ABSTRACT
Whether or not supervisors should be legally protected when exercising collective bargaining rights involves a conflict between the employer’s desire to have supervisors identified and aligned with management policy and the supervisor’s interest in participating through union membership in the determination of his working conditions. 1 Prior to its appearance in the public sector, the issue of supervisor collective bargaining representation was resolved in the private sector by an act of Congress. Initially, the United States Supreme Court upheld a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision providing National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protection to supervisors who engaged in collective bargaining [1]. This decision was primarily based on the conclusion that supervisors were a class of employees, and as such should have protected rights to collectively influence their employment conditions as do other employees [1, 19LRRM 2499]. The issue was finally resolved by a provision of the Labor Management Relations Act (1947) that, by definition, specifically excluded supervisors from the protection of the NLRA. 2 This exclusion was based on the concern that supervisors who exercise managerial discretion in the use of the employer’s resources should not be allowed to become aligned against the employer through the exercise of collective bargaining rights [2].
