Members of the Westchester/Putnam Central Labor Body and the Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation met jointly with Congressman John Hall to ask him to be a co- sponsor of the RESPECT Act. Congressman Hall was well versed in the bill’s importance and agreed to sign on to the bill. Four other New York Representatives, Maloney, Engel, McCarthy and Higgins are already on the bill and Nita Lowey is in the process of adding her name to the bill.
The Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradesworkers (RESPECT) Act has been introduced in the House by Rep. Andrews (H.R. 1644) and in the Senate by Senators Dodd and Durbin (S. 969). The RESPECT act would restore the original intent of Congress that employees should not be considered “supervisors”. “Supervisors” are not protected by the NLRA and can be legally fired for union activity.
Recent decisions such as the Kentucky River Decision and the Oakwood Decision, had declared almost every worker a supervisor. Workers were declared supervisors if they merely assigned a nurse to a patient for a single shift, trained an unskilled apprentice as is often done by skilled construction workers, asked someone to restock the shelves, etc. Among the workers potentially affected are 843,000 registered nurses; 397,000 computer systems analysts; 123,900 licensed practical nurses; 152,000 electricians; 99,000 machine operators; 97,200 carpenters; 83,000 janitors; 77,500 mechanics; 65,900 truck drivers; 53,700 physician assistants; 51,500 other construction workers; 33,000 aerospace engineers; 24,100 editors and reporters; 8,600 librarians; and 4,300 broadcast equipment operators.
The RESPECT Act would make two minor modifications to the NLRA: (1) it would delete the words “assign” and “responsibility to direct” from the statutory definition of “supervisor”; and (2) it would define “supervisor” to be an employee who has supervisory authority for at least 50 percent of his or her work time. Under the RESPECT Act, supervisors with substantial authority to affect employees’ terms and conditions of employment-supervisors who for a majority of their work time have authority to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, reward, or discipline other employees, or effectively to recommend any of these actions-would still be excluded from protection of the NLRA.
