Chicken Farm Wins Labor Ruling

Egg City in Moorpark, once the world’s largest chicken ranch, won a labor victory Friday when a state board upheld a 1986 vote by the farm’s employees to end representation by the United Farm Workers.

“We’re delighted that the vote the people made has been upheld, and we hope the facility will be able to move forward,” said Richard Carrot, one of Egg City’s owners.

The State Agricultural Labor Relations Board’s decision affirmed the findings made in June by an administrative judge. The judge dismissed union claims that the Nov. 3, 1986, vote was unfair.

An attorney for the United Farm Workers said the union will challenge the decision in state court on the grounds that the board does not have jurisdiction in the case.

Union attorney Dianna Lyons claimed that the board lacked jurisdiction because the Egg City workers who petitioned for the election were not agricultural employees. The board decided earlier that it could still hear the case.

The union made five objections to the vote.

The union contended, among other things, that its representatives had not been allowed to meet with some workers at the Egg City hatchery and claimed that an anti-union worker attacked a union representative.

Earlier this year, Egg City won a ruling by the board that a 1986 union boycott of some businesses that bought Egg City eggs had been illegal.

The 1986 vote to end union representation came in the midst of a strike over wage cuts and a bankruptcy filing by Egg City.

A bankruptcy court judge upheld the wage cuts.

Egg City emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings when Okura Inc., a Japanese trading company, loaned the company $14 million in exchange for a 40% interest in the farm.

The Guinness Book of World Records in 1986 called Egg City, with 3 million hens, the biggest chicken ranch in the world, but an Ohio Farm has since taken over that position.