The 3-2 ruling, made public Tuesday, is broad enough to set a precedent for industries other than health care and was immediately assailed by labor experts and union organizers, who said it could deprive millions of American workers of the right to join a union.
"If the ruling remains unchanged, this is going to have a devastating effect on unionization in the country," said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.
The EPI estimates that a broad interpretation of the ruling could immediately strip almost 1.4 million American workers of their union membership, based on their current job duties. Another 8 million non-union Americans could lose their right to join unions, according to the same analysis.
The ruling's exact implications are somewhat murky because it shifts power to individual employers, who may or may not decide to reclassify their workers as supervisors.
The California Nurses Association said it expected nearly 30 percent of its 70,000 members would be affected by this ruling.
"Essentially, we have a decision that ultimately opens the door to the deunionization of registered nurses and silencing their voice," said CNA president Rose Ann DeMoro, who said California nurses were ready to strike if "any employer decides to act on this harebrained decision."
A California Hospital Association spokeswoman welcomed the clarity provided by the ruling. "There is no uniform definition of a charge nurse, but to the extent that they are directing the duties of other employees, they are definitely supervisors," said Gail Blanchard-Saiger, CHA's vice president of labor and employment. She said it would be up to individual hospitals to decide how to apply the ruling.
The NLRB's decision involving Michigan-based Oakwood Healthcare Inc. is one of three cases collectively called the "Kentucky River" cases, filed in response to a 2001 Supreme Court suit involving the definition of a supervisor. The current ruling attempts to settle a prickly, ongoing question: Are workers who "assign and responsibly direct" other workers supervisors or not?
The NLRB interpreted that question broadly, saying nurses who are assigned to regular shifts as "charge nurses" are supervisors. Charge nurses typically don't have the traditional duties of a supervisor -- such as hiring, firing or disciplining employees -- but because of experience and training, sometimes direct the duties of other nurses.
In the two other cases, involving nurses at a Minnesota hospital and "lead men" at a Mississippi manufacturing plant, the NLRB said that the frequency and consistency of the supervisory duties would determine the employees' status.
As the dissenters, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh warned that the ruling threatens to create a "new class of workers under federal labor law."
Those workers, they warned, "have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees. Into that category fall most professionals, who by 2012 could number almost 34 million."
The AFL-CIO, America's largest union, said Tuesday it would make the reversal of this decision -- either through litigation or legislation -- its top political priority for November's congressional elections.
"This is easily the most important challenge in front of American workers right now, and we intend to fight it as hard as we can," Stewart Acuff, national organizing director for the AFL-CIO, said in a phone call.
The industry groups that supported the reclassification remained mostly silent on Tuesday, saying they needed time to analyze the complex, 31-page decision. The Washington, D.C.-based American Hospital Association issued a brief statement, saying the NLRB had "recognized the vital and special role charge nurses play in providing high quality patient care."
"Since hospital staffing can vary -- not only hospital to hospital but hour by hour -- this decision will play out differently hospital by hospital," Pamela Thompson, the AHA's spokesperson on this issue.
Among those likely affected would be nurses like CNA member Steve Lebeau, 50, who has been a charge nurse at Woodland Memorial Hospital for about seven years. Besides his regular duties, he assigns less-experienced nurses on his shift. He doesn't have the authority to hire, fire or discipline workers. Under the current NLRB ruling, Woodland Memorial Hospital could designate him as a supervisor, forcing him to leave the union.
"If I had to lose my union membership to remain a charge nurse, I would rather not be a charge nurse," he said.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a UC Santa Barbara professor who directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy, called the decision an "evisceration of labor, to say that any workers who are somewhat knowledgeable and skilled should automatically not belong to a union," he said. "It's the ghetto-ization of unions to say that their members should only be people who have no authority and no power."
The case is likely to be appealed and ultimately could reach the Supreme Court.
By Mehul Srivastava, The Sacramento Bee
Oct. 4, 2006