Workers at JBS-Swift & Co.'s Hyrum, Utah, beef plant voted this week to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

More than two-thirds of the plant's workers voted to organize. Nearly 1,000 were eligible to vote in an election held Wednesday. Of ballots cast, 649 (69 percent) voted for the union and 290 voted against the union, UFCW spokesman Evan Yeats was quoted as saying.

Efforts to organize the Hyrum facility began in the 1980s. In the latest push, workers held organized meetings in August and later petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

JBS-Swift spokewoman Tamara Smid issued the following statement by e-mail: "We congratulate our employees for exercising their rights under the Nation Labor Relations Act. We said from the beginning that JBS respected our employees' right to organize. We also told our employees that they would get the right to decide through a secret ballot election, which would be supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

"Our employees in Hyrum have spoken; we look forward to this new partnership with the employees and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. We anticipate our next step will be to set dates in the near future when we will begin the process of negotiating our first labor agreement for the Hyrum facility."