In October 2006, the conservative National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued one of the most far-reaching decisions in the Board’s history—a decision that potentially could deprive hundreds of thousands of registered nurses of their ability to have a protected voice in the American health care system.

In Oakwood Healthcare, Inc. and two other cases (which dealt with issues raised by the Supreme Court in its Kentucky River decision), the NLRB undermined the clear intent of Congress when it radically changed the law by expanding the definition of “supervisor.” With a stroke of a pen, the Board declared about 843,000 RNs and 123,800 licensed practical or vocational nurses (LPN/LVNs) were potentially “supervisors” and thus could lose their legally protected voice and right to engage in union activities.

The NLRB decision says nurses could be considered “supervisors” if they have the authority to “assign” a patient to another nurse for only the duration of a single shift, or to “responsibly direct” another employee to perform a task, and they have this “authority” during as little as 10 percent of their work time.

For example, a nurse who regularly serves as a charge nurse 10 percent of her/his time and spends the remaining 90 percent of the time performing her/his regular nursing duties may be considered a “supervisor,” and thus can be denied her/his basic right to belong to a union. Of course, this is an affront to common sense. And such a charge nurse does not have the authority of a real supervisor, such as the authority to hire, fire, discipline, suspend, promote, lay off or reward.

The Real World. To see how absurd the ruling is, consider these real-life examples:

• In an attempt to deny nurses their right to choose to belong to a union, a hospital in Salt Lake City argued that two-thirds of the nursing staff were charge nurses and should be considered supervisors.
• A hospital in Washington tried to argue all nurses at the facility were charge nurse supervisors and should be denied their legally protected right to form a union.

That means that corporate executives at the Salt Lake hospital argued that two-thirds of the nurses “supervise” the other one-third of the nurses! And according to hospital executives in Washington, every RN is a supervisor AND every RN supervises all the other RNs!

If two-thirds to 100 percent of nurses are acting as supervisors, you have to wonder who’s actually doing the work of delivering patient care. Common sense tells you this is absurd. There is a difference between a nurse who provides patient care and a nursing supervisor. We know the difference, real supervisors know the difference and hospital management knows the difference.

The Bottom Line. What this does is allow hospital managers to fire or discipline any nurse who openly talks about important patient care issues and/or tries to organize a union. The National Labor Relations Act was passed to protect people’s rights to engage in this type of activity and the radical actions taken by the NLRB have taken these rights away. We need nurses to be protected in their role as patient advocates so they have the ability to speak freely about problems they encounter while caring for patients and have the ability to join a union if they so desire.

Want to get involved in the fight to ensure that nurses’ rights are protected? Contact your local union or become an RNs Working Together Patient Advocate.