IN THIS GUIDE · Explain management powers within a collective agreement
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Identify the decisions reserved to each participant
Explain the applicant’s responsibilities alongside those of human resources, higher management and any contractual process. Do not claim unilateral dismissal authority if the organization requires additional steps. Describe actual recommendations and decision powers accurately. Set the description out as a table before it becomes prose: the decision, who initiates it, who must be consulted, who may object and on what ground, and who signs at the end. Hiring, discipline, dismissal, shift assignment, overtime allocation and promotion often sit in different rows, and a manager may hold real authority over some while holding only a right of recommendation over others. Hypothetical example: a greenhouse production manager may suspend immediately for a safety breach, but a dismissal recommendation goes to a joint committee that can substitute a lesser measure. Both facts belong in the account. Overstating the second invites a request for the agreement itself, and the agreement will contradict the letter.
Assess the work beyond a personnel procedure
Show whether the applicant manages qualifying personnel or an essential function at the required level. First-line supervision alone does not establish managerial capacity unless the supervised employees are professional. If function management is claimed, explain the essential function, senior-level authority, discretion and primarily managerial duties rather than relying only on personnel rights. Answer the question the category actually asks, which is what the person directs rather than how many people report to them. If personnel management is claimed, describe the professional or supervisory character of the subordinate positions and what those positions require of the people holding them. If an essential function is claimed instead, name the function, say why the organisation could not operate without it, and show the discretion the applicant exercises over its budget, priorities and standards. A span of control made up of seasonal or line staff, however large, does not by itself establish managerial capacity, and a title granted for pay-band reasons proves nothing about the duties.
Establish the international employment case
Provide the qualifying corporate connection and continuing qualifying operations in the United States and abroad. Generally document one continuous year of qualifying full-time employment abroad within the relevant preceding three years. A collective agreement cannot establish those facts or replace proof of the actual proposed U.S. managerial or executive job. Three documentary facts have to be established independently of anything the agreement says: the corporate relationship between the foreign employer and the U.S. entity, the applicant's one continuous year of qualifying full-time employment abroad within the preceding three years, and the existence of a real U.S. position of the claimed character. Ordinary payroll records, dated organisation charts and corporate registers carry that burden. Hypothetical example: a file assembles the collective agreement and the manager's curriculum vitae and treats the qualifying year as self-evident because the person has always worked there; the year is a fact with a start date, an end date and continuity, and it is proved with records rather than with a description.
What the first working review produces
A first session on a case like this usually ends with three short documents rather than a legal opinion. The first is a one-page authority map, listing each personnel decision and the applicant's real part in it, initialled by whoever in the organisation can confirm it. The second is a list of the provisions in the agreement that touch those decisions, by article number, so that nobody later quotes a clause out of context. The third is a gap list: the records still needed to prove the qualifying year abroad and the corporate relationship. That last list usually determines the timetable, because payroll and corporate records take longer to retrieve than any narrative takes to write.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.