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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 95–210

HOLLY FARMS CORPORATION et al., PETI-TIONERS v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS LABOR BOARD et al.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fourth circuit

[April 23, 1996]

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.

Petitioner Holly Farms Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tyson Foods, Inc., is a vertically integrated poultry producer headquartered in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Holly Farms' activities encompass numerous poultry operations, including hatcheries, a feed mill, an equipment maintenance center, and a processing plant.

"Broiler" chickens are birds destined for human food markets. Holly Farms hatches broiler chicks at its own hatcheries, and immediately delivers the chicks to the farms of independent contractors. The contractors then raise the birds into full-grown broiler chickens. Holly Farms pays the contract growers for their services, but retains title to the broilers and supplies the food and medicine necessary to their growth.

When the broilers are seven weeks old, Holly Farms sends its live-haul crews to reclaim the birds and ferry them to the processing plant for slaughter. The live-haul crews—which typically comprise nine chicken catchers, one forklift operator, and one live-haul driver—travel in a flat-bed truck from Holly Farms' processing plant to the farms of the independent growers. At the farms, the chicken catchers enter the coops, manually capture the broilers, and load them into cages. The forklift operator lifts the caged chickens onto the bed of the truck, and the live-haul driver returns the truck, with the loaded cases and the crew, to Holly Farms' processing plant. There, the birds are slaughtered and prepared for shipment to retail stores.

In 1989, the Chauffeurs, Teamsters and Helpers, Local 391 (Union), filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board (Board or NLRB), seeking an election in a proposed unit that included live-haul employees working out of Holly Farms' Wilkesboro processing plant. Over Holly Farms' objection, the Board approved the bargaining unit, ruling that the live-haul workers were "employee[s]" protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act), 49 Stat. 449, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §151 et seq., rather than "agricultural laborer[s]" excluded from the Act's coverage by §2(3) of the NLRA, 29 U. S. C. §152(3). See Holly Farms Corp., 311 N. L. R. B. 273, 273, n. 4, 284 (1993). After further proceedings not relevant here, the Board ordered the corporation to bargain with the Union as the representative of the unit. Id., at 285–286.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit enforced the Board's order. The court held that the Board's classification of the live-haul workers as "employee[s]," rather than "agricultural laborer[s]," rested "on a reasonable interpretation of the Act." 48 F. 3d 1360, 1372 (1995). The Board's reading, the court added, was consistent with the NLRB's prior decisions, see Imco Poultry, Div. of Int'l Multifoods Corp., 202 N. L. R. B. 259, 260–261 (1973), adhered to in Seaboard Farms of Kentucky, Inc., 311 N. L. R. B. No. 159 (1993), and Draper Valley Farms, Inc., 307 N. L. R. B. 1440 (1992), and with the Eighth Circuit's case law, see NLRB v. Hudson Farms, Inc., 681 F. 2d 1105, 1106 (per curiam), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 1069 (1982), and Valmac Industries, Inc. v. NLRB, 599 F. 2d 246, 249 (1979). 48 F. 3d, at 1371–1372.

Other Federal Courts of Appeals, in conflict with the Fourth and Eighth Circuits, have held that live-haul workers employed by vertically integrated poultry producers are engaged in "agriculture." See, e.g., Coleman v. Sanderson Farms, Inc., 629 F. 2d 1077, 1079 (CA5 1980); NLRB v. Ryckebosch, Inc., 471 F. 2d 20, 21 (CA9 1972). We granted certiorari to resolve the division of authority. 516 U. S. __ (1995).

The NLRA's protections extend only to workers who qualify as "employee[s]" under §2(3) of the Act. 29 U. S. C. §152(3). The term "employee," NLRA §2(3) states, "[does] not include any individual employed as an agricultural laborer." Ibid. No definition of "agricultural laborer" appears in the NLRA. But annually since 1946, Congress has instructed, in riders to Appropriations Acts for the Board: "[A]gricultural laborer," for NLRA §2(3) purposes, shall derive its meaning from the definition of "agriculture" supplied by §3(f) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). See Bayside Enterprises, Inc. v. NLRB, 429 U. S. 298, 300, and n. 6 (1977).

Section §3(f) of the FLSA provides:

"`Agriculture' includes farming in all its branches and among other things includes the cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural commodities (including commodities defined as agricultural commodities in section 1141j(g) of title 12), the raising of livestock, bees, fur-bearing animals, or poultry, and any practices (including any forestry or lumbering operations) performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, including preparation for market, delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market." 29 U. S. C. §203(f).

This definition, we have explained, "includes farming in both a primary and a secondary sense." Bayside, 429 U. S., at 300. "Primary farming" includes the occupations listed first in §3(f): "the cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural commodities . . . [and] the raising of livestock, bees, fur-bearing animals, or poultry." 29 U. S. C. §203(f). "Secondary farming" has a broader meaning, encompassing, as stated in the second part of §3(f): "any practices . . . performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, including preparation for market, delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market." Ibid.; see Bayside, 429 U. S., at 300, n. 7; Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb, 337 U. S. 755, 763 (1949) (secondary farming embraces "any practices, whether or not themselves farming practices, which are performed either by a farmer or on a farm, incidently to or in conjunction with `such' farming operations").

If a statute's meaning is plain, the Board and reviewing courts "must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress." Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843 (1984). When the legislative prescription is not free from ambiguity, the administrator 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, 429 U. S., at 304, even if the issue "with nearly equal reason [might] be resolved one way rather than another," id., at 302 (citing Farmers Reservoir, 337 U. S., at 770 (Frankfurter, J., concurring)). We note, furthermore, that administrators and reviewing courts must take care to assure that exemptions from NLRA coverage are not so expansively interpreted as to deny protection to workers the Act was designed to reach. See 48 F. 3d, at 1370 (citing NLRB v. Cal-Maine Farms, Inc., 998 F. 2d 1336, 1339 (CA5 1993)); cf. Arnold v. Ben Kanowsky, Inc., 361 U. S. 388, 392 (1960) (exemptions from the FLSA "are to be narrowly construed against the employers seeking to assert them"); Mitchell v. Kentucky Finance Co., 359 U. S. 290, 295 (1959) ("It is well settled that exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act are to be narrowly construed.").

Primary farming includes the raising of poultry. See Bayside, 429 U. S., at 300–301. All agree that the independent growers, who raise Holly Farms' broiler chickens on their own farms, are engaged in primary agriculture. But we confront no contention that Holly Farms' live-haul employees are themselves engaged in raising poultry. Thus, the only question we resolve is whether the chicken catchers, forklift operators, and truckdrivers are engaged in secondary agriculture—that is, practices "performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations." 29 U. S. C. §203(f).

We take up, initially, the "performed by a farmer" strand of FLSA §3(f). We do not labor over the point, for our decision in Bayside securely leads us to the conclusion that the live-haul activities are not performed "by a farmer." In Bayside, we considered the application of §3(f)'s "by a farmer" specification to integrated agricultural companies that contract out farming work. We upheld the Board's rejection of the contention that "all of the activity on a contract farm should be regarded as agricultural activity of an integrated farmer" such as Holly Farms. 429 U. S., at 302. When an integrated poultry producer "contracts with independent growers for the care and feeding of [its] chicks, [its] status as a farmer engaged in raising poultry ends with respect to those chicks." Id., at 302, n. 9 (citing Imco Poultry, 202 N. L. R. B., at 260). Accordingly, when the live-haul employees arrive on the independent farms to collect broilers for carriage to slaughter and processing, Holly Farms does not resume its status as "farmer" with respect to those birds, the status Holly Farms had weeks before, when the birds were hatched in its hatcheries. This conclusion, we note, 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." Tr. of Oral Arg. 5.

We turn, now, to the nub of the case for the chicken catchers and forklift operators: the "on a farm" strand of FLSA §3(f).

Holly Farms argues that under the plain language of the statute, the catching and loading of broilers qualifies as work performed "on a farm as an incident to" the raising of poultry. The corporation emphasizes that §3(f) of the FLSA enumerates "preparation for market" and "delivery to storage or to market" among activities that count as "agriculture." The live-haul employees' work, Holly Farms concludes, thus falls within the domain of the FLSA exemption and, accordingly, enjoys no NLRA protection.

We find Holly Farms' position to be a plausible, but not an inevitable, construction of §3(f). Hence, we turn to the Board's position, examining only its reasonableness as an interpretation of the governing legislation.

While agreeing that the chicken catchers and forklift operators work "on a farm," the Board contends that their catch and cage work is not incidental to farming operations. Rather, the work is tied to Holly Farms' slaughtering and processing operations, activities that do not constitute "farming" under the statute. We conclude, as we next explain, that the Board's position "is based on a reasonable interpretation of the statute, is consistent with the Board's prior holdings, and is supported by the Secretary of Labor's construction of §3(f)." Bayside, 429 U. S., at 303 (footnotes omitted).

The Board underscores the statutory words "such farming operations." It does not suffice that the alleged secondary agriculture consists of "preparation for market," or "delivery to storage or to market," the Board maintains; to qualify for the statutory exemption, the Board urges, the work must be incidental to, or conjoined with, primary farming operations. As just explained, see supra, at 7–8, at the growing stage in the short life of a broiler, Holly Farms is not involved in primary farming, but the contract growers are. The essential question, then, is whether the live-haul employees' activities are inevitably "incident to or in conjunction with" the farming operations of the independent growers. The Board answers this question in the negative. See Imco Poultry, 202 N. L. R. B., at 261 (Because chicken catching crews "have no business relationship with the independent farmers, we conclude that the employees' activities were not incidental to the independent farmers' poultry raising operations.").

We find the Board's answer reasonable. 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 record reflects minimal overlap between the work of the live-haul crew and the independent growers' raising activities. The growers do not assist the live-haul crews in catching or loading the chickens; their only responsibilities are to move certain equipment from the chicken coops prior to the crews' arrival, and to be present when the crews are on the farms. App. to Brief for Federal Respondent 3a. Nor do the live-haul employees play any role in the growers' performance of their contractual undertakings.

The record, furthermore, supports the Board's conclusion that the live-haul crews' activities were conjoined with Holly Farms' processing operations, rather than with farming. The chicken catchers, forklift operators, and truckdrivers work as a unit. They all "work out of the processing plant" in Wilkesboro, App. 22a, located three miles from the hatcheries, App. to Pet. for Cert. A–381, n. 119. Crew members begin and end each shift by punching a timeclock at the processing plant, id., at A–831 to A–832, and are functionally integrated with other processing-plant employees, App. 22a. See also App. to Pet. for Cert. A–396 (correlation between Holly Farms' slaughter rate and work available for live-haul crews); App. 29a (live production manager for Holly Farms' Wilkesboro facility described catching and delivery of grown broilers as the first step in the produc- er's processing operations). The Board's determina- tion, in sum, has the requisite "warrant in the record." Bayside, 429 U. S., at 304, n. 14 (citing NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131 (1944)).

We think it sensible, too, that the Board homed in on the status of the live-haul crews' employer. The employer's status respecting the particular activity at issue accounts for the Board's determination that Holly Farms' "egg haulers" (who transport eggs from the laying houses to the hatcheries), and "pullet catchers" (who collect the breeding-destined birds on the farms of independent growers) rank as "agricultural laborer[s]." As the record shows, the pullet catchers and egg haulers work in Holly Farms' hatchery operations, while the live-haul employees—who deal only with broilers—work out of the processing plant. "There is no inter change between these classifications. Broiler haulers do not haul pullets and pullet haulers do not haul broilers." App. 20a–21a. Accordingly, the Board reasonably aligned the pullet catchers and egg haulers with Holly Farms' poultry-raising operation, and the live-haul employees with the corporation's slaughtering and processing activities.

The Board's decision regarding Holly Farms' live-haul crews adheres to longstanding NLRB precedent. For more than 23 years, the NLRB has maintained that vertically integrated poultry producers' employees who "handl[e] and transpor[t] chicks on the farms of independent growers only after [the poultry producers'] farming operations have ended, . . . cannot be performing practices incident to, or in conjunction with, [their employer's] farming operations." Imco Poultry, 202 N. L. R. B., at 260. Rather, such employees, the Board has repeatedly ruled, perform work "incident to, or in conjunction with, a separate and distinct business activity of [their employer], i.e., shipping and marketing." Id., at 261. See also Draper Valley Farms, Inc., 307 N. L. R. B., at 1440 ("We think it follows plainly from Imco that the Employer's chicken catchers are not, when working on the farms of independent growers who have concluded their `raising' activities, exempt as agricultural laborers."); Seaboard Farms of Kentucky, Inc., 311 N. L. R. B. No. 159 (1993) (same).

In construing the agricultural laborer exemption, the Board endeavors to "follow, whenever possible, the interpretations of Section 3(f) adopted by the Department of Labor, the agency which is charged with the responsibility for and has the experience of administering the Fair Labor Standards 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. 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 §§780.137 et seq. [explaining that work must be performed in connection with the farmer-employer's own farming to qualify as `secondary' agriculture by a farmer] and Johnston v. Cotton Producers Assn., 244 F. 2d 553)." 29 CFR §780.126 (1995).

This regulation suggests that live-haul crews surely are not engaged in a primary farming operation. The crews could rank as workers engaged in "secondary" agriculture if they "perform[ed] work on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with the raising of poultry on the farm." Ibid. As we developed earlier, however, see supra, at 9–12, in the Board's judgment, the crews do not fit that bill. The live-haul crew members perform their work, as the Board sees it, not "as an incident to" poultry raising by independent growers, but "incident to" and "in conjunction with" the slaughter and processing of chickens at Holly Farms' Wilkesboro plant. In the Board's words, the crews are tied to "a separate and distinct business activity," the business of processing poultry for retail sale, see Imco Poultry, 202 N. L. R. B., at 261, not to the anterior work of agriculture.

Other Department of Labor regulations are in harmony with the Board's conclusion that the live-haul crews do not engage in secondary farming because their work, though "on a farm," is not performed "as an incident to or in conjunction with" the independent growers' poultry-raising operations. Thus, 29 CFR §780.129 (1995) reiterates that the work "must be performed `as an incident to or in conjunction with' the farming operations," and §780.143 adds:

"The fact that a practice performed on a farm is not performed by or for the farmer is a strong indication that it is not performed in connection with the farming operations there conducted." Ibid.

The same regulation, §780.143, further states that, in determining whether a practice is performed "for" a farmer, it is "highly significant" whether the practice involves property to which the farmer has title or for which the farmer otherwise has responsibility. Ibid. Holly Farms retains title to the chicks and, once the live-haul crew undertakes its catch and remove operation, the independent grower "divest[s] himself of further responsibility with respect to the product." Ibid.

The Department of Labor candidly observed that "[t]he line between practices that are and those that are not performed `as an incident to or in conjunction with' such farming operations is not susceptible of precise definition." §780.144. This acknowledgment accords with our recognition that the meaning of FLSA §3(f) is not so "plain" as to bear only one permissible construction in the context at hand.

In sum, we find persuasive the Board's conclusion that the collection of broilers for slaughter was an activity serving Holly Farms' processing operations, and not Holly Farms' own or the independent growers' farming operations. Again, we stress that "the reviewing court's function is limited." Bayside, 429 U. S., at 304, n. 14 (citing Hearst Publications, 322 U. S., at 131). For the Board to prevail, it need not show that its construction is the best way to read the statute; rather, courts must respect the Board's judgment so long as its reading is a reasonable one. See Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U. S. 883, 891 (1984) ("we will uphold any interpretation [of the term `employee' in NLRA §2(3)] that is reasonably defensible"). "[R]egardless of how we might have resolved the question as an initial matter," Bayside, 429 U. S., at 304, the Board's decision here reflects a reasonable interpretation of the law and, therefore, merits our approbation. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly

Affirmed.