Nurses are Yeshiva’ed by NLRB

The decision harkens back to the Yeshiva ruling in 1980, which found that professors at private institutions were managers and therefore did not have the right to bargain. That precedent-setting decision—which has become a verb in the academic labor world—has served as a potent weapon in the hands of union-busting private university employers who “Yeshiva” faculty that try to seek union recognition. Now, the Kentucky River decision could have a similar effect on millions of workers.

The main case, Oakwood Healthcare Inc., was decided on a 3-2 vote. It says permanent “charge” nurses are bosses under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), while rotating charge nurses may not be. In the other two cases, Kentucky River Community Care and Golden Crest Healthcare Center, the board said the nurses did not exercise supervisory authority.

“Today’s 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,” wrote the two dissenting NRLB members, Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh. “In that category fall most professionals.”

The dissenters said that by 2012, the number of U.S. professionals who might be considered bosses could number almost 34 million, approaching a quarter of the workforce. The Economic Policy Institute says up to 8 million workers could be affected right now.

The new rules in Oakwood will be challenged. “This is hardly the end of the process,” says Craig Becker, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO. “It’s only the next step.”