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NOTRE-DAME-DU-MONT-CARMEL · L-1A FIELD GUIDE

Does a Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel trucking company's operations manager qualify for L-1A if her dispatchers are not professionals and the drivers are contractors?

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THE DIRECT ANSWER

She can, as a manager of an essential function. The test is whether she sets policy and exercises discretion over the dispatch and freight function at a senior level, not whether the people beneath her hold degrees.

Function management does not depend on the staff's credentials

The regulation defines managerial capacity in two ways: managing the organization or a department and supervising professional, supervisory or managerial staff with hiring authority, or managing an essential function at a senior level with discretion over its daily operations. A carrier's dispatch and freight-acceptance function is plainly essential, and a manager who decides which loads are taken, negotiates owner-operator contracts, sets rates and controls the function's budget is managing it, even though the dispatchers are clerical employees and the drivers are contractors. What defeats the case is a record showing that she spends most of her day dispatching loads herself; that is performing the function, not managing it.

The petition should quantify her time, list decisions made without referral upward and show a year of that work abroad in the last three years. The U.S. role must also be primarily managerial, which requires a terminal with people or a function for her to direct.