Labor lays an egg.

• Author: Hetzer, Michael
• Position: Labor relations at House of Raeford Farms Inc. turkey processors; includes related article on unionizing

LABOR LAYS AN EGG Union organizers grabbed a tiger by the tail when they followed up a wildcat strike at a turkey plant.

It was 9:10 when she heard about the strike. By then, of course, it was too late to give it much thought. All around her, people were walking out. There was no time to weigh the risks, but they were heavy for a single mother, black, poor, a resident of North Carolina's poorest country.

Later, after the union meetings, after the company "education" meetings, after the handbills, after the "Vote Yes" and the "Vote No" T-shirts were distributed, after the name-calling and the angry words, she would worry about what could happen. But now, with her friends and co-workers leaving, she made an impulsive decision.

Betty Robinson laid down her turkey saw -- and with it, she later feared, her $4-an-hour job -- walked out of the cutlets department and through the processing plant's doors. It was that way for many of the first-shift workers at House of Raeford Farms Inc. last Aug. 1. Second- and third-shift employees would bring the total who joined the wildcat strike to about 1,000 of the plant's 1,140 workers.

Within three days, nearly all would be back at their jobs. It wasn't the plant's first strike. Twice before, in 1980 and 1987, workers had won 10-cent hourly raises. Both strikes were settled without the union. This time, organizers were swarming around the plant like bees in a hive.

But on Oct. 7, just 10 weeks after walking off their jobs and demanding higher pay, better benefits and shorter hours, House of Raeford turkey-plant workers rejected United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 204's bid to represent them by a vote of 420 to 391.

The outcome had a familiar ring in North Carolina, which has the smallest percentage of its work force covered by collective-bargaining agreements of any state. During the past decade, while job growth has soared, the number of Tar Heel workers represented by unions has remained constant at 200,000, about 6 percent of the non-farm work force. Nationally, the figure is about 16 percent, down from a high of nearly 26 percent in 1953.

Long before labor laws, long before the first union drives, workers around the world had demonstrated their dissatisfaction the way these people started their struggle: by voting with their feet. But at House of Raeford, the shots soon were being called by the pros: the union organizers and the company's labor lawyers. Each side would wind up spending an estimated $250,000 in the high-stakes contest. Each had much to win and a lot to lose.

"It's unfortunate, but these days you've basically got a war between anti-union law firms and union organizers," says Christopher Scott, president of the state AFL-CIO. "The whole thing's being fought over the heads of the workers."

The turkey-processing plant sits about 400 yards outside downtown Raeford, about 13 miles due west of Fayetteville in Hoke County. It is a quite, peaceful-looking town, like so many other small towns scattered through Eastern North Carolina. In 1986, an estimated 4,237 people lived in Raeford and 23,135 in the county. Main Street is Business Route 401, and traffic that ventures from the bypass is interrupted by the town's three stoplights.

As you near the plant, the first thing you notice is the feathers -- white, fluffy, turkey feathers. Like persistent snowflakes, they lie in the grass, on the roofs of houses, in trees and on the street. Next, the plant comes into view, a sprawling, yellow structure surrounded on all sides by a chain-link fence, barbed wire on...