
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 14, 1995                   TAG: 9503140133
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                 LENGTH: Medium

TYSON LOSES LABOR APPEAL

A federal court has upheld an unfair labor practice ruling against Holly Farms Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc. stemming from union organizing campaigns seven years ago.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a National Labor Relations Board ruling that Tyson, which bought Holly Farms in 1989, must pay back wages and benefits to 51 long-distance drivers still working for the company.

Under the ruling, Tyson also must rehire and give back pay to 47 other long-haul drivers and return 200 to 250 local drivers and yardmen to their 1989 employment conditions and give them back pay.

The board found that the drivers' wages and benefits were unfairly reduced by the company in 1989 during three union organizing campaigns at the company's North Carolina chicken processing facilities.

Many of the unfair practices described by the board were not disputed. The appeal largely hinged on whether Tyson violated any duty that it may have had to bargain with the union regarding the drivers-yardmen unit and whether the workers in a ``live-haul'' unit were protected by the National Labor Relations Act.

The live-haul employees included chicken catchers, fork lift operators and live-haul drivers.

Writing for the majority of the three-judge panel, Judge Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. said the board made a reasonable interpretation in determining that the live-haul workers could be considered ``employees'' covered by the act and not ``agricultural laborers,'' who are exempt.

Murnaghan was joined in the ruling by Judge Alexander Harvey Jr., a senior U.S. District judge in Maryland, who sat by designation.

Circuit Judge Paul V. Niemeyer concurred with some of the ruling, but wrote a dissent that said the live-haul workers should not have been included in the bargaining unit.

He also said Tyson should not have been held liable when it purchased 100 percent of the stock of Holly Farms, because Holly Farms continued as a separate entity and remained as a continuing employer for two months, with no change in its relationship with its employees.

The board had found that Tyson was bound to bargain with the union at the time it acquired a controlling interest in Holly Farms stock and that Tyson then committed numerous violations of the labor act.

by CNB