92
Opinion of the Court
Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 404 U. S. 157, 166 (1971) (retired persons are not "employees" because they do not "work for another for hire"). See also NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131-132 (1944) (independent contractor-like newsboys are "employees"); Packard Motor Car Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485, 488-490 (1947) (company foremen are "employees"). But see 61 Stat. 137-138, 29 U. S. C. § 152(3) (1988 ed.) (amending Act to overrule Hearst and Packard by explicitly excluding independent contractors and supervisory employees).
Finally, at least one other provision of the 1947 Labor Management Relations Act seems specifically to contemplate the possibility that a company's employee might also work for a union. This provision forbids an employer (say, the company) to make payments to a person employed by a union, but simultaneously exempts from that ban wages paid by the company to "any . . . employee of a labor organization, who is also an employee" of the company. 29 U. S. C. § 186(c)(1) (1988 ed., Supp. V) (emphasis added). If Town & Country is right, there would not seem to be many (or any) human beings to which this last phrase could apply.
III
Town & Country believes that it can overcome these general considerations, favoring a broad, literal interpretation of the Act, through an argument that rests primarily upon the common law of agency. It first argues that our prior decisions resort to common-law principles in defining the term "employee." See Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden, 503 U. S. 318, 323 (1992) (using common-law test to distinguish between "employee" and "independent contractor" under Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq.); Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U. S. 730, 739-740 (1989) (using common-law test to distinguish between "employee" and "independent contractor" under Copyright Act of 1976, 17
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