DENVER -- The National Labor Relations Board said employees at a Colorado Wal-Mart tire department can hold a union election.

The ruling was issued Friday but no election date was set.

Nine of the 17 employees of the Wal-Mart Tire and Lube Express in Loveland signed cards last year asking for a vote. The nine say they want to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Wal-Mart objected, saying the Tire and Lube Express is only one part of its Loveland store and isn't eligible for its own union.

The workers in the automotive service department say they are separate from the store and eligible for independent union representation.

The NLRB regional director in Denver sided with the union.

Union spokesman Dave Minshall said it's great news for the workers.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman didn't immediately return a phone call.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 is the same union that represents 17,000 grocery workers at King Soopers, Safeway and Albertsons. It is the same union that is in negotiations with the grocery stores, which have cited competition from non-union discount chains such as Wal-Mart in offering wage and benefit increases that have been rejected by workers.

Wal-Mart said it treats its workers fairly and has an open-door policy that lets each negotiate directly with management.

Efforts to unionize Wal-Mart stores in the United States have failed, while in Canada, a government agency certified workers at a Quebec store as a union and told the two sides to negotiate. Wal-Mart has said it may have to close that store.

In the United States, the closest a U.S. union ever came to representing Wal-Mart workers happened in 2000. Eleven members of the store's meatpacking department at Jacksonville, Texas, store voted to be represented by the UFCW.

In a move it said was unrelated to the union vote, Wal-Mart eliminated the job of meatcutter company-wide, and announced it would only sell pre-cut, pre-wrapped meat.