Source: Lisa M. Keefe, Meatingplace.com, March 29

A vote taken last December over whether to decertify the union at Tyson Foods Inc.’s beef plant near Pasco and Wallula, Wash., remains untallied, with the ballots impounded in the National Labor Relations Board’s Seattle regional office and likely to remain under lock and key for some months yet.

Resolving the question of union representation at the facility awaits an NLRB decision on another case entirely, NLRB Regional Director Richard L. Ahearn explained to Meatingplace.

At issue is a 2007 NLRB decision regarding the agency’s requirement that employers alert the NLRB when they grant voluntary recognition to a labor union. Tyson failed to notify the NLRB of such a decision regarding the Pasco/Wallula plant several years ago, and so an employee sued to have the union decertified at that plant.

Initially, Ahearn issued a decision that the decertification petition was filed in a timely manner and so the election proceeded. (See “NLRB calls for secret ballot for Tyson workers,” on Meatingplace, Nov. 19, 2010.) [http://www.meatingplace.com/MembersOnly/webNews/details.aspx?item=19932]

Meanwhile, however, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1439 challenged the notification rule itself at the NLRB’s national level. An existing case — now filed under Lamons Gasket Co. — previously was filed challenging the notification rule. The Lamons decision likely will be made first, and will essentially determine the outcome of the Tyson challenge.

The Lamons decision likely will be handed down in the next couple of months, Ahearn said. Whether the national board will uphold the notification requirement or overturn it, and whether that decision will apply retroactively — to the Tyson challenge as well as to other cases — is anybody’s guess, he said.

In a statement supplied to Meatingplace, Tyson Foods’ spokesman Gary Mickelson said, “Hourly workers at our Pasco beef complex were involved in a union decertification vote earlier this year, however, the outcome remains unknown. The vote count was delayed by the NLRB after the union … filed some objections. It’s our understanding the ballots have been impounded pending the outcome of the NLRB’s review of the union’s claims.”

The union represents almost 1,200 of the more than 1,300 people employed at the Washington state beef complex.

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