A nursing home violated federal labor law by unilaterally limiting union access to its facility, threatening legal action and calling the police to enforce that restriction, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled.

The decision highlights legal dangers nursing homes can face when taking unilateral action to limit union power and access in their facilities. 

The Upstate New York facility — Rosewood Care LLC — had allowed union representatives to meet with workers throughout the facility prior to the state’s 2020 ban on visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Administrative Law Judge Andrew Gollin wrote in the decision released Thursday. After the ban was lifted, union representatives were allowed only to meet with employees in the basement break room.

The new restrictions grew into further confrontations between the facility and the union.

According to the ruling, Rosewood, “threatened to call and called the police to have the representatives removed if they attempted to meet employees other than in the breakroom … banned two of the representatives from the property for allegedly threatening and harassing conduct, and it threatened to have them arrested and charged with criminal trespass if they returned.”

This restriction kept union representatives from hearing employee grievances in person during the spring and summer of 2022, according to the decision. 

“… [Rosewood] violated [the National Labor Relations Act] when it evicted and threatened to call and called the police on the Union representatives exercising their contractual right to confer with the Unit employees,” Gollin concluded, citing consideration of the “totality of the evidence.”

The judge also ruled that Rosewood had illegally fired Nicholas Parker, a certified nursing assistant who worked at the facility from 2018 until his firing in July 2022, only hours after he was informed that he had been elected as a union delegate for the facility. 

The union filed a complaint on Parker’s behalf, claiming the firing was retaliatory. Rosewood argued that Parker had been let go for not properly requesting medical leave after an injury sustained in spring of 2022. The judge found in Parker’s favor, ordering Rosewood to reinstate his pay, including backpay, and offer his position back.

This is not the first time in recent months that the NLRB has decided that a nursing home had wrongfully fired an employee. 

In addition to required back pay, the court ordered Rosewood to cease its restrictions against union activity and prominently display a court document outlining workers’ labor rights within the facility. 

Rosewood did not respond by publication deadline to a McKnight’s request for comment Tuesday.