Analysis and discussion of issues that impact business

This is an interesting ruling.

Nurses permanently assigned to run work shifts should be considered supervisors and thus exempt from U.S. labor protections, a federal panel held Tuesday in a decision that potentially has major implications for workers in other fields.

Now, I'm not sure this will make them "exempt from U.S. labor protections" - not as long as there are lawyers...

Basically, this ruling is an attempt to define who is management and who is not.

The National Labor Relations Board, in a 3-2 ruling, also said people who work supervisory shifts only on a rotating basis may be exempt from supervisory status in some cases but not others, depending on the frequency and consistency of the shifts.

The rhetorical fur is flying.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney denounced the ruling as inviting employers “to strip millions of workers of their right to have a union by reclassifying them as ’supervisors’ in name only.”

Millions? I know there are a lot of nurses, but...

Stephen Bokat, an attorney for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, praised the decision as providing “a good, clear standard” on what workers are supervisors.

“When undergoing any organizing efforts by unions, you have to know who in the work force belongs to you and who belongs to the union,” he said.

Part of the dissent has merit. Give an unscrupulous employer an loophole, and they'll find it. According to some NLRB members:

The decision “threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees,” they wrote.

But again, that's why they have lawyers.

Despite the claims of imminent disaster, I think this sums it up best.

Former NLRB member John Raudabaugh, now a labor specialist with an international law firm, said he sees the decision as causing some changes in labor-employee relationship, but he criticized those who characterize the ruling as an attack on organized labor.

“I see isolated thunderstorms,” he said, “but not a tsunami.”

Here, here.