bitbucket-25253 (9/5/2011)

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In the United States, the National Labor Relations Board sets the rules for union membership. For example:

The majority ruled that workers should generally be deemed supervisors, exempt from union membership, if they oversaw another employee and could be held accountable if that subordinate performed poorly. The majority also ruled that workers could be deemed supervisors if they were assigned supervisory duties just 10 percent to 15 percent of their total work time.

The case focused on workers who did not perform functions like hiring, promoting or laying off workers, but rather assigning and directing other employees — functions in which the supervisory role was more ambiguous. The board’s majority emphasized that to be considered a supervisor, workers had to exercise independent judgment, although it adopted a more expansive view of such judgment than previous labor boards had.

From this you can see that a DBA who does exercise independnt judgment would be considered a supervisor and hence not eligible for union membership. In addition:

Professionally exempt work means work which is predominantly intellectual, requires specialized education, and involves the exercise of discretion and judgment. Professionally exempt workers must have education beyond high school, and usually beyond college, in fields that are distinguished from (more "academic" than) the mechanical arts or skilled trades