SELBYVILLE, Del. — Employees at a Mountaire Farms poultry processing plant in southern Delaware voted overwhelmingly Thursday to decertify their representation by the Teamsters union, the company said.
Workers at the Selbyville plant who are members of the Teamsters Local 355 voted 140-29 to remove the union, according to a vote overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, the company said.
Employees cast ballots in person from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m and again from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
“For the first time since 1977, our Selbyville plant is union-free and it was our hourly employees who made that happen,” Mountaire Farms President Phillip Plylar said in a prepared statement. “We could not be prouder of our team there who put our employees first every day.”
Selbyville is the only Mountaire Farms plant where employees are represented by unions. The unions have been part of the plant since it was purchased by Mountaire in 1977.
In December, employees who were part of the United Food Commercial Workers (UFCW) union at the Selbyville plant voted overwhelmingly to decertify that union during a mail-in ballot process. The final vote count of 356-80 was certified by the NLRB in late December.
After that election, a Teamsters union employee gathered signatures and submitted a petition to the NLRB in early February asking to decertify the Teamsters union.
The results of Thursday’s election will become official after being certified by the NLRB.
Mountaire Corp. and its affiliates, Mountaire Farms and Mountaire Farms of Delaware, operate facilities in Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
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