National Labor Relations Board v. Health Care & Retirement Corporation of America (511 U.S. 571)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 23, 1994 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 511 U.S. 571 · 114 S. Ct. 1778
- Decided
- May 23, 1994
- Term
- October Term 1993
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Unions
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. The National Labor Relations Act (Act) affords employees the rights to organize and to engage in collective bargaining free from employer interference. The Act does not grant those rights to supervisory employees, however, so the statutory definition of supervisor becomes essential in determining which employees are covered by the Act. In this case, we decide the narrow question whether the National Labor Relations Board’s (Board’s) test for determining if a nurse is a supervisor is consistent with the statutory definition. I Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. Act of July 5,1935, ch. 372,49 Stat. 449. In the early years of its operation, the Act did not exempt supervisory employees from its coverage; as a result, supervisory employees could organize as part of bargaining units and negotiate with the employer. Employers complained that this produced an imbalance between labor and management, but in 1947 this Court refused to carve out a supervisory employee exception from the Act’s broad coverage. The Court stated that “it is for Congress, not for us, to create exceptions or qualifications at odds with [the Act’s] plain terms.” Packard Motor Car Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485, 490 (1947). Later that year, Congress did just that, amending the statute so that the term “ ‘employee’ . . . shall not include . .…
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