Opinion ID: 2827787
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Assign

Text: The Acting Regional Director first considered whether TSSs have the power to assign other employees, 29 U.S.C. § 152(11). Relying on Oakwood Healthcare, the Acting Regional Director explained (and NSTAR does not argue otherwise) that the power to assign is more substantial than the power merely to direct. Specifically, Oakwood Healthcare explained that the 9This Circuit has never addressed the proper role of secondary indicia -- evidence not directly related to the Act's listed supervisory functions -- in the analysis of supervisory status. The Board has at times relied on such evidence as a further indicat[ion] of supervisory status where the evidence also showed that the worker performed a listed supervisory function. See, e.g., McClatchy Newspapers, Inc., 307 N.L.R.B. 773, 773 (1992); see also E & L Transp. Co. v. NLRB, 85 F.3d 1258, 1270 (7th Cir. 1996) (Although not determinative on their own, where one of the enumerated indicia in § 152(11) is present, secondary indicia support a finding of statutory supervisor.). Even if secondary indicia are potentially relevant where there is not sufficient evidence to show that the worker in question carries out one of the statutory supervisory functions with independent judgment, we conclude that the Acting Regional Director's determination that the TSS title and the other secondary indicia cited by NSTAR are inconclusive was a reasonable one that is supported by substantial evidence. We separately discuss the secondary indicia below in considering whether the TSSs are, although not supervisors, managerial employees, and our discussion there supplies our reasons for concluding that such indicia also do not suffice, in this case, to make the workers supervisors. - 19 - power to assign implicates three distinct types of activities: designating an employee to a place (such as a location, department, or wing), appointing an employee to a time (such as a shift or overtime period), and giving significant overall duties . . . to an employee. Oakwood Healthcare, 348 N.L.R.B. at 689 (emphases added).
With respect to designating an employee to a place, the Acting Regional Director found that that TSSs did occasionally dispatch field employees to re-assigned locations . . . and to trouble locations. The Acting Regional Director, like the Board in Entergy Mississippi, then assumed without deciding that these sorts of directions to go to particular locations to do discrete tasks constitute assignments within the meaning of the statute.10 See Entergy Miss., 357 N.L.R.B. No. 178, at 7. For that reason, the Acting Regional Director proceeded to the second part of the supervisor test. He addressed whether NSTAR had shown that the 10 The Board had explained in Entergy Mississippi that electrical dispatchers did in a sense assign field employees to places, by telling field employees where to go [d]uring trouble outages. 357 N.L.R.B., No. 178, at 9. Entergy Mississippi did not resolve, however, whether that was assignment or ad hoc direction. The Board held instead that there was no independent judgment involved in any event -- as would be necessary for any assignment power to make the employees into supervisors -- because the dispatchers utilize a computer program that notifies them of trouble spot locations, and usually assign to trouble spots employees already assigned to that specific area. Id. at 7. - 20 - performance of such tasks -- assuming they amounted to a power to assign -- required the exercise of independent judgment. The Acting Regional Director took his definition of independent judgment from Oakwood Healthcare. There, the Board held that independent judgment meant that an individual must at minimum act, or effectively recommend action, free of the control of others and form an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing data. Oakwood Healthcare, 348 N.L.R.B. at 692-93. As a result, Oakwood Healthcare explained, judgment is not independent if it is dictated or controlled by detailed instructions, whether set forth in company policies or rules, the verbal instructions of a higher authority, or in the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement. Id. at 693. Likewise, [i]f there is only one obvious and self- evident choice . . . or if the assignment is made solely on the basis of equalizing workloads, then the assignment is routine or clerical in nature and does not implicate independent judgment, even if it is made free of the control of others and involves forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing data. Id.11 11 For the reasons we have already given, NSTAR supplies us with no reason not to defer to the Acting Regional Director's interpretation of the supervisor definition in general or of his reliance on Oakwood Healthcare's interpretation of it in particular, including with respect to the meaning of independent judgment. - 21 - We thus proceed to assess whether substantial evidence supports the Acting Regional Director's finding that NSTAR had not shown that this particular power to assign -- assuming it qualified as such -- involved the use of independent judgment as Oakwood Healthcare construed those words. The Acting Regional Director explained that NSTAR had not shown that any . . . judgments the TSSs made in routing field employees to outage locations were free of the control of others. Rather, the Acting Regional Director found that such judgments were controlled by detailed instructions. The TSSs, the Acting Regional Director concluded, must follow established call-out procedures in telling which field employees where to report. And after the first field employee is sent pursuant to those procedures, the first responder, a field employee, informs the supervisor or TSS if additional employees are needed, and if so, what type of employee is needed. The Acting Regional Director therefore concluded that the record showed that the TSSs' routing of field employees to an outage location is nothing more than a routine task, and did not involve independent judgment. NSTAR responds by pointing to certain pieces of evidence in the record that might suggest the opposite conclusion. But in doing so, NSTAR does not address the competing record evidence on which the Acting Regional Director relied. One worker familiar with TSS job duties, for example, explained that in deciding which - 22 - field employee to send to complete a task, [t]here's no discretion, you have one [field employee in a geographical area], he's going, that's it. Likewise, a TSS witness explained, a TSS is not really choosing [between workers]. I mean . . . it's pretty automatic. If the work is scheduled for the North you talk to [the field employee scheduled for the North]. If it's scheduled for the South you talk to [the field employee scheduled for the South]. This TSS witness further explained that this same, automatic process applies to unplanned work, which he called [t]rouble. And while the record shows that TSSs sometimes ask field employees to do tasks outside their assigned areas, the record also shows that this would happen only if the field employee assigned to the area where the task takes place was unavailable, in which case the TSSs would call the next closest field employee.12 We thus conclude that the record provides substantial evidence to support the Acting Regional Director's conclusion that NSTAR had failed to show that any assignments the TSSs made by designating an employee to a place required the exercise of 12 The Acting Regional Director explained that the record failed to show that the TSSs[] perform an analysis of the field employees' skill set and level of proficiency . . . when routing field employees to an outage location. In contrast, he explained, the Board in Oakwood Healthcare, in finding independent judgment, emphasized that charge nurses found to be supervisors analyzed the personality of the staff and patients and specific skills or abilities of the nursing staff in making assignments. See Oakwood Healthcare, 348 N.L.R.B. at 697. - 23 - independent judgment. See NLRB v. Hilliard Dev. Corp., 187 F.3d 133, 140 (1st Cir. 1999) ([T]he possibility of drawing two inconsistent conclusions from the evidence does not prevent an administrative agency's finding from being supported by substantial evidence. (quoting Am. Textile Mfrs. Inst. v. Donovan, 452 U.S. 490, 523 (1981))). And so we affirm this finding.13 13 The Acting Regional Director did find that in multiple outage situations the TSSs prioritize trouble cases, and based upon the status of a case, can route field employees from one trouble case to another trouble case. In prioritizing such cases, the TSSs consider such things as the number of customers affected, the size of the customer, and the weather. But the Acting Regional Director then explained that NSTAR had not shown that such determinations were free from the control of others rather than controlled by detailed instructions. The Acting Regional Director thus found that any assignments that resulted from these prioritization decisions (and the designation to places that they entailed) did not require the use of independent judgment. It is not immediately clear to us how judgment of the type described by the Acting Regional Director's finding regarding prioritization of trouble spots could be circumscribed by detailed instructions, as the Acting Regional Director found it was. But NSTAR's brief to us makes no argument based on the Acting Regional Director's finding concerning prioritization discretion during multiple trouble cases. In fact, NSTAR's argument as to why the Acting Regional Director should have concluded that TSSs assign field employees based on their designating them to places does not mention trouble cases or prioritization discretion at all. And our own review of the record has turned up little evidence of any sort on whether TSSs made prioritization decisions in the context of multiple trouble cases, let alone how they went about making them when such issues arose. In the absence of a developed argument from NSTAR contending that this finding by the Acting Regional Director demonstrates that the - 24 -
The Acting Regional Director next considered whether TSSs have the authority to assign employees by virtue of their power to appoint them to a time. See Oakwood Healthcare, 348 N.L.R.B. at 689. The dispute centers primarily on the TSSs' authority to make decisions that lead to field employees working overtime. See id. (holding that designating an employee to a[n] . . . overtime period would constitute an assignment). The Acting Regional Director found that TSSs' decisions to dispatch field employees to outage locations can result in overtime expenses for NSTAR, because the field employees generally work until the trouble is cleared[,] and even longer if additional outages are anticipated. The Acting Regional Director explained, however, that a TSS might authorize overtime only after discussion with the field supervisor and/or the TSS's own supervisor, and that it was [u]ltimately[] the field supervisors, not the TSSs who possess full authority to assign and approve overtime for field employees. The Acting Regional Director thus concluded that NSTAR had not shown that the TSSs had the authority to assign overtime to field employees. TSSs do have the authority to exercise independent judgment in such circumstances, we treat any such argument as waived. See Zannino, 895 F.2d at 17. - 25 - The Acting Regional Director relied on the Board's reasoning in Entergy Mississippi. See 357 N.L.R.B. No. 178, at 7. The Board found there that while the electrical dispatchers in that case could request overtime, they could not require employees to work it. Id. at 10. And the Board held that the mere request to do so did not amount to an assignment as to time. Id. NSTAR does not challenge in any developed way the Board's distinction between requesting and requiring overtime for purposes of determining what constitutes assigning as to time. We thus look to see if the record contains substantial evidence to support the Acting Regional Director's finding that, as in Entergy Mississippi, the workers in question -- the TSSs -- can request but not require overtime. One witness, who was a TSS, testified that a field supervisor, not the TSS, made the decision about whether a particular field employee would work later than scheduled. That witness further testified that, as a TSS, he did not authorize overtime of people in the field, and that only the field supervisor gave such an authorization. And that witness added that he could not overrule a supervisor as a TSS regarding overtime and that all we can do is ask for it. The TSSs' supervisor, Conlon, did testify that especially at the initial stage of it, TSSs could require field employees to work overtime. But Conlon later clarified that he - 26 - was sure that a TSS who needed overtime from a field employee would discuss it with either a field supervisor or with Conlon first. He also stated that there's probably always some type of discussion before overtime is authorized. NSTAR fails to identify competing evidence that -- in the face of the evidence just reviewed -- compels a conclusion contrary to the one that the Acting Regional Director reached. See NLRB v. Reg'l Home Care Servs., Inc., 237 F.3d 62, 68 (1st Cir. 2001); Hilliard Dev. Corp., 187 F.3d at 140. We thus affirm the Acting Regional Director's determination. NSTAR does make one additional contention that TSSs assign employees by appointing them to a time. NSTAR contends that TSSs do so by deciding when work in the field will commence, end, be delayed and recommenced, by sequencing work and similar actions. The Acting Regional Director did not explicitly address this argument in finding that TSSs made no assignments as to time. But the Acting Regional Director's reasons for rejecting the argument may be inferred from what the Acting Regional Director did find. In particular, the Acting Regional Director expressly found that TSSs do not assign field employees to regular shifts or reporting times. And the Acting Regional Director further found that TSSs can request, but cannot require, that field employees stay past the end of their shifts to finish a job. - 27 - Given those findings, the only remaining possible times that TSSs could assign are the start and end times of the particular discrete tasks that whichever field employee is on duty during the relevant period would be required to perform. The Board ruled in Oakwood Healthcare, however, that the authority to sequence work in that way does not constitute a power to assign. See 348 N.L.R.B. at 689 (distinguishing between an assignment to a certain shift (e.g. night) and choosing the order in which the employee will perform discrete tasks during that shift). And NSTAR made no argument to the Acting Regional Director -- and makes no argument to us -- that Oakwood Healthcare erred in concluding that such sequencing decisions are not assignments. We thus may infer from the Acting Regional Director's decision that he hewed to the Board's construction of assignments of time in Oakwood Healthcare in finding that the TSSs' sequencing authority did not itself constitute authority to assign. And because the record contains substantial evidence to support a finding that the TSSs held only this sequencing power, we affirm the Acting Regional Director's determination that NSTAR did not show that TSSs can assign other employees to a time. iii. Giving Significant Overall Duties to an Employee The Acting Regional Director also considered whether TSSs possess the power to assign by virtue of their authority to give significant overall duties to field employees. In finding - 28 - that NSTAR had not shown that TSSs possess such authority, the Acting Regional Director relied on both Oakwood Healthcare and Entergy Mississippi. In Oakwood Healthcare, the Board distinguished between giving a worker a broad category of responsibilities, which the Board treated as an assignment, and directing a worker to do a specific task, which the Board did not treat as an assignment (and instead as only a direction). For example, the Board explained that ad hoc instructions like -- in a retail setting -- restock[] toasters before coffeemakers did not constitute the assignment of significant overall duties. 348 N.L.R.B. at 689. Or, as the Board also explained, designating a nurse to be the person who will regularly administer medications to a patient or a group of patients is an assignment, but telling that nurse to immediately give a sedative to a particular patient is not. Id. Entergy Mississippi then drew on that same distinction. In doing so, it held that the electrical dispatchers in that case did not assign significant overall duties because they gave field employees only what amounted to ad hoc instruction, i.e., trouble work needing to get done before routine work. 357 N.L.R.B. No. 178, at 12. NSTAR contends that TSSs do give employees significant overall duties by writing and issuing switching orders. In that regard, NSTAR asserts that [s]witching orders are perhaps the - 29 - farthest thing from ad hoc . . . they are carefully researched and planned work instructions, prepared with deep consideration of the entire system as well as the specific issue to be addressed, conceived with vitally important business and safety concerns. NSTAR further points out that the most complex switching orders can take days, or even weeks, to execute. But, as the Acting Regional Director explained, field employees receive their daily assignments from their direct supervisors, not from TSSs.14 And it is those daily assignments that tell field employees where they need to be, and when, to conduct whatever switching operations are planned for that day. The switching orders, by contrast, relay a set of specific, individual actions that field employees must take to successfully complete the overall duties their field supervisors have assigned them. Given the deference we owe the Acting Regional Director's expertise in defining the bounds of the supervisor definition, see Ne. Utils., 35 F.3d at 624, we find his application 14 NSTAR criticizes the Acting Regional Director for stating that TSSs get the information on which employee is assigned to what overall tasks from a computer program called TOA. That particular program, NSTAR tells us, is one that STOCs use, not TSSs, and that program, NSTAR adds, contains outage schedules, not field employee schedules. But the record supports the Acting Regional Director's statement, and in any event, it is undisputed that TSSs were informed by field supervisors, if not via TOA then by some other means, as to which field employees the field supervisors had scheduled to execute the planned work. - 30 - of the distinction on which Oakwood Healthcare and Entergy Mississippi relied to the switching orders in this case to be a supportable one. And thus, we affirm the Acting Regional Director's finding that NSTAR did not show that the TSSs have the power to assign significant overall duties.