Target loses latest round in effort to prevent pharmacy workers from forming union

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) - Target Corp (NYSE: TGT) has lost another round in its attempt to prevent pharmacy workers at a New York City store forming what would be the first union in the retailer's 113-year history after a U.S. labor agency declined to review its objections to the plan.

In a single-sentence ruling on Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board declined to review Target's claim that board lawyers erred in approving the creation of the union because the company is in the process of selling its pharmacy operations to CVS Health Corp (NYSE: CVS).

A group of employees at one of Target's stores in Brooklyn voted 7-2 in September to form the union, a local unit of United Food and Commercial Workers, after they won approval to have an election from an NLRB regional director in New York.

The company also said the pharmacy workers should not have been able to form a so-called micro union that excluded other store employees.

A Target representative said on Thursday the company was reviewing its options. The retailer could take the case to a U.S. appeals court, which would have the power to order the NLRB to reconsider the company's arguments.

In a 2011 decision, the labor board created a new standard for forming micro unions within a company's operations, ruling they are appropriate when their members share "a community of interest."

That decision was upheld by an Ohio-based U.S. appeals court, spurring the board to extend the standard to FedEx drivers, fragrance and cosmetic department workers at Macy's Inc. and maintenance workers at a Nestle Dreyer's Ice Cream plant, among others.

Nestle last week asked a U.S. appeals court in Virginia to overturn the ruling in its case, as well as the board's 2011 decision, which allowed nurses at a health care facility to form their own union.

Trade groups backing Nestle, as well as FedEx in a similar case, say micro unions are a logistical nightmare for employers and could pit groups of workers against each other.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Frances Kerry)

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