WAL-MART UNION VOTE RESULTS IMPOUNDED

PALESTINE, Texas -- Results of a vote to organize by meat and seafood workers at a Wal-Mart Supercenter here last week were impounded pending a National Labor Relations Board decision because of an objection to the vote by Wal-Mart Stores, Bentonville, Ark.

seafood workers could be reassigned to different departments in the stores when the chain rolls out prepackaged meat later this year.

The board may choose to hear Wal-Mart's appeal or it could ignore it, Witherspoon said. He did not know when that decision would be made.

The 15 meat and seafood workers at Wal-Mart's Palestine store voted on whether they would join the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Earlier this year, a group of butchers from Wal-Mart's Jacksonville, Texas, store became the first workers in a Wal-Mart store to organize. Wal-Mart opposed the vote on the basis that the meatcutters comprised only a small part of Wal-Mart's workers, but the NLRB sided with the UFCW, which argued that butchers were skilled laborers.

Shortly afterward, Wal-Mart announced it would switch to prepackaged meat at some of its Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets, including the Jacksonville and Palestine stores.