594
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
themselves which aide was to cover which residents." Id., at 70. The administrator and the director of nursing were "always on call" and nurses in fact called them at their homes "when non-routine matters ar[o]se." Id., at 72.
Throughout the hearing, the ALJ reported, he gained "the impression that Heartland's administrator believed that the nurses' views about anything other than hands-on care of the residents were not worth considering." Ibid. "[T]he actions of Heartland's administrator," the ALJ concluded, repeatedly and unmistakably demonstrated that "to [Heart-land's] management, Heartland's nurses were just hired hands." Ibid. I see no tenable basis for rejecting the ALJ's ultimate ruling that the nurses' jobs did not entail genuine, front-line supervisory status of the kind that would exclude them from the Act's protection.
IV
A
The phrase ultimately limiting the § 2(11) classification "supervisor" is, as the Court recognizes, "in the interest of the employer." To give that phrase meaning as a discrete and potent limitation, the Board has construed it, in diverse contexts, to convey more than the obligation all employees have to further the employer's business interests, indeed more than the authority to assign and direct other employees pursuant to relevant professional standards. See, e. g., Northcrest Nursing Home, 313 N. L. R. B. 491 (1993) (nurses); Youth Guidance Center, 263 N. L. R. B. 1330, 1335, and n. 23 (1982) (social workers); Sav-On Drugs, Inc., 243 N. L. R. B. 859, 862 (1979) (pharmacists); Neighborhood Legal Services, Inc., 236 N. L. R. B. 1269, 1273, and n. 9 (1978) (attorneys).13 It is a defining task of management to formu-13 The Board, as the decisions cited in text demonstrate, takes no unique approach in cases involving nurses. See also cases cited, supra, at 591- 592, nn. 6-7, 9, 12. Nor, contrary to the Court's report, see ante, at 574, did counsel for the NLRB admit to deviant interpretation of the phrase,
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