U S Supreme Court HOLLY FARMS CORP v NLRB U S 1996 HOLLY FARMS CORP v NLRB U S 1996 HOLLY FARMS CORPORATION ET AL PETITIONERS v NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS LABOR BOARD ET AL CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No 95 210 Argued February 21 1996 Decided April 23 1996 Page I Respondent National Labor Relations Board Board approved a bargaining unit at the Wilkesboro North Carolina processing plant of petitioner Holly Farms Corporation a vertically integrated poultry producer The approved unit included workers described as live haul crews teams of chicken catchers forklift operators and truckdrivers who collect for slaughter chickens raised as broilers by independent contract growers and transport the birds to the processing plant On Holly Farms petition for review the Fourth Circuit enforced the Board s order The court held that the Board s classification of the live haul workers as employee s protected by the National Labor Relations Act NLRA or Act rather than agricultural laborer s excluded from the Act s coverage by 2 3 of the NLRA rested on a reasonable interpretation of the Act and was consistent with the Board s prior decisions and with the Eighth Circuit s case law Held The Board reasonably aligned the live haul crews with Holly Farms processing operations typing them covered employee s not exempt agricultural laborer s therefore the Fourth Circuit properly deferred to the Board s determination Pp 4 17 a The term agricultural laborer as used in 2 3 of the NLRA derives its meaning from the definition of agriculture supplied by 3 f of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 FLSA This definition includes farming in both a primary sense which includes the raising of poultry and a secondary sense which encompasses practices performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations When a statutory prescription is not free from ambiguity the Board must choose between conflicting reasonable interpretations Courts in turn must respect the judgment of the agency empowered to apply the law to varying fact patterns Bayside Enterprises Inc v NLRB Page II 429 U S 298 304 Pp 4 7 b The Court confronts no contention that the live haul crews are engaged in primary agriculture Thus the sole question the Court addresses and decides is whether the chicken catchers forklift operators and truckdrivers are engaged in secondary agriculture The live haul activities are not performed by a farmer When an integrated poultry producer contracts with independent growers for the care and feeding of chicks hatched in the producer s hatcheries the producer s status as a farmer ends with respect to those chicks Bayside 429 U S at 302 n 9 The producer does not resume farmer status when its live haul employees arrive on the independent farms to collect broilers for carriage to slaughter and processing This conclusion entirely disposes of the contention that the truckdrivers are employed in secondary agriculture for Holly Farms acknowledges that these crew members do not work on a farm Pp 7 8 c The more substantial question is whether the catching and loading of broilers qualifies as work performed on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with the independent growers farming operations Holly Farms position that this work is incident to the raising of poultry is a plausible but not an inevitable construction of FLSA 3 f Hence a reviewing court must examine the Board s position only for its reasonableness as an interpretation of the governing legislation P 8 d The Board concluded that the collection of broilers for slaughter although performed on a farm is not incidental to farming operations Rather the Board determined the live haul crews work is tied to Holly Farms processing operations This is a reasonable interpretation of the statute Once the broilers have grown on the farm for seven weeks the growers contractual obligation to raise the birds ends and the work of the live haul crew begins The growers do not assist the crews in catching or loading the chickens and the crews play no role in the growers performance of their contractual undertakings Furthermore the live haul employees all work out of the Wilkesboro processing plant begin and end each shift by punching a timeclock at the plant and are functionally integrated with other processing plant employees It was also sensible for the Board to home in on the status of the crews employer Pp 9 12 e The Board s decision adheres to longstanding NLRB precedent see e g Imco Poultry Div of Int l Multifoods Corp 202 N L R B 259 260 and is supported by the construction of FLSA 3 f by the Department of Labor the agency responsible for administering the FLSA The Department s interpretative regulations accord with the Board s conclusion that the live haul crews do not engage in secondary farming and further demonstrate that FLSA 3 f s meaning is not so plain as to bear only one permissible construction in the context at hand Pp 12 16 48 F 3d 1360 affirmed Page III GINSBURG J delivered the opinion of the Court in which STEVENS KENNEDY SOUTER and BREYER JJ joined O CONNOR J filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part in which REHNQUIST C J and SCALIA and THOMAS JJ joined HOLLY FARMS CORP v NLRB U S 1996 1 JUSTICE GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court This controversy stems from a dispute concerning union representation at the Wilkesboro North Carolina headquarters facility of Holly Farms a corporation engaged in the production processing and marketing of poultry products The parties divide as have federal courts over the classification of certain workers described as live haul crews teams of chicken catchers forklift operators and truckdrivers who collect for slaughter chickens raised as broilers by independent contract growers and transport the birds to Holly Farms processing plant Holly Farms maintains that members of live haul crews are agricultural laborer s a category of workers exempt from National Labor Relations Act coverage The National Labor Relations Board disagreed and approved a Wilkesboro plant bargaining unit including those employees Satisfied that the Board reasonably aligned the live haul crews with the corporation s processing operations typing them covered employee s not exempt agricultural laborer s we affirm the Court of Appeals judgment which properly deferred to the Board s determination HOLLY FARMS CORP v NLRB U S 1996 2 I A
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