592
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
directors,12 and, as this Court has noted, architects and engineers. See NLRB v. Yeshiva Univ., 444 U. S. 672, 690, n. 30 (1980) (citing cases). Indicating approval of the NLRB's general approach to the Act's coverage of professionals, the Court stated in Yeshiva:
"The Board has recognized that employees whose decisionmaking is limited to the routine discharge of professional duties in projects to which they have been assigned cannot be excluded from coverage even if union membership arguably may involve some divided loyalty. Only if an employee's activities fall outside the scope of the duties routinely performed by similarly situated professionals will he be found aligned with management. We think these decisions accurately capture the intent of Congress . . . ." Id., at 690 (footnote omitted).
Notably, in determining whether, in a concrete case, nurses are supervisors within the meaning of the Act, the Board has drawn particularly upon its decisions in "leadperson" controversies. "Leadpersons" include skilled employees who do not qualify as statutory "professionals," but, like professional employees, have some authority to assign or direct other workers. In leadperson cases, as in cases involving professionals, the NLRB has distinguished between authority that derives from superior skill or experience, and authority that "flows from management and tends to identify or associate a worker with management." South-which direction is incidental to the practice of their profession, and thus is not the exercise of supervisory authority in the interest of the Employer." Id., at 1273, n. 9.
12 See Golden-West Broadcasters-KTLA, 215 N. L. R. B. 760, 762, n. 4 (1974): "[A]n employee with special expertise or training who directs or instructs another in the proper performance of his work for which the former is professionally responsible is not thereby rendered a supervisor. . . . This is so even when the more senior or more expert employee exercises some independent discretion where, as here, such discretion is based upon special competence or upon specific articulated employer policies."
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