New York Public Personnel Law: Placing supervisors and subordinates in the same negotiating unit

October 06, 2018

Placing supervisors and subordinates in the same negotiating unit

Placing supervisors and subordinates in the same negotiating unit

CSEA and Genesee County, 29 PERB 3068

Is there any prohibition to mixing supervisors and the rank-and-file employees they supervise in the same negotiating unit? No, PERB ruled in the Genesee County case, which involved a petition to place ten head nurses and supervising nurses in separate negotiating units rather than include them in the same unit as 200 non supervisory nurses.

PERB, noting that it had declined to establish a per se supervisory exclusionary rule, said "tensions, real or imagined, stemming from supervisor-subordinate relationships are not entitled to more weight in making a unit determination than any other of the myriad sources of workplace strain which can affect employees."

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