Opinion ID: 2827787
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Appointing an Employee to a Time

Text: 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.