Labor - Management Relations 347and in the nonprofi t sector. For purposes of this discussion, all of the
labor - management collective bargaining acts — private or nonprofit
(LMRA), federal (LMRS), and state (PERAS) — will be referred to generically
as labor - management relations acts.
Labor - management relation acts designate or create agencies to
provide oversight of the acts and to administer relations among employers,
employees, and unions. The NLRB governs private and nonprofi t labor
relations, and the FLRA provides oversight for the federal government.
Although the names of these administrative agencies tend to vary across
the states (New Jersey ’ s version is the Public Employment Relations
Commission, the Illinois version is known as the Illinois State Labor
Relations Board, and Florida calls its board the Public Employee Rela-
tions Commission), they are often referred to as public employee relations
boards (PERBs).Unit Determination
The labor - management relations acts generally defi ne the procedures for
designating the employees ’ representative or union. Before a union can
represent a group of employees, the constituency of the group must be
determined. The group of employees that can potentially be represented
by one representative at the bargaining table is called the appropriate bargaining
unit. The acts contain guidelines for the determination of the appropriate
unit and procedures for determination.
The labor - management relations acts exclude some general categories
of employees from a bargaining unit. For example, managerial and confi den-
tial employees are excluded as a matter of policy because their interests
are more closely aligned with management than with the bargaining unit.
Managerial employees are employed by an agency in positions that require
or authorize them to formulate, determine, or infl uence the policies of the
agency. Confi dential employees are those who assist the individuals who
formulate, determine, or execute labor policy. Included in this category are
employees who have access to information about labor relations or who
participate in deliberations of a labor relations nature and are required
to keep that information confi dential from the labor organization repre-
senting a bargaining unit.
Professional and technical employees, and in some cases supervisors,
may also be excluded from an overall bargaining unit, but they are still
entitled to representation as their own units. A supervisor is an individual
who has the authority to, in the interests of the agency, hire, direct, assign,