What are the kinds of individual eligibility or inclusion questions that need not be litigated at the pre-election hearing?

Generally, individual eligibility and inclusion issues concern: (1) whether individuals or groups of individuals, otherwise falling within the terms used to describe an appropriate unit, are nevertheless ineligible because they are excluded from the Act’s definition of employee and (2) whether individuals or groups of individuals fall within the terms used to describe the unit. For example, if the petition calls for a unit including ‘‘production employees’’ and excluding the typical ‘‘professional employees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act,’’ then the following would all be eligibility or inclusion questions: (1) whether production foremen are supervisors; (2) whether production employee Jane Doe is a supervisor; (3) whether workers who perform quality control functions are production employees; and (4) whether Joe Smith is a production employee.