You might be a supervisor and not even know it

“The Board defined ‘assign’ as the act of ‘designating an employee to a place, (such as a location, department, or wing), appointing an individual to a time (such as a shift or overtime period), or giving significant overall duties, i.e. tasks to an employee,’” the NLRB said in a statement explaining three related decisions issued Oct. 3.

On the issue of judgment: “If a person on the shop floor has men under him, and if that person decides what job shall be undertaken next or who shall do it, that person is a supervisor, provided that the direction is both ‘responsible’ … and carried out with independent judgment.”

The board found that even if a worker spent only 10 to 15 percent of his time assigning work and making independent judgments he could be deemed a supervisor.

That means a union carpenter who directs an aspiring apprentice might fall under the supervisor designation. And with so much emphasis on team building and worker empowerment in the manufacturing sector, an autoworker who tells a colleague which station to move to next arguably could fall under the definition.

Fact file The National Labor Relations Act: A quick history In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, mainly to protect private-sector employees who chose to join unions. The thinking was that employees were the Davids of the work world, and their employers the Goliaths. While the act was not intended to strike down the Goliaths, it was intended to give workers a little bigger slingshot when it came to seeking better wages and working conditions. Here’s a key section: “Experience has proved that protection by law of the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively safeguards commerce from injury, impairment, or interruption, and promotes the flow of commerce by removing certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest, by encouraging practices fundamental to the friendly adjustment of industrial disputes arising out of differences as to wages, hours, or other working conditions, and by restoring equality of bargaining power between employers and employees.” Click here for the full text of the law. MSNBC

Stewart Acuff, organizing director for the AFL-CIO, says, “They’ve changed the ID of a supervisor who was someone with clear authority to hire, fire, etc., to anyone that directs another employee.”

Employer advocates don’t see it that way. Labor law attorney William P. Schurgin says the ruling finally establishes “21st century guidelines that help employers evaluate who is and who is not a supervisor for purposes of the Labor Relations Act.”

Right now it appears every case will be decided on its own merits, says Ellen Dannin, a law professor Pennsylvania State University. But she noted: “There will be some employers who will say, 'Let’s take advantage of this and see if we can test the limits.'”

So employees will have to look at their own situations before deciding whether to take part in any union organizing activities.

“The reality is that every time workers organize they risk that the employer will retaliate against them. This is nothing new," Dannin says. “If workers were not afraid of losing their jobs, then employer anti-union campaigns would have no power over them.”

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