106768. The charge nurse is the employer's designated representative to whom the other employees will first turn in the case of any unusual happening or emergency. Being designated charge nurse is more significant than acquiring a mere title, it is acceding to full responsibility for the nursing home. `[J]ob titles are meaningless; it is the authority vested in the employee, be it expressly or by implication, that is the controlling factor.' Id. at 1066 (quoting Mid-Continent Refrigerator Service Co., 228 N.L.R.B. 917, 920 (1977)). For those shifts when the Director of Nursing is absent from the facility, the charge nurse is the `highest ranking employee' on the jobsite at the time to whom other employees must look for direction. Id. at 1066. Any one of the members of the Point Pleasant (or Cedar Ridge) bargaining unit could be designated charge nurse on any particular shift. It does not matter that a particular staff member might be designated charge nurse only infrequently. [I]t is the power and not the frequency of its use which is dispositive. Id. at 1068. The Board's conclusion that the designation charge nurse merely confers the additional duty of filing incident and accident reports is not supported by substantial evidence. The charge nurses' duties at Point Pleasant include: excusing other employees early from work, effectively recommending disciplinary action, dealing with emergencies, and acceding to the status of `highest ranking employee on the jobsite.' St. Mary's Home, Inc., 690 F.2d at 1066. These responsibilities are indistinguishable from those possessed by the charge nurse at St. Mary's Home, whom we held to be a supervisor under § 2(11) of the NLRA. See id. at 1066, 1069. Thus, the Board once again has declined to follow our Circuit's law.16 _________________________________________________________________ 16 See ante n.8. 22