Cite as: 516 U. S. 85 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
U. S. C. § 101 et seq.); NLRB v. United Ins. Co. of America, 390 U. S. 254, 256 (1968) (using common-law test to distinguish between "employee" and "independent contractor" under NLRA). And it also points out that the Board itself, in its decision, found "no bar to applying common law agency principles to the determination whether a paid union organizer is an 'employee,' " Town & Country Elec., Inc., 309 N. L. R. B., at 1254.
Town & Country goes on to argue that application of
common-law agency principles requires an interpretation of "employee" that excludes paid union organizers. It points to a section of the Restatement (Second) of Agency (dealing with respondeat superior liability for torts), which says:
"Since . . . the relation of master and servant is dependent upon the right of the master to control the conduct of the servant in the performance of the service, giving service to two masters at the same time normally involves a breach of duty by the servant to one or both of them . . . . [A person] cannot be a servant of two masters in doing an act as to which an intent to serve one necessarily excludes an intent to serve the other." Restatement (Second) of Agency § 226, Comment a, p. 499 (1957).
It argues that, when the paid union organizer serves the union—at least at certain times in certain ways—the organizer is acting adversely to the company. Indeed, it says, the organizer may stand ready to desert the company upon request by the union, in which case, the union, not the company, would have "the right . . . to control the conduct of the servant." Ibid. Thus, it concludes, the worker must be the servant (i. e., the "employee") of the union alone. See id., § 1, and Comment a, p. 8 ("agent" is one who agrees to act "subject to [a principal's] control").
As Town & Country correctly notes, in the context of reviewing lower courts' interpretations of statutory terms, we
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