Holly Farms Corp. v. NLRB, 517 U.S. 392, 15 (1996)

Page:   Index   Previous  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  Next

406

HOLLY FARMS CORP. v. NLRB

Opinion of the Court

ards Act." Cornell University, 254 N. L. R. B. 110 (1981); see also Mario Saikon, Inc., 278 N. L. R. B. 1289, 1290 (1986); Wegman's Food Market, Inc., 236 N. L. R. B. 1062 (1978). The Board has not departed from that endeavor here.12 The

Department of Labor's regulations do not address the precise situation of the live-haul workers before us, nor are the regulations free from ambiguity. We agree with the Board, however, that they are consistent with "employee" characterization of the crews that catch grown chickens for carriage to Holly Farms' processing plant.

On contract arrangements for raising poultry, the Department of Labor has issued an interpretative regulation, which we noted in Bayside, 429 U. S., at 303-304, n. 13, as follows:

"Feed dealers and processors sometimes enter into contractual arrangements with farmers under which the latter agree to raise to marketable size baby chicks supplied by the former who also undertake to furnish all the required feed and possibly additional items. Typically, the feed dealer or processor retains title to the chickens until they are sold. Under such an arrangement, the activities of the farmers and their employees in raising the poultry are clearly within section 3(f). The activities of the feed dealer or processor, on the other hand, are not 'raising of poultry,' and employees engaged in them cannot be considered agricultural employees on that ground. Employees of the feed dealer or processor who perform work on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with the raising of poultry on the farm are employed in 'secondary' agriculture (see

12 Coleman v. Sanderson Farms, Inc., 629 F. 2d 1077 (CA5 1980), which determined that chicken catching crews were employed in "agriculture" under § 3(f), involved a dispute over applicability of the FLSA's overtime provisions, not over union representation. Thus, the court in that case was not required to respect the position of the Board. See id., at 1081, n. 4. We note, however, that the Coleman court did not advert to the Secretary of Labor's interpretations of § 3(f).

Page:   Index   Previous  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007