Court Opinion

ID: 9425684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:26.973237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.971193
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice Stewart, and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting in part.
I concur in Part III of the Court’s opinion insofar as it holds that the Board was not required to resort to rule-making in deciding this case, but I dissent from its hold*296ing in Part II that managerial employees, as a class are not “employees” within the .meaning of the National Labor Relations Act.
Section 7 of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 157, provides that “[ejmployees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing____” Section 8(a)(1),-29 U. S. C. § 158 (a)(1), makes it an unfair labor practice to interfere with the rights guaranteed in § 7, and under §8 (a)(5), 29 U. S. C. § 158 (a) (5),"it is an unfair practice for the employer to refuse to bargain collectively with representatives- of his “employees.” For the purposes of the foregoing sections, the term “employée” as defined in § 2 (3) of the Act, means “any employee” of the employer,
“but shall not include any individual employed as an agricultural laborer, or in the domestic service of any family or person at his home, or any individual employed by his parent or spouse, or any individual having the status of an independent contractor, or any individual employed as a supervisor, or any individual employed by an employer subject to the Railway Labor Act . . . ?’ 29 . U. S. C. § 152 (3).
The issue in this case is whether the term “employee” excludes not only those specifically excluded by § 2 but also the broad category of “managerial” employees who, although literally “employees” of the employer and not expressly excluded by § 2, are nevertheless not to be considered employees for the purposes of the Act because they make , and implement managerial policies. The Court holds that no managerial employee is an. employee for the'purposes of the Act. I cannot agrén with' this conclusion. ■
*297The Act is very plain on its face — “any employee,” with specified exclusions, is entitled to the benefits of the Act. Each of the exclusions is a narrow and precisely defined class, and none of them mentions managerial . employees. “Supervisors” are excluded, but a precise definition of that class, much narrower than the. class of managerial employees, is provided in §2 (11):
“any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them,,. or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend -such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.” 29 U. S. C. § 152 (11).
Without more, it could not be concluded that Congress meant to exclude a whole category of employees in addition to those expressly excepted in § 2 (3). To infer that all managerial employees are not employees for purposes of the Act because a specified managerial subgroup, supervisors, was expressly excluded, is unwarranted, at least where Congress was careful to define precisely what employees were within the scope of the - supervisory exclusion.
What is morei Congress in § 2 (12), 29 U. S. C. § 152 (12), has defined a special subclass of professional employees having special skills and duties “involving -the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in” the performance of their work. These employees are obviously “employees” for fhe purposes of the. Act; and in § 9, 29 U. S. C. § 159, after investing the Board with the powers necessary to decide- the units appropriate for collective bargaining, it is provided *298that the Board shall not hold any bargaining unit to be appropriate “if such unit includes both professional employees and employees who are not professional employees unless a majority of such professional employees vote for inclusion in such unit.” It is apparent, it seems to me, that there are many professional employees who would qualify as managerial employees; yet the Act clearly treats them as employees for purposes of the Act and Congress assumed they would have full organizational and bargaining rights unless it was provided otherwise in accordance with congressional desires. Hence § 9 (b).
Insofar as the face of the Act is concerned, and as compared with an across-the-board exclusion of “managerial” employees, the present ruling of the Board,, which excludes only those managerial employees whose work may involve them in a conflict of interest if they are permitted, to bargain collectively, is a far narrower exclusion adhering much more.closely to the rationale of the supervisory exclusion and to the apparent intent' of Congress. The Court nevertheless not only holds that the term employee may be construed to exclude managerial employees but also that it must be so construed. No narrower exclusion, it is said, in addition to those expressly provided for,, will satisfy the Act.
Although it would appear to be a difficult and questionable feat to rewrite the statute so substantially, the Court purports to find license for its result in the legislative history of the 1947 amendments to the Act, read in the light of previous and subsequent Board and court decisions. It is true that the exclusion of supervisors from the definition of employees first occurred in 1947, but, with all respect, I find no basis in the history of these amendments, read in the light of prior Board cases, for concluding that Congress intended to exclude all *299managerial employees, in addition to supervisors, from the benefits of the Act.
As I understand its decisions, the Board at no time prior to 1947 completely excluded the broad category of managerial, employees from the class of employees protected by the Act. The Court concedes that the Board’s cases during this period involved only the exclusion of managerial employees from bargaining units of rank-and-file workers. Some of the Board’s statements may have been ambiguous, but no Board case held or had occasion to hold that managerial employees as a group would riot be protected by the Act. As the Court acknowledges, the Board, in one decision excluding buyers and expediters from a unit of office and clerical employees, pointedly expressed the caveat that “[t]his is not to say, however, that buyers and expediters are to be denied the right to self-organization and to collective bargaining under the Act.” Dravo Corp., 54 N. L. R. B. 1174, 1177 (1944). In Hudson Motor Car Co., 55 N. L. R. B. 509, 512 (1944), where the Board excluded buyers from a bargaining unit of office and clerical employees, the reason given for the exclusion was “that their duties are closely allied to management, differing materially from those of the other clerical employees.” And in Vulcan Corp., 58 N. L. R. B. 733, 736 (1944), the Board excluded a buyer from a production and maintenance employees’ unit, not because a managerial employee could not be accorded bargaining rights, but “[b]ecause of the responsibility of his position and his peculiar relationship to management, and in view of the fact that his interests are apparently different from those of the production and maintenance employees.” This line of Board decisions addressed the question whether certain managerial employees had sufficient community of interest with rankr-arid-file employees to be included in the“same bargaining unit with them, and the Board was exercising its power to designate *300appropriate bargaining units under §9. It is clear that the Board at no time held managerial employees to be outside the scope of the Act during the period prior to the Taft-Hartley amendments.
The Board’s position with respect to supervisors, as a class, vacillated during this time, the Board first excluding supervisors from rank-and-file units but recognizing units confined to supervisory employees, then refusing to recognize any bargaining units of supervisors and finally returning to its earlier rule. But even when the Board determined for a short period that supervisors should not be permitted to organize either with other employees or in separate units, it never went as far as to hold supervisors not to be “employees” under the Act. This was the Court’s understanding of the Board’s position in Packard Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485, 492 n. 3 (1947), the very case which prompted the 80th Congress to go further than the Board had ever gone and exclude supervisors entirely from the- category of employees accorded bargaining rights under the Act.1 In Maryland, Drydock Co., 49 N. L. R. B. 733, 738, 740 (1943), the Board was “no longer convinced that, from the mere determina*301tion that a supervisor is an employee it follows that supervisors may constitute appropriate bargaining units” because “the benefits which supervisory employees might achieve through being certified as collective-bargaining units would be outweighed not only by the dangers inherent in the commingling of management and employee functions, but also in its possible restrictive effect upon the organizational freedom of rank and file employees.” Shortly thereafter, the Board, faced with a claim by the employer that foremen are not employees within the meaning of the Act, did not address this possible ground of decision but held instead that it was “not- persuaded that the factors militating against the establishment of units of supervisory employees, set forth in . . . the Maryland Drydock case, are obviated by the circumstance that the union seeking to represent such employees is an independent, unaffiliated union.” General Motors Corp., 51 N. L. R. B. 457, 460 (1943). Moreover, the Board held in Soss Mfg. Co., 56 N. L. R. B. 348 (1944), that while a bargaining unit of supervisory employees might not be appropriate, a supervisor, like other employees, was nonetheless protected- against an unfair labor practice: “We conclude that supervisors are .‘employees’ and that supervisory status does not by its’ own force remove an employee from the protection of Section 8 (1) and (3)” of the Act. Id., at 353. Ultimately, in the Packard cases, 61 N. L. R. B. 4, 64 N. L. R. B. 1212 (1945), the Board reverted to its earlier rule that bargaining units of supervisors were entitled to recognition under the Act as long as they included no ránk-and-file. members.
When Congress undertook to amend the Act following this Court’s decision in' Packard upholding the Board’s inclusion of supervisprs as employees under the Act, it was acting in .light of a renewed Board policy to *302permit supervisory employees to organize in separate units under the mantle of the Act’s protection, an' enduring Board policy not. to exclude supervisors from the statutory definition of employees, and a further policy which excluded managerial employees from rank-and-file units but had never denied them the right to establish separate bargaining units or placed them outside the Act’s definition of “employee.” The amendments adopted by Congress in 1947 in light of this pattern of Board practice clearly intended to do away with the Packard decision approving the Board’s authority to grant recognition to unions of supervisors. The House and the Senate both proposed to exclude supervisors from the individuals defined as employees for purposes of the Act.' The Senate definition of “supervisor” was limited to individuals with authority, in the employer’s interest, to take or recommend action involving the employment of other employees, if the exercise of such authority required the use of independent judgment, S. 1129 §2(11).. But the proposed House definition would also have identified as excluded “supervisors” (a) those who could determine or effectively recommend the wages to be paid other employees, (b) employees with responsibility in the area of labor relations, personnel, employment; police, or time-study matters, and (c) confidential employees, H. R. 3020 § 2 (12). Neither of these proposals sought to exclude in express terms the entire category of “managerial employees,” i. e., those who are in a position to formulate, determine, and effectuate management policies beyond the area of labor relations, whether by defining such persons as “supervisors” or by proposing a separate exclusion for “managerial employees.” Such a step could easily have been taken had Congress intended to exclude these individuals from the protection of the Act. But it was not, despite the fact that the Board had recently considered whether *303certain employees should be denied organizational rights, either because they were supervisory or, separately, because their job responsibilities involved the exercise of managerial discretion. See, e. g., Ford Motor Co., 66 N. L. R. B. 1317, 1322 (1946); Electric Controller & Mfg. Co., 69 N. L. R. B. 1242 (1946). One would expect that if Congress had intended to eliminate the Board’s authority to accord bargaining rights to managerial employees, as well as supervisors, it would have said so, particularly as Board practice had treated these two categories separately and differently.
The Court would fill this gap by referring to the House Managers’ statement accompanying the Conference Committee Report and explaining the adoption of the narrower. Senate definition of excluded “supervisors.” This report is indeed instructive, but it indicates even mere-clearly, in my opinion, that Congress did not contemplate the exclusion of managerial employees from the coverage of the Act:
“The conference agreement, in the definition of ‘supervisor,’ limits such term to those individuals ■treated as supervisors under the Senate amendment. In the'case of persons working'in labor relatiois, personnel and employment departments, it was not thought necessary to make specific provision, as vías done in the House bill, since the Board has treat 3d, and presumably will continue to treat, such persons as' outside the scope of the act. This is the prevailing Board practice with respect to such people as confidential employees as well, and it was not the intention of the conferees to alter this practice in any respect. The conference agreement does not treat time-study personnel or guards as supervisors, -as did the House bill. jSince, however, time-study employees may qualify as professional personnel, *304the special provisions of the Senate- amendment . . . applicable with respect to professional employees will' cover many in this category; In the case .of guards, the conference agreement does not permit-the certification of a labor organization as the. bargaining representative-of guards if it admits to membership, of is affiliated with any organization that admits io membership, employees other than guards. The provision dealing with the certification of bargaining units for guards is dealt with in section 9 (b) of the conference agreement....” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 35-36 (1947).
The Court emphasizes that the statutory language adopted in the 1947 amendments did not expressly exclude persons working 'in labor relations, personnel, or employment departments, or confidential employees, but that these were “impliedly excluded” from the Act’s coverage by dint of the House Managers’ statements just quoted. From this premise, the Court proceeds to assume that other • categories of employees, similarly not excluded under the express terms of the amended definition of “employee,” were also impliedly excluded from the Act. In my view, there is no warrant for the assumption that groups of employees, which the statute, or express legislative statements, do not address, are to be excluded from the Act; nor is there any legislative debate whatsoever which can reasonably be construed as expressing an authoritative intent to exclude managerial employees as a class.
The House Managers’ statement accompanying the Conference Committee Report explains that the Act' was not amended expressly to exclude labor relations and confidential employees from coverage undef the Act, because it was already prevailing Board practice to exclude these employees. This was not an entirely accu*305rate representation of Board practice, which seemed to hold only that such employees fehould not be included in rank-and-file bargaining units, and not necessarily that they would have no protections under the Act, see, e. g., Murray Ohio Mfg. Co., 61 N. L. R. B. 47 (1945); Ford Motor Co., 66 N. L. R. B. 1317 (1946), but even accepting the House Managers’ statement as an authoritative direction that these workers were not to' be considered employees within the meaning of- § 2, it does not follow that other groups of employees, regarding whom no such explicit direction was set forth and whom the Board had not treated in such a manner, were also intended to be excluded. Such statement implied that certain groups of employees were to be excluded, but it also noted that some timestudy personnel could qualify as professional employees and could therefore organize in units .which a majority of them approved, and that guards were not wholly excluded from the Act, but were restricted to' units composed solely of other guards. §9(b), 29 U. S. C. §159(b). Given that Congress made specific provision for timestudy and plant protection employees, who were to be entitled to bargaining rights, and that it expressed a desire to exclude only labor relations and confidential employees whom it thought the Board had previously held outside the Act, there is no reason to suppose from the further congressional silence that special provisions, whether of inclusion or exclusion, were intended with respect to other categories of employees. If'’ it be argued that the absence of any express treatment of managerial employees by Congress was ■ somehow intended to codify prior Board practice, then the unavoidable fact is that Board decisions had not held that managerial employees were unprotected by the Act. They had only, been excluded from rank-and-file bargaining units. Moreover, there is no indication in the legislative history as to what *306Congress might have perceived the Board’s rule to be with respect to managerial employees as a class.2
Nor is the Court’s position much ádvanced by the few passing references in the House Report and in the floor debates, which the Court cites, ante, at 283, and nn. 12 and 13, for the assumption that “executives” would be excluded from the Act apart from whether they were confidential employees or not, and for the discussion of supervisors as representatives of management whom' the amendments sought to exclude. In none of the cited passages was the category ■ of “managerial employees,” as the Board had defined it, ever addressed, and the focus of these remarks is clearly directed at the exclusion of supervisors as defined in the proposed amendments. Perhaps it was clear to Congress that a confidential secretary’s superior would be excluded by the Act, but such an individual would either be a confidential employee himself, or a supervisor, or both. We are referred to *307nothing in the debates or other congressional materials where the category of managerial employees, as distinguished from the class of supervisory employees, a distinction the Board had previously drawn, is discussed.3
Finally, if we are to consider the 1947 amendments as intending to enact the views of the dissenting Justices in Packard, it should be noted that the dissent interpreted the National Labor Relations Act to “put in the employer category'all those who acted for management not only in formulating but also in executing its labor policies.” 330 U. S., at 496. (Emphasis supplied.) See also id., at 500. Limiting the exclusion of managerial employees to those who are charged with the formulation or implementation of labor relations policies, as the Board has now done in the case before us, is *308entirely consistent with this view and with the purposes of the Act. As thq Senate Report noted, its concern in changing the law with respect to supervisory employees, as construed by Packard, was that the balance of power in the collective-bargaining process had been upset by “the successful efforts of labor organizations to invoke the Wagner Act for covering supervisory personnel, traditionally regarded as part of management, into organizations composed of or subservient to the unions of the very men they were hired to supervise.” S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1947). See also H. R. Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 13 (1947); 93 Cong. Rec. 3553. Where an employee may be deemed managerial because of the nature of his duties apart from supervision of other employees, however, there is no reason to suppose that union affiliation, at least in separate units, would raise the same labor relations concern.
Following the Taft-Hartley amendments .in 1947, the Board continued to hold, as it had frequently held before, that buyers, and others with managerial interests, were to be excluded from bargaining units of other employees. Denver Dry Goods, 74 N. L. R. B. 1167 (1947); Palace Laundry Dry Cleaning, 75 N. L. R. B. 320 (1947); Denton’s, Inc., 83 N. L. R. B. 35, 37 (1949); Wise, Smith & Co., 83 N. L. R. B. 1019, 1021 n. 6 (1949); Westinghouse Electric Corp., 89 N. L. R. B. 8, 14 (1950). But in 1950, in American Locomotive Co., 92 N. L. R. B. 115, 117, the Board, in rejecting the inclusion of buyers in an office and clerical employees unit or their placement in a separate bargaining unit, said that “[a]s it appears that the buyers are authorized to make substantial purchases for the Employer, we find that they are representatives of management, and -as such may not be accorded bargainipg rights under the Act.” Reliance for this *309statement was placed on the Wise, Smith cfc Co. case and Westinghouse Electric case which involved the appropriateness of placing the managerial employees in a particular bargaining unit. In Swift & Co., 115 N. L. R. B. 752 (1956), the Board held that á proposed unit of procurement drivers could not be accorded bargaining rights, even in a separate unit. There, the Board flatly asserted .that it was “the clear intent of Congress to exclude from the coverage of the Act all individuals allied with management.” Id., at 753-754. The sole support for this statement, which the Board has now repudiated, was a reference to the statutory definitions of “employee” and “employer” and to the Conference Committee Report’s explanation of the term “supervisors,” as quoted above and reprinted in the Congressional Record.
. The Board thereafter continued to exclude managerial employees from bargaining units of other employees, occasionally citing Swift, e. g., Copeland Refrigeration Corp., 118 N. L. R. B. 1364, 1365 n. 2 (1957); AFL-CIO, 120 N. L. R. B. 969 (1958),'but more frequently excluding managerial employees from particular units without citing that case or suggesting that the excluded workers were not protected employees. E. g., Mack Trucks, Inc., 116 N. L. R. B. 1576, 1577-1578 (1956); Diana Shop, 118 N. L. R. B. 743, 745 (1957); Federal Tel. & Radio Co., 120 N. L. R. B. 1652, 1654 (1958); Kearney & Trecker Corp., 121 N. L. R. B. 817, 822 (1958); Weaver Motors, 123 N. L. R. B. 209, 216 (1959); Eastern Camera & Photo Corp., 140 N. L. R. B. 569, 572 (1963).
Until the Board overruled Swift in North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, Inc., 185 N. L. R. B. 550 (1970), it had thus actually held only twice that managerial employees could not be. afforded protection under the Act, and its support for that conclusion was without any persuasive appeal. It is true, of course, that the Board had not held to the contrary either, and that *310various courts of appeals interpreted and deferred to the Board’s position as one of total exclusion of managerial employees from the scope of the Act, although in none of these cases was that conclusion necessary to the result reached. But the Board has now rejected this broad exclusion, and the question is whether the current view should be sustained. That the Board now refuses to follow its prior precedents is no reason to overturn it, for we have frequently sustained Board decisions over7 ruling its prior interpretations of the Act. E. g., Golden State Bottling Co. v. NLRB, 414 U. S. 168 (1973); Packard Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485 (1947). And the face of the Act and the events of 1947 demonstrate that the Board’s present decision is a permissible construction of the statute.
Nor did Congress in 1959, when it again amended the statute, expressly or impliedly enact or approve the statutory interpretation announced in Swift <fc Co. The 1959 amendments dealt with secondary boycotts' and picketing, and we are cited to nothing suggesting that the attention of Congress at that time was directed to or focused on the question whether managerial employees were covered or excluded in the statute. Congressional silence does not imply legislative approval of ail Board rulings theretofore made. As the Court noted in Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, 398 U. S. 235, 241-242 (1970), which overruled Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U. S. 195 (1962):
“Nor can we agree that the conclusive weight should be accorded to the failure of Congress to respond to Sinclair on the theory that congressional silence should be interpreted as acceptance of the decision. The Court has cautioned that '[i]t is at best treacherous to find in congressional silence alone the adoption of a controlling rule of law.’ Girouard v. *311United States, 328 U. S. 61, 69 (1946). Therefore, in the absence of any persuasive circumstances evidencing a clear design that congressional inaction be .taken as acceptance of Sinclair, the mere silence of Congress is not a sufficient reason for refusing to consider the decision.”
See also Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U. S. 426, 431 (1955). Similarly, from the congressional silence in 1959 concerning Swift’s exclusion of managerial employees from the protection of the Act, it should not be assumed that' Congress intended to approve of Swift and foreclose the possibility of the Board’s reconsidering Swift and overruling it on further and more examining reflection. NLRB v. Seven-Up Co., 344 U. S. 344, 350-352 (1953).
The Board’s decisions in this area have not established a cohesive and precise pattern of rulings. It is often difficult to tell whether an individual decision is based on the propriety of excluding certain employees from a particular bargaining unit or whether the worker under consideration is thought to be outside the scope of the Act. But this Court has consistently said that it will accept the Board’s determination of whether a particular individual is an “employee” under the Act if that determination “has ‘warrant in the record’ and a reasonable basis in law " NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131 (1944); NLRB v. United Insurance Co., 390 U. S. 254, 260 (1968). There is no reason here to- hamstring the Board and deny a broad category of employees those protections of the Act which neither the statutory language nor its legislative history- requires simply because the Board at one time interpreted the Act — erroneously it seems to me — to exclude all managerial as well as supervisory employees.
I respectfully dissent.

 The majority argues that “no explicit exclusionary provision was necessary in 1947 because the Board had never approved the organization of ‘managerial employees’ in either a separate unit or as part cf a rank-and-file unit.” Ante, at 284-285, n. 13. It does not dispute, however, that the Board had never disapproved théir organization either, and admits that the Board had stated in Dravo Corp., 54 N. L. R. B. 1174 (1944), that by excluding buyers from a clerical employees unit it did not mean to say they would be denied bargaining rights under the Act. The Board had not held managerial employees excluded prior to 1947, and Congress did not address itself to the class of “managerial employees” by that term or by reference to the Board’s definition. There is, therefore, no justification for excluding from the statutory designation of “any employee” an entire class that the Board had not previously excluded and that Congress did not expressly deal with in its amendments to the Act or in the legislative materials surrounding their adoption. If Congress had intended to exclude managerial employees, it would have said something. about them, since it took such great pains to discuss supervisors and labor relations, confidential, time-study, and plant protection employees.

 The majority expresses concern that extending organizational and bargaining rights to managerial employees would permit the extension of the Act to vice presidents and other high level executives, thereby blurring the distinction between management and labor. The concern is overblown; for most, if not all, executives will obviously be “super” supervisors, confidential employees, professionals or within the Board’s definition of those employees whose organization would result in a conflict of interest with respect to the company’s labor policies. If there are remaining executives outside these categories who should also be excluded, the Board should be told to exclude that particular group, rather than to exclude the managerial class that would reach not only vertically, but laterally, to deny “hundreds of thousands,” 475 F. 2d 485, 496, of buyers and other relatively lowdevel management employees the organizational benefits and other protections; of the Act otherwise available to “any employee.”
To argue, as the majority does, that had Congress intended to include managerial employees, it would have said so expressly, ignores the fact that the Act covers “any employee” and that the burden properly falls on those who would exclude managerial employees to demonstrate that it was the intent of Congress to exclude this category when it legiálated directly to exclude supervisory employees.