MAINE COAST REGIONAL HEALTH FACLITIES, d/b/a MAINE COAST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, the sole member of which

National Labor Relations Board - Administrative Judge Opinions

Nov 2, 2018

01-CA-209105 (N.L.R.B. Nov. 2, 2018)

JD–71–18
Ellsworth, ME
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BEFORE THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
DIVISION OF JUDGES
MAINE COAST REGIONAL HEALTH FACILITIES,
d/b/a MAINE COAST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, the
sole member of which is EASTERN MAINE
HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
and Cases 01-CA-209105
01-CA-212276
KAREN-JO YOUNG, an individual
Gene M. Switzer, Esq.
for the General Counsel.
Frank T. McGuire, Esq., and
Joshua A. Randlett, Esq.,
(Rudman Winchell, LLC)
Bangor, Maine,
for the Respondent.
DECISION
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
PAUL BOGAS, Administrative Law Judge. This case was tried in Bangor, Maine, on July
17 and 18, 2018. Karen-Jo Young, an individual, filed the initial charge on October 31, 2017,
and amended that charge on June 19, 2018. Young filed a second charge on December 28,
2017. The Acting Regional Director for Region One of the National Labor Relations Board (the
Board) issued the consolidated complaint on February 28, 2018, and an amended consolidated
complaint on June 20, 2018. At trial the amended consolidated complaint was further amended
to clarify the name of the Respondent. The complaint, as amended, alleges that Maine Coast
Regional Health Facilities d/b/a Maine Coast Memorial Hospital, the sole member of which is
Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems (the Respondent), violated Section 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(3) of
the National Labor Relations Act (the Act or NLRA) by terminating the charging party’s
employment because she engaged in protected concerted and union activity by submitting a
letter to a local newspaper in which she made common cause with employees voicing concerns
about working conditions, and violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act by maintaining an unlawful
policy restricting employees’ work-related communications with the media. The Respondent
filed a timely answer in which it denied committing the violations alleged.
JD–71–18
2
On the entire record, including my observation of the demeanor of the witnesses, and
after considering the briefs filed by the General Counsel and the Respondent, I make the
following Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.
FINDINGS OF FACT5
I. JURISDICTION
The Respondent, a nonprofit corporation, operates a hospital in Ellsworth, Maine, where
it annually derives gross revenues in excess of $250,000 and purchases and receives goods 10
valued in excess of $5000 directly from points outside of the State of Maine. The Respondent
admits, and I find, that it is an employer engaged in commerce within the meaning of Section
2(2), (6), and (7) of the Act and a health care institution within the meaning of Section 2(14) of
the Act. I find that the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing
Committee/National Nurses Union (the Union) is a labor organization within the meaning of 15
Section 2(5) of the Act.
II. ALLEGED UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES
A. Background Facts20
The Respondent operates Maine Coast Hospital in Ellsworth, Maine. In 2015, the
Respondent became affiliated with Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems (EMHS), which
manages a network of nine hospitals. On November 21, 2017, EMHS became the “sole
member” of the Respondent, which, according to the parties, means that EMHS is the nonprofit 25
equivalent of the Respondent’s corporate parent and that the Respondent is the equivalent of a
wholly owned subsidiary of EMHS.1 The Respondent employs approximately 500 persons at
Maine Coast Hospital. The Union represents two bargaining units of Maine Coast Hospital
employees. One unit, composed of registered nurses and other professional staff, has been
represented by the Union for decades and was covered by a contract that went into effect on 30
May 21, 2016, and was effective at the time of the alleged violations. The other unit, composed
of technical employees, has been represented by the Union since November 2017. Young, the
charging party in this case, was not a member of either bargaining unit during her employment
with the Respondent.
35
B. Management Actions; Employee Resignations
and Petition over Staffing
The highest ranking official at the Respondent is its president, John Ronan. Ronan is an
employee of EMHS, not the Respondent, and he serves simultaneously as the president of the 40
Respondent and a second EMHS network hospital. EMHS performs the human resources,
legal services, and some patient accounting, functions for the Respondent. The record shows
that when the Respondent became affiliated with EMHS in 2015, the Respondent was facing
challenges with both finances and employee morale. Ronan testified that the Respondent had
been losing money since 2010 and that when he became acting president2 in the fall of 2016, 45
the loss for the prior year was $6 to 7 million. The new management team took actions
intended to address the Respondent’s financial situation. By the period beginning in September
of 2017, the Respondent was beginning to be profitable, but the management’s actions did not

1 Transcript at Page(s) (Tr.) 267-268, 411.
2 Ronan remained in acting status until August 2017, at which time he became president of the
Respondent.
JD–71–18
3
solve the Respondent’s other problem – poor employee morale – and may have exacerbated it.
For example, the Respondent cancelled the contracts of 50 of the 54 physicians at the facility,
discharged six of those physicians outright, and attempted to renegotiate the contract terms of
the others.3 A number of the hospital’s physicians, including four of the five physicians in the
emergency department, responded by resigning rather than agreeing to renegotiate their 5
contracts. Physicians expressed anger over the Respondent’s actions at a heated meeting
during which Ronan acknowledged that the way management had handled the physician
contracts for the emergency department was confusing and frustrating. Transcript at Page(s)
(Tr.) 257-258. Young, the charging party in this case, credibly testified that employees at the
hospital had discussed the physician resignations and that the departures were “very upsetting 10
for everybody.” Tr. 39-40.
In addition, the nurses’ bargaining unit had ongoing concerns that the Respondent was
not adequately staffing the hospital with nurses. When nurses who left the Respondent were
not replaced, the employees would call attention to this by placing a note on the departed 15
nurse’s locker. Staffing concerns were a subject of negotiations and this led to the inclusion of
new language in the most recent contract, which became effective in May 2016. After that
contract went into effect, the Union continued to have concerns about the adequacy of nurse
staffing and believed that the Respondent was not adhering to the contract provision regarding
staffing levels, and attempted to draw management’s attention to the issue. Tr.147-148. Ronan20
acknowledged that there was a shortage of nurses at the hospital during this time period,
although he was quick to add that the Respondent had not “cut” any nurse positions. Tr. 171-
172. The Union did not invoke the grievance process to address the staff shortages, but instead
chose to present a petition to the Respondent on August 28, 2017. Bruce Becque (chief
steward for the nurses’ unit), a number of other unit members, and Todd Ricker (Union labor 25
representative)4 presented the petition to Noah Lundy (regional director of human resources for
EMHS) and Ardelle Bigos (chief nursing officer at Respondent).
The employee petition, which was signed by over 60 persons,5 stated:
30
We, the undersigned, again want to call attention to the lack of adequate nursing
and laboratory staffing at the hospital. We have repeatedly requested better
staffing levels and have yet to see substantial improvement. We are exhausted,
demoralized, and are rapidly losing faith that the [Maine Coast Memorial Hospital
(MCMH)] administration will ever respect our professional judgment about 35
working conditions at the hospital and clinics. On a daily basis our departments
work without adequate support from the administration: Charge nurse routinely
have a patient care assignment; secretaries are frequently not scheduled;
continuous telemetry monitoring in the ICU is not a given; the slightest increase
in inpatient census taxes our nursing resources and puts our patients at risk. 40
The emotional and physical toll created by these conditions is pushing us to our
limits. In light of this daily struggle for professional survival, the rewards of
working at MCMH are few and far between.

3 The changes the Respondent was seeking to make in the physician’s contracts related to wages,
hours, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment.
4 At the time the time of trial, Ricker was the Union’s labor representative and lead labor
representative for Maine, but at the time the petition was presented he was a labor representative, but not
yet the lead labor representative.
5 Many, but not all, of the signers identified themselves on the petition as nurses. The record does
not reveal whether the signers included employees who were not nurses.
JD–71–18
4
Inadequate staffing on Med/Surg is the focal point of nursing troubles at MCMH.
Higher than average inpatient census stresses MCMH’s staffing resources.
Med/Surg RNs end up with unsafe patient loads. ICU and OB RNs are required
to float to Med/Surg, which increases their job dissatisfaction. Throughput from
the ED is slowed and ED RNs effectively become Med/Surg nurses, which 5
increases their job dissatisfaction, too.
Therefore, we demand that you take immediate steps to better support staffing
on Med/Surge and ICU. Specifically: 1) In keeping with our contract language,
that charge nurses not ordinarily take patient care assignments (ordinarily = not 10
more than 50 percent of the time). They must be available to be a resource and
to coordinate patient care. 2) Follow the Med/Surg and ICU staffing grids. 3.
Restore full-time secretarial coverage to all units.
The Respondent did not provide the nurses with any response to the petition, either at 15
the time it was delivered or thereafter. Tr. 155-156. Ronan testified that once he satisfied
himself that the Respondent was in compliance with the staffing requirements in the nurses’
labor contract, he “left it at that.” Tr. 264.
While the Respondent was attempting to address problems with profitability, it was not 20
only experiencing the previously discussed problems with employee morale, but also appears to
have been experiencing problems with customers. Ronan testified that, prior to the time of the
petition, the Respondent was “starting to see E[mergency ]R[oom]” and “inpatient census . . .
dropping” and had hired an external public relations firm to help communicate a positive image
of the Respondent to the community. Tr. 174, 176.25
C. The Charging Party
Young, the charging party in this case, was discharged by the Respondent on
September 21, 2017, for violating an employer policy that prohibited employees from having 30
contacts with the media relating to EMHS and its member organizations without the direct
involvement of the EMHS Community Relations Department or of the chief operating officer
responsible for that organization. Prior to her discharge, Young had been the Respondent’s
activities coordinator for over 13 years. In that position, Young provided patients with activities
intended to keep them stimulated during their hospital stays. Young did not supervise any 35
employees, although at times she had overseen the work of volunteers. Young’s duties also
included responding when patients activated their call lights and then conveying the patients’
requests to nurses or other staff who Young determined could best provide the requested
assistance. Tr. 29-30, 282-283. In addition, Young interacted with registered nurses and
physical therapists as part of a program in which she took patients for scheduled walks to help40
keep them physically active. She was responsible for helping patients in and out of their beds
or chairs and for communicating with occupational therapists and physical therapists about
changes she observed in patient condition. Young also worked with hospital physicians to
obtain prescriptions for equipment such as canes and wheelchairs that patients would need
when they were discharged from the hospital. Young was trained as a licensed practical nurse 45
(LPN) and, while she was not employed as a nurse by the Respondent, Young credibly testified
that part of her job was to help with nursing activities. Tr. 84. The evidence showed that, not
long before the Respondent discharged Young, it issued a performance evaluation that
recognized Young for pro-actively offering assistance to the nursing department. Tr. 302, 305.
According to Douglas Keith, the head of the department in which Young worked, when the 50
nursing staff requested Young’s assistance, Young and her supervisor were expected to
JD–71–18
5
“discuss whether and how” providing assistance to the nurses “could fit into [Young’s] daily
assignments.” Tr. 303.
Although Young was not herself a member of the nurse’s bargaining unit, she informed
the Respondent that she had concerns about the adequacy of nurse staffing levels. She did this 5
in two emails to Lundy on June 23, 2017 – at a time when, according to Ricker, the Union had
continuing concerns about staffing and about 3 months in advance of when representatives of
the nurses presented a staffing petition to management. In her emails to Lundy, Young stated
that “[n]urses have increased patient loads now for some reason,” and that she had seen
“several safety issues,” including a patient “leaving the floor with his packed bag,” and “patients 10
calling to use the bathroom but nurses tied up with other patients.” She stated that the
medical/surgical unit “is very short staffed – nurses feel they have more patients than they can
manage.” Young expressed the view that the Respondent should arrange for her to have more
time to assist the nurses and suggested that this could be accomplished by using volunteers for
some of Young’s more routine activities. Young credibly testified that all the staff in patient care 15
areas worked together “as a team” and that when “one part of your team is short-staffed” it has
“a ripple effect” that “everyone more or less feels.” Tr.49-50. By way of example of this ripple
effect, Young recounted that she had been “involved with situations where patients were in
unsafe situations, and understaffing meant that there were no registered nurses close by to pull
in because they were all with other patients.” Ibid. Young also credibly testified that, on a daily 20
basis, certified nursing assistants told her that they were assigned “way too many patients to
care for.” Tr. 49.
D. Media Policy
25
1. Version In Effect Until January 14, 2018
On April 1, 2016, not long after Respondent became part of the EMHS network,
management made a number of EMHS system policies applicable to the Respondent and its
employees. The Respondent notified employees that they could use an on-line portal to access 30
these policies. Approximately 263 employer policies were available at that portal. Among the
many EMHS policies made applicable to the Respondent in April 2016 was a one-page policy
entitled News Release, External Publication and Media Contact (Media Policy).6 That policy
includes the following prohibition:
35
No EMHS employee may contact or release to news media information about EMHS, its
member organizations or their subsidiaries without the direct involvement of the EMHS
Community Relations Department or of the chief operating officer responsible for that
organization. Any employee receiving an inquiry from the media will direct that inquiry to
the EMHS Community Relations Department, or Community Relations staff at that 40
organization for appropriate handling.
The policy includes the following statement of purpose: “To present EMHS and its various
member organizations to the general public in a manner consistent with the brand and
supporting the mission statement of EMHS.” Suzanne Spruce, EMHS chief communications 45
officer, testified that the purpose of the policy was to control the company’s brand and reputation
for being a place where it was safe to obtain care. She stated that its purpose was also to
provide a “safety net” to employees by “prepar[ing]” them before they spoke to reporters. She
noted that reporter’s inquiries sometimes implicated patient privacy concerns. Spruce testified

6 This was designated EMHS system policy # 12-000.
JD–71–18
6
that it was not the intent of the Media Policy to suppress union activity or prohibit employees
from talking about their working conditions.
At trial, the Respondent and the General Counsel entered into a stipulation that Young’s
termination was the only disciplinary action that the Respondent, and EMHS more generally, 5
had ever taken at any EMHS facility for a violation of the Media Policy. An internal company
document from September 20, 2017, recognized that "some [managers] may have never seen
th[e media] policy," General Counsel Exhibit Number (GC Exh.) 18, a fact that is not surprising
given that there were well over 200 employer policies available through the Respondent’s on-
line portal. Even Ronan had not been aware of the Media Policy until 3 or 4 months before he 10
invoked it to terminate Young. Tr. 233-235. Young did not recall ever having seen the policy
prior to when the Respondent told her she was being discharged for violating it.
2. Language Added to the Policy on January 15, 2018
15
On January 15, 2018, after the Respondent terminated Young and she filed the charges
that led to this litigation, the Respondent added the following sentence to the Media Policy:
This policy does not apply to communications by employees, not made on behalf of
EMHS or a Member Organization, concerning a labor dispute or other concerted 20
communications for the purpose of mutual aid or protection protected by the National
Labor Relations Act.
Spruce testified that this was not a “substantive change,” but only a “clarification” of the policy.
See also Brief of Respondent at Page 12 (new language in Media Policy did not constitute a 25
“substantive change”). The Respondent, by email dated January 17, 2018, notified its
department heads that a revision had occurred and stated: “Please ensure policy updates are
shared as appropriate within your organization(s) and/or among your teams.” The email did not
explain the modification or articulate any purpose for it. Douglas Keith, the manager of the
rehabilitation department where Young had worked prior to her discharge, testified that he 30
advised employees of the modification during a meeting with some, but not all, of the employees
in the department. He himself had not been advised of the reasons for the modification and his
communication to employees was simply that the policy had been revised and that they were
responsible for reviewing the revision. The record does not establish the actions that other
department heads may, or may not, have taken to communicate with employees about the 35
language added to the Media Policy.
E. Respondent Subject of Media
Attention in the Ellsworth American
40
The Ellsworth American is a weekly local newspaper that has been in existence for at
least 30 years. The Respondent is located in Ellsworth and at the end of August and beginning
of September 2017 the Ellsworth American published a number of pieces that discussed
reported dissatisfaction among the Respondent’s employees. On August 31, the paper ran a
front page article with the title “Rewritten contracts cause unrest at MCMH.” The article 45
discussed reports that the Respondent’s decision to renegotiate its contracts with physicians
had led a number of those physicians to resign. The article quoted physicians who had recently
been providers at the Respondent as saying, inter alia, that “the biggest problem is that they
don’t understand the value of good people” and that physicians were leaving for “places where
they can get better hours and more pay.” Ronan was quoted in the article as recognizing that 50
physician recruitment and retention was a problem and that some physicians had resigned. He
was quoted as stating that “[a]s of yesterday we’ve got a plan in place to ensure we’ve got
JD–71–18
7
coverage for every shift” and that on some shifts the Respondent had been using temporary
physicians, known as “locums,” who he recognized were generally “more expensive” for the
Respondent than employee-physicians. The article also quoted the chairwoman of the
Respondent’s Board, Debbie Ehrlenbach, as commenting favorably on the Respondent’s
decision to affiliate with EMHS, and stating “We are pleased with the plans that Maine Coast’s 5
senior leadership has developed, working in partnership with EMHS, to ensure we will have
sufficient physician coverage to continue to deliver high-quality care.”
The next weekly issue of the Ellsworth American, published on September 7, 2017,
included another front page article regarding the Respondent, this one entitled “MCMH nurses 10
cite staffing in petition.” The article reported on the staffing petition that the nurses had
delivered to the Respondent 10 days earlier on August 28. As noted above, the Respondent
had chosen not to make any response to its employees about their petition. The article reported
that Becque said “many in the union are frustrated by what they say are unsafe and
inappropriate staffing levels” and that the Respondent had been “cutting and cutting, and when 15
people leave they don’t replace them.” The article also stated that Becque said he had “tried to
follow the grievance process laid out in the nursing contract, but hasn’t seen results.” One nurse
was quoted as complaining that "It seems like short-sighted financial decisions for a quick
impact, but it’s having long-term devastating results.” The article also reported that the
Respondent had made changes that amounted to “an effective pay cut of about 30 percent” for 20
certified registered nurse anesthetists and that half of those employees had left the Respondent
as a consequence. In a written statement, the hospital responded that it was “abiding by all
contractual obligations” regarding nurse staffing.
In the next issue of the Ellsworth American, on September 14, the newspaper published 25
an editorial that recognized the concerns of both the nurses and hospital management and
urged “the two sides to resolve differences.” The editorial also noted that nurses have tried to
address their perceived “lack of proper remuneration” and “respect” by seeking support from
organized labor and the editors opined that “[w]hile these organized efforts may have improved
their remuneration, tensions have altered dramatically employer/employee relationships . . . and 30
also concerns from the public at large who must pay the higher costs incurred.” The same
issue of the Ellsworth American included a letter to the editor from a physician who said he had
stopped working for the hospital after 40 years providing services there. He expressed his
agreement with the physician concerns discussed in the August 31 article about worsening
morale and the adverse effects of physician departures. 35
F. Young’s Concerns and Letter to the Editor
Young has been a subscriber to the Ellsworth American for 3 decades, and read the
pieces in the newspaper about her employer. Young, who was both an employee and a 40
customer/patient of the hospital, gave testimony indicating that the reports about employee
dissatisfaction and staffing levels were consistent with her own observations. She knew that a
number of long-serving physicians had departed from the hospital and, while she had no direct
knowledge of the contract terms at-issue, she did know from her conversations with other
employees that the physician departures were “very upsetting” for the staff. The Ellsworth 45
American’s report that physicians felt they were not being valued by the administration was
consistent with Young’s own experience of not feeling valued or listened to by the
administration.
Regarding the nurses’ staffing, Young testified that she knew there were deficiencies in 50
that regard based on her experience working in patient care areas as part of a team with nurses
and other staff. In addition, certified nursing assistants told her on a daily basis that too many
JD–71–18
8
patients were being assigned to them. Indeed, as discussed above, even before the employees
submitted their petition, Young had informed Lundy in writing on June 23, 2017, that she had
experienced safety issues resulting from the fact that the nurses were “very short staffed.”
Young also testified about the notes that were placed on the lockers of nurses who left and were
not replaced, and stated that she had observed a large number of such notes. Young testified 5
that she “knew from” her “own experience working with the nurses that what they were saying
was true.” Young had no direct knowledge regarding whether the Union had attempted to
address the staffing issues through the grievance process, but she had read the September 7
Ellsworth American article which stated that Becque said he had “tried to follow the grievance
process” in the contract prior to presenting the petition. 10
Young testified about her perception that there was a disconnect between what
management was focusing on and what the hospital staff members who were providing direct
patient care were focusing on. Young testified that she never saw Ronan on the patient care
floors of the hospital and rarely saw Lundy there. She recounted that she had tried to talk to 15
Lundy, but he told her he had a meeting to go to. Ronan’s office was in the administrative
building, not the building where patient care took place. Ronan testified that, after the Ellsworth
American articles began to appear in late September, he met with employees and admitted to
them that he had not been visible enough in the patient care areas of the hospital. He promised
to be more visible and to round the patient care floors more frequently. Nevertheless, Ronan 20
testified at trial that he had no concerns about a lack of communication between management
and staff.
Although Young’s experience at the hospital was largely consistent with what was being
reported in the Ellsworth American coverage, one thing she disagreed with was the implication25
in the newspaper’s September 14 editorial that the Union and the nurses’ demands were
responsible for rising healthcare costs. In her view it was not fair to blame the nurses for
increased healthcare costs when what they were seeking was safer staffing.
On September 3, after the first of the Ellsworth American articles, Young submitted a 30
letter-to-the editor. That letter was not published by the newspaper. On September 10, after
the second of the articles, Young submitted a revised version of her letter-to-the editor, and that
version was also not published. On September 17, after the Ellsworth American published its
September 14 editorial, Young once again revised and submitted her letter-to-the-editor.7 This
time the Ellsworth American published Young’s letter – first in an on-line edition on September 35
20 and then in its print edition on September 21. Young’s published letter read as follows:
Dear Editor:
The headline of the front page article in the Aug. 31 edition of The Ellsworth
American titled “Rewritten contracts cause unrest at MCMH” accurately describes the 40
situation. I have worked at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital under the swing bed
program and rehabilitation departments for the past 13 ½ years. Losing many of our
experienced, trusted doctors is causing unrest, uncertainty and concern among the staff,
patients and the community.

7 The Respondent has implied that Young submitted the letter published on September 20 out of
frustration over a September 18 decision by the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) to reject her
unrelated claim against the hospital relating to a disability. Any suggestion that Young was motivated by
the MRHC decision is rebutted by the uncontradicted evidence that Young first submitted a version of her
letter over two weeks before the MHRC decision and that even the final version, although published after
the MRHC decision, was submitted by Young prior to it. Young credibly testified, moreover, that she did
not know about the decision MRHC was going to make when she submitted her letter.
JD–71–18
9
Back in October 2015, in another article in The American titled “Maine Coast is
now part of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems,” the MCMH Board chairman at the time,
Adin Tooker, was quoted: “Our primary mission is to ensure that this resource is here
and better going forward, and the affiliation with EMHS going forward will do that.” The
article stated that the EMHS Board chairwoman, Evelyn Silver, assured the audience 5
members that the Maine Coast Board of Directors “will have a very strong role to play”
going forward. She is also quoted as saying: “Local input is critical in how decisions are
made.”
I have to wonder why our local hospital board is not vehemently protesting the
actions taken by parent organization EMHS causing MCMH to change contracts with 10
doctors. We were told back in 2015 that our local board would still “have a very strong
role to play.” Current MCMH Board Chairwoman Debbie Ehrlenbach’s statement in the
Aug. 31 article is as follows: “We are pleased with the plans that Maine Coast’s senior
leadership has developed, working in partnership with EMHS to ensure we will have
sufficient physician coverage to continue to deliver high-quality care for residents of 15
Ellsworth and other Downeast communities.” This sounds like a complete allegiance to
EMHS. What happened to loyalty to our local hospital, staff and the patients and
communities that have benefited by the consistent, dedicated, experienced care given
by trusted local doctors?
After I wrote the above paragraphs in a letter to The American, yet another article 20
about MCMH was published in the Sept. 7 edition with the front page headline “MCMH
nurses cite staffing in petition.” I have to applaud the nurses for going public with their
valid concerns of inadequate, unsafe staffing levels. The nurses followed the proper
internal procedures for voicing their concerns in the grievance process, but little
changed. Hospital management who work out of their offices and have meeting after 25
meeting and who are not working where patients are being cared for, but who then make
decisions about staffing levels should be listening to those who are actually caring for
patients. Nurses at MCMH have valid reasons to be concerned about patient safety,
and management needs to make the necessary changes.
The Sept. 14 editorial “We need a healthy hospital” pointed out that unions have 30
helped improve salaries of both unionized nurses and teachers and that this brings
about increased tensions with management because the unions want better pay,
working conditions, etc. for their members. The implication is that nurses getting a fair
wage is a driver of increased health care costs, but your editorial is very deficient in
analyzing the reasons why health care is so expensive. This topic would be better 35
accomplished in an article of facts, not in an editorial opinion. Nurses and teachers have
traditionally been mostly women and this continues to be true nationwide. Women
continue to earn less than men (gender pay gap does exist). Maine nurses’ and
teachers average salaries are lower than the national average. But salaries are not the
issue in the MCMH nurses’ current petition. The MCMH nurses are using their strength 40
in numbers in order to voice their valid concerns about patient safety that is at risk
because of inadequate staffing levels.
Nurses and other staff leave and are not replaced. Frustrated doctors leave and
more expensive locums fill in temporarily until other expensive temporary locums arrive,
driving costs up further. And management keeps going to their meetings or are in their 45
offices in their administrative building, far from the doctors and nurses and other staff
JD–71–18
10
who are working on the Med/Surg floor, ICU, operating rooms, Emergency Department,
maternity, etc.
No wonder there is unrest and uncertainty at our hospital.
Karen Jo Young
Corea5
G. Respondent’s Investigation and
Decision to Terminate Young10
On September 21, 2017 – the same day that Young’s letter-to-the-editor was printed in
the Ellsworth American and the day after it had appeared in the newspaper’s on-line edition –
the Respondent discharged Young. The reason given was that she had submitted that letter in
violation of the Respondent’s Media Policy. The Respondent’s investigation prior to taking this 15
action consisted of Ronan having Lundy determine whether Young had, in fact, written and
submitted the letter. Management officials involved in the decision-making process testified and
in none of their accounts did the Respondent make any efforts to determine whether the
statements in Young’s letter were accurate or whether she had relied in good faith on her own
observations or credible reports. Although, in the Respondent’s brief, counsel suggests that 20
Young’s submission of the letter was unprotected because the letter contained intentionally,
recklessly or maliciously false statements, the testimony of managers was decidedly less
emphatic on that score. For example, Ronan testified that Young’s letter was “representing a
story that we didn’t believe to be true.” Tr. 181 (emphasis added). He stated that he terminated
Young because she was “trying to represent what was actually going on at the hospital, and in 25
my opinion, it wasn’t.” Tr. 188 (emphasis added). He testified that the letter “offended” him.
Similarly, Spruce (EMHS chief communications officer) stated that Young’s letter “portrayed” the
hospital in “an unflattering light” by saying “things that may or may not be true.” Tr. 390-391
(emphasis).8
30
Nor did the Respondent, prior to discharging Young, make any attempt to ascertain
whether she was aware of the Media Policy or whether, like some managers and until recently
Ronan, she had not previously seen the policy. As discussed earlier, the Media Policy was one
of approximately 263 policies that the Respondent made available through an on-line portal and,
in fact, Young had no awareness of the policy at the time she submitted the letter. When Young 35
asked to see the Media Policy at the discharge meeting, Lundy refused to show it to her.
At approximately 8:00 am on September 21, Ronan had a meeting about Young’s letter
with Glenn Martin (EMHS corporate counsel), and Paul Bolin (EMHS chief human resources
officer). Within an hour after that meeting, Ronan asked Lundy to investigate whether Young 40

8 The Respondent states that in 2017 two outside entities (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services and the Leapfrog Group) gave the hospital their highest performance category rating. To what
extent these rating would reflect the effects of resignations and staffing shortages occurring as late as
September and October of 2017 was not explored at trial. At any rate, the opinions of these outside
entities should not be confused with fact and, in any case, do not show that Young was lying when she
expressed the view that nurses had valid concerns about unsafe staffing levels and that the hospital had
suffered from the resignations of long-tenured physicians. Indeed it is hard to imagine that the staff
shortages and the resignations of long-tenured physicians, neither of which is disputed, would not have a
negative effect on patient care. Moreover, even assuming that the ratings referenced by the Respondent
reliably reflect its overall performance at the time Long submitted her letter, that would still not establish
that the hospital’s performance had not declined within the range represented by a particular rating
category as a result of recent staff shortages and physician resignations.
JD–71–18
11
had drafted and submitted the letter. As referenced above, Ronan did not ask Lundy to
investigate any other circumstances relating to the letter. Ronan and Lundy agreed that, if
Young had written and submitted the letter, the Respondent would discharge her. Later that
day, there was a conversation between Ronan, Martin, Bolin and Lundy to “finalize” Ronan’s
decision to discharge Young. At that point Young had still not been interviewed by the 5
Respondent about the letter. During the managers’ conversation, Lundy told Ronan that there
had been prior discipline against Young. This prior discipline consisted of two warnings that the
Respondent issued in March and May 2016, and which were concerned with Young’s potential
and actual communications to the hospital’s board of directors about employee dissatisfaction.
As noted above, before the meeting at which Lundy informed Ronan of this prior discipline, 10
Ronan had already decided that Young would be discharged if it was determined that she
submitted the letter. Nevertheless, Ronan testified at trial that the reason for the discharge was
both the letter and the fact that Young had previously received discipline. At any rate, the
record leaves no doubt that the Respondent would not have disciplined Young at all on
September 21 but for her submission of the Ellsworth American letter. The Respondent has not 15
suggested otherwise.
Later that same day, the Respondent met with Young for the first time concerning her
letter. Lundy and Keith were present at the meeting for the Respondent, along with a secretary
who took notes. When Lundy started the meeting he already had the letter terminating Young’s 20
employment with him. After Young confirmed that she had written and submitted the letter,
Lundy told her that those actions were “in direct violation of the Media Policy and that she was
terminated immediately.” Lundy and Keith did not talk about any other reasons for the
discharge decision. The discharge letter informed Young that she was being discharged “for
violation of the EMHS Policy: News Release External Publication and Media and in accordance 25
with the Maine Coast Memorial Hospital (MCMH) progressive disciplinary policy.” As previously
noted, Young is the only employee who either the Respondent, or EMHS more generally, has
ever disciplined pursuant to the Media Policy.
III. DISCUSSION30
A. Section 8(a)(1) and (3): Discharge of Young
The General Counsel alleges that the Respondent violated Section 8(a)(1) and (3) of the
Act by discharging Young for engaging in protected concerted and union activity when she 35
submitted a letter to the Ellsworth American newspaper in which she made common cause with
other employees who were seeking improved working conditions and expressed union support.
As discussed below, Young’s right to submit the letter was protected by the NLRA both because
it was concerted activity and because it was union activity, and nothing she did caused her to
forfeit that protection. Therefore the Respondent violated Section 8(a)(1) and (3) on September 40
21, 2017, when it discharged Young for submitting the letter.
Regarding protected concerted activity, the Board has repeatedly held that health care
facility employees engage in concerted activity protected by Section 7 of the NLRA9 when, like
Young did here, they use a letter to the editor or another 3rd-party channel to protest 45
deficiencies in staffing levels or other working conditions that have an effect on patient care.
See Manor Care of Easton, PA, 356 NLRB 202, 232-233 (2010), enfd. 661 F.3d 1139 (D.C. Cir.

9 Section 7 of the NLRA provides in relevant part that “[e]mployees shall have the right to self-
organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of
their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or
other mutual aid or protection.”
JD–71–18
12
2011) (employee’s letter to State representative regarding inadequate staffing is protected by
the Act and not so disloyal as to forfeit protection), Valley Hospital Medical Center, 351 NLRB
1250, 1252-1253 (2007), enfd. 358 Fed. Appx. 783 (9th Cir. 2009) (employee’s letter to
newspaper criticizing nurse workloads is protected and not so disloyal, reckless or maliciously
false as to forfeit that protection), Mount Desert Island Hospital, 259 NLRB 589, 589 fn.1 and 5
593 (1981), affd. in relevant part and remanded 695 F.2d 634 (1st Cir. 1982) (employee’s letter
to newspaper, in which he “attack[ed] the hospital’s safety levels and administration” is
protected activity and not so extreme as to forfeit that protection); see also Eastex, Inc. v.
NLRB, 437 U.S. 556, 565 (1978) (the right to “seek to improve terms and conditions of
employment . . . through channels outside the immediate employee-employer relationship” is 10
essential to vindicate the guarantees of the NLRA); Hacienda de Salud-Espanola, 317 NLRB
962, 966 (1995) (NLRA protects employees’ communications to newspapers about labor
disputes). The Board explained that “[i]n the health care field, patient welfare and working
conditions are often inextricably intertwined” such that when hospital employees protest that
inadequate staffing is negatively affecting patient care they are effectively protesting their15
inability to carry out their duties and their conditions of employment. Valley Hospital, supra;
Holy Rosary Hospital, 264 NLRB 1205, 1205 fn. 2 (1982); see also Mount Desert Island
Hospital, supra. In the instant case, Young’s letter included such a protest – making common
cause with other employees seeking improved staffing, respect, and communication with
management. Moreover, in Young’s case the connection of the protest to employees’ working 20
conditions is especially clear since the employee petition that Young supported explicitly stated
that the staffing shortages were causing them to be “exhausted” and had exacted an “emotional
and physical toll.” The employee petition asked that, among other things, the Respondent
adhere to the staffing provisions of the nurses’ labor contract. In her letter, Young also
referenced a prior article regarding the hospital’s physicians and that article discussed25
employee dissatisfaction with working conditions – stating that physicians were leaving the
Respondent to obtain better hours and pay. Young, who was expected to provide various types
of assistance to the nursing staff and who worked as part of a team with nurses and other staff
providing care to patients, experienced the negative “ripple” effects of the nursing shortages and
other problems in her own working conditions. Thus Young’s letter addresses terms and 30
conditions of employment not only because, as the Board has recognized, patient care is
inextricably tied to hospital employees’ working conditions, but also because she referenced
employees’ complaints about the burdens falling on them as employees.
In addition to being protected as concerted activity, Young’s submission of the letter was 35
union activity protected by Section 8(a)(3) of the Act. In her letter, Young gave support to the
Union by arguing in favor of the observations and objectives of the petition that union
representatives had submitted to the Respondent, and arguing more generally in support of
union efforts to secure better working conditions for hospital workers. It is clear that an
employee engages in protected union activity when he or she supports the efforts of a union40
even when, as in Young’s case, the employee is not in the bargaining unit that the union
represents. Pride Ambulance Co., 356 NLRB 1023 (2011) (discharge of non-bargaining unit
employee violated Section 8(a)(3) because it was based on employee’s protected activity of
refusing to perform work of unit employees engaged in a strike); Beth Israel Medical Center, 292
NLRB 497, 499 (1989) (employer violates Section 8(a)(3) and (1) by discharging a non-45
bargaining unit employee for refusing to cross the picket line of bargaining unit employees);
Signal Oil and Gas Co., 160 NLRB 644, 649 (1966), enfd. 390 F.2d 338 (9th Cir. 1968)
(unrepresented employee engaged in protected union activity by expressing support for a
potential strike by represented unit employees, since unrepresented employee was making
common cause with the represented employees).1050

10 This is equally true with regards to the question of whether the non-unit employee’s action is
JD–71–18
13
The Respondent contends that, despite the facts and law discussed above, I should find
that Young was not entitled to the Act’s protection when she submitted the letter. As discussed
below, none of the Respondent’s contentions in this regard have merit. The Respondent asserts
that Young’s activity in submitting the letter was not “concerted” because she did not discuss5
submitting the letter with other employees prior to doing so. This contention fails for a number
of reasons, not the least of which is that Young was, in fact, party to prior discussions with other
employees regarding their concerns over the staffing shortages and physician resignations that
she discussed in her letter. Her submission of the letter was a logical outgrowth of those
discussions with other employees and was therefore concerted. See Hitachi Capital America 10
Corp., 361 NLRB 123, 138-139 (2014), citing Mike Yurosek & Son, Inc., 306 NLRB 1037 (1992)
and Salisbury Hotel, Inc., 283 NLRB 685, 687 (1987); Mount Desert Island Hospital, 259 NLRB
at 589 fn.1. Even absent those discussions, a finding of concerted activity would be compelled
because the petition, signed by over 60 employees, was indisputably concerted activity, and
Young, by submitting a letter arguing in support of the observations and objectives of that 15
petition, was “joining forces” with those employees in their group action. See Ybarra
Construction, 343 NLRB 35, 40 (2004) (Activity is concerted where “the employee ‘at any
relevant time or in any manner joined forces with any other employee, or by his actions intended
to enlist the support of other employees in a common endeavor.’”), quoting Meyers Industries,
281 NLRB 882, 886-887 (1986), affd. sub nom. Prill v. NLRB, 835 F.2d 1481 (D.C. Cir. 1987);20
see also Office Depot, 330 NLRB 640, 642 (2000) (“employees’ conduct on behalf of the
employees of another employer who are engaged in protected concerted activity is itself
protected concerted activity”). No reasonable reading of Young’s letter permits the conclusion
that it reflects solely Young’s individual concerns about her own working conditions, and not
those of other employees including nurses and physicians. It joins with the signers of the 25
petition, the departing physicians, and other employees in the common endeavor of seeking
improvements to working conditions at the Respondent. Mount Desert Island Hospital, 259
NLRB at 592 (employee’s letter to a local newspaper is concerted for purposes of the Act’s
protection where, although written and submitted by a single employee, it references the
concerns of a group of employees, not solely the writers’ own concerns or interests).30
Next the Respondent argues that even if Young’s submission of the letter was protected
activity, it forfeited any such protection because it contained disparaging and untrue statements.
Although it is the case that an employee’s otherwise protected communication with a third party
may be “so disloyal, reckless, or maliciously untrue [as] to lose the Act’s protection,” Valley 35
Hospital, 351 NLRB at 1252, quoting Emarco, Inc., 284 NLRB 832, 833 (1987), the Board has
guaranteed that employees’ Section 7 protection is meaningful by setting a high threshold for
forfeiture of that protection. Employees engaged in protected activity may use “intemperate,
abusive, or insulting language without fear of restraint or penalty.” Mount Desert Island Hospital,
259 NLRB at 593 (emphasis in Board decision), quoting National Association of Letter Carriers, 40
418 U.S. 264, 283 (1974). “In determining whether employee conduct falls outside the realm of
conduct protected by Section 7, the Board consider[s] whether ‘the attitude of the employees is

protected as concerted activity. See Office Depot, 330 NLRB 640, 642-643 (2000) (non-unit employee
made common cause with striking employees by calling another employee a “scab” and her comment
was protected concerted activity); Beth Israel Medical, 292 NLRB at 507 (“It is well established that
nonstriking employees who refuse to cross a picket line maintained by their fellow employees have made
common cause with the strikers, [and] are engaged in protected concerted activities as defined in Section
7 of the Act.”); ABS Co., 269 NLRB 774, 774-775 (1984) (non-unit employee engages in protected
concerted activity by refusing to cross the picket line of unit employees).
JD–71–18
14
flagrantly disloyal, wholly incommensurate with any grievances which they might have, and
manifested by public disparagement of the employer's product or undermining of its reputation .
. . .’” Five Star Transportation, 349 NLRB 42, 45-46 (2008) (quoting Vandeer-Root Co., 237
NLRB 1175, 1177 (1978)), enfd. 522 F.3d 1210 (1st Cir. 2008). For the reasons discussed
below, I find that Young’s letter, by any reasonable standard, was a measured response to the 5
workplace problems that she and other employees were finding increasingly pressing and does
not even begin to approach the extreme level that would permit the Respondent to discharge
her for submitting it.
The Respondent, in an effort to show that the letter contained statements that were so 10
“reckless, or maliciously untrue” as to forfeit the Act’s protection, singles out two points Young
made. What “Young wrote was false,” the Respondent asserts, because “it was not unsafe at
the hospital and the nurses had not followed any grievance process before or after the petition.”
Brief of Respondent at Page 23. Regarding the former, I note that Young did not assert that
the hospital had become generally or unacceptably unsafe, or was guilty of any intentional 15
malfeasance or mistreatment of patients. She merely expressed the opinion that the nurses
had “valid concerns” about “unsafe staffing levels” and “valid reasons to be concerned about
patient safety.” See Professional Porter & Window Cleaning Co., 263 NLRB 136, 139 (1982)
(Board is careful “to distinguish between disparagement of an employer’s product and the airing
of what may be highly sensitive issues.”), enfd. 742 F.2d 1438 (2d Cir. 1983); compare with20
NLRB v. Electrical Workers Local 1229 (Jefferson Standard), 346 U.S. 464, 469 (1953)
(Employee statement unprotected as disloyal when made “at a critical time in the initiation of the
company's” business and where the statement constitutes “a sharp, public, disparaging attack
upon the quality of the company's product and its business policies, in a manner reasonably
calculated to harm the company's reputation and reduce its income.).” The Respondent has 25
failed to demonstrate that Long’s opinion regarding the validity of the nurses’ concerns was
maliciously or recklessly false, or even that it was false at all in the sense either of not being
Young’s sincerely held opinion or in the sense that it was untrue that nurses had valid concerns
about patient safety.
30
At any rate, the Respondent’s argument that Young’s expression of her opinion about
unsafe staffing levels was so flagrantly disloyal or maliciously false as to forfeit protection
cannot be accepted because her opinions are exactly the type of expression that the Board has
repeatedly held, with consistent Courts of Appeal approval, to be both protected by the Act and
not so disloyal, reckless or maliciously false as to forfeit that protection. See, e.g., Manor Care,35
supra; Valley Hospital, supra; Mount Desert Island Hospital, supra. Statements to the media
about inadequate staffing have been held to retain NLRA protection even when those
statements go well beyond Young’s in describing the deficiencies in patient care. For example,
in Valley Hospital the Board found that the employees’ communications to the media about
staffing levels were not so disloyal or maliciously untrue as to forfeit the Act’s protection even 40
though that employee catalogued various patient care horror stories – e.g., patients “could be
lying in their own excrement for who knows how long,” “don’t get medications . . . on time,” and,
as a result of inadequate monitoring “could have a heart attack and possibly die.” 351 NLRB at
1250-1251. Protection was retained for those inflammatory statements about staffing levels,
and it is inconceivable that Young’s far milder opinion somehow forfeited such protection. Young45
did not advise the public against seeking care at the hospital, did not accuse the hospital of
intentionally mistreating patients, and did not relate alarming episodes of poor patient care.
Indeed, Young even refrained from publicly mentioning the instances of staffing-related safety
problems that she had reported to management in an email 3 months earlier. Based on this
record, I find that the purpose of Young’s letter was not to impugn the Respondent’s operation 50
or to harm the Respondent’s reputation or income, but rather to encourage improvements to
JD–71–18
15
working conditions.11 Where, as here, there is no “’malicious motive, [an employee’s] right to
appeal to the public is not dependent on the sensitivity of [an employer] to his choice of forum.”
Professional Porter & Window Cleaning Co., 263 NLRB 136, 139 (1982) (Board's bracketing)
(quoting Richboro Community Mental Health Council, 242 NLRB 1267, 1268 (1979), affd. 742
F.2d 1438 (2d Cir. 1983); see also Manor Care of Easton, PA, 356 NLRB at 232–233 (same). 5
“[E]ven the most repulsive speech enjoys immunity provided it falls short of deliberate or
reckless untruth.” Phoenix Transit System, 337 NLRB 510, 514 (2002), enfd. 63 Fed. Appx. 524
(D.C. Cir. 2003). “Federal law gives license in the collective-bargaining arena to use
intemperate, abusive, or insulting language without fear of restraint or penalty if the speaker
believes such rhetoric to be an effective means to make a point.” Ibid.; see also Mount Desert 10
Island Hospital, 259 NLRB at 593.
The only demonstrated objective inaccuracy in Young’s letter is her statement that the
“nurses followed the proper internal procedures for voicing their concerns in the grievance
process” before delivering the staffing petition. The record shows that the nurses and Young 15
herself had previously raised concerns about nurse staffing with the Respondent, but that the
Union ultimately chose to submit a petition rather than use the grievance process to seek a
remedy. As the Board has recognized, “[t]he mere fact that statements are false, misleading or
inaccurate is insufficient to demonstrate that they are maliciously untrue” so as to forfeit
protection. Valley Hospital, 351 NLRB at 1252. In the instant case, it is frivolous to contend that 20
the Young’s misstatement in one sentence regarding a collateral issue was significant enough
to obliterate the protection for her NLRA activity and free the Respondent to discharge her for
seeking improvements to employees’ working conditions. I find, in any case, that Young’s
misstatement was not malicious or reckless. Rather, she was reasonably relying on the
September 7 article in the Ellsworth American, which reported that chief steward “Becque said 25
he’s tried to follow the grievance process laid out in the nursing contract, but hasn’t seen
results.” The Ellsworth American is a long-established local news source in the community.
Young herself has been a subscriber for 30 years. The Respondent makes no argument that
Young did not reasonably believe that the reporting in the newspaper was reliable.12
“Employees do not forfeit the protection of the Act if, in voicing their dissatisfaction with matters 30
of common concern, they give currency to inaccurate information, provided that it is not
deliberately or maliciously false.” Universal Fuels, 298 NLRB 254, 255 (1990); see also Valley
Hospital, 351 NLRB at 1252-1253 (“Where an employee relays in good faith what he or she has
been told by another employee, reasonably believing the report to be true, the fact that the
report may have been inaccurate does not remove the relayed remark from the protection of the 35

11 In Valley Hospital, the Board indicated that one factor that may indicate that an employee’s critical
comment was intended to harm the company’s business, rather than to improve working conditions, is
when the comment is made “’at a critical time in the initiation of the company's’ business and where the
comment constitutes ‘a sharp, public, disparaging attack upon the quality of the company's product and
its business policies, in a manner reasonably calculated to harm the company's reputation and reduce its
income.’” 351 NLRB at 1252, quoting NLRB v. Electrical Workers Local 1229 (Jefferson Standard), supra.
The Respondent emphasizes that it was facing financial challenges at the time Young submitted her
letter, but the record shows that Young did not time the letter to harm the Respondent at a critical time.
Ronan testified that the Respondent had been losing money for a 7-year period, since 2010. A period of
7 years is too long to constitute a “critical time” in the sense that a suspicion of malicious intent attaches
to the timing of employee criticism during that entire period. In this case the record indicates that Young’s
letter was not timed to coincide with a financially critical period for the hospital, but instead that its timing
was dictated by the burdens that Young and other employees argued that management was unfairly
imposing on them as part of its response to longstanding financial problems.
12 No manifest reporting bias has been shown and, indeed, the newspaper’s editorial regarding unrest
at the hospital called on both sides to work to resolve their differences and attributed problems, in part, to
unionization.
JD–71–18
16
Act.”), citing KBO Inc., 315 NLRB 570, 571 (1994), enfd. mem. 96 F.3d 1448 (6th Cir. 1996). It
was neither malicious nor reckless for Long to credit what she had read in the Ellsworth
American’s reporting regarding the Union’s use of the grievance process, and Long’s
unintentional and minor misstatement on the subject does not free the Respondent to discharge
her for otherwise protected activity. See Richmond District Neighborhood Center, 361 NLRB 5
833, 837 (2014) (“Protection is not denied to an employee regardless of the lack of merit or
inaccuracy of the employee's statements, absent deliberate falsity or maliciousness, even
where the employee's language is stinging and harsh.”); cf. Simplex Wire & Cable Co., 313
NLRB 1311, 1315 (1994) (An employer may not “restrict employees in the exercise of their
Section 7 rights by prohibiting statements which are merely false, as distinguished from those 10
which are maliciously so.”). If employees lost their NLRA right to protest working conditions
every time an employer could identify a minor misstatement of the type shown here, it would
render that right a nullity in a large segment of instances and would profoundly chill employees
from exercising their Section 7 rights at all.
15
The Respondent criticizes Young for the portions of the letter in which she suggests that
employee dissatisfaction is attributable to management decision makers being out-of-touch with
the experience of the direct providers of patient care, and to the hospital’s board chairwoman
showing inordinate allegiance to EMHS management at the expense of “our local hospital, staff
and the patients and communities.” Even one with paper thin skin cannot reasonably see these 20
mildly expressed opinions, which directly related to employees working conditions and the labor
dispute over staffing, as the type of “flagrantly disloyal” statements that are so “wholly
incommensurate with any grievances,” Five Star Transportation, 349 NLRB at 46, that they
forfeit employees’ NLRA protection for efforts to improve working conditions. See also Emarco,
Inc., 284 NLRB at 834 (employee's name calling did not cause her to forfeit NLRA protection 25
where her statements were not “a personal attack unrelated to the employee's protest,” but
rather were “made in the context of and were expressly linked to the labor dispute”)
and Community Hospital of Roanoke, 220 NLRB 217, 223 (1975) (Employee's comment on
television program were not disloyal so as to forfeit protection when the comment “was made in
a context of, and was specifically related by her to, the employees' efforts to improve wages and 30
working conditions” and were not shown to be “deliberately intended to alienate the public by
impugning the quality of the hospital's patient care.”) enfd 538 F.2d 2d 607 (4th Cir. 1976).
In other cases the Board has found that statements more extreme than Young’s retained
the Act’s protection. In Springfield Library and Museum Association, the employee’s letter-to-35
the-editor characterized the employer’s chief administrator as “a man who never ‘lost contact’
with working professionals because he never had it to begin with.” The letter in that case also
included the claim that the chief administrator had been hired as a form of “welfare-for-the-rich
courtesy of his friends on the Board of Trustees” after he was fired by his previous employer.
238 NLRB 1673 (1979). The Board noted that since the employee’s statements were positing 40
these circumstances as a reason for work-related problems his statements retained the Act’s
protection even if the “rhetorical hyperbole” “offended” management and the comments were
“repulsive.” Id. at 1673-1674. Similarly, in Harris Corp., 269 NLRB 733, 738-739 (1984), the
Board found that an employee’s letter calling members of management “hypocritical,” “despotic”
and “tyrannical” retained protection of the NLRA notwithstanding the “boorish, ill-bred and 45
hostile” tone. In the instant case, Young was positing management’s lack of contact with direct
patient care and what she saw as the hospital board chairwoman’s overly deferential attitude
towards EMHS management as reasons for the employees’ work-related problems. She
expressed this view in more measured terms than had the employees in other cases, quoted
above, where the Board held that protection was retained. Young’s comments did not include 50
unfounded accusations of scandalous behavior, extreme or intentional neglect of patients, or
JD–71–18
17
unlawful conduct, nor do they intrude upon the managers’ or the hospital board member’s
privacy.13
Even if I believed that Young’s comments were “intemperate, abusive, or insulting” – and
I find that they were not – that would not be enough to deprive Young of the Act’s protection. 5
See Mount Desert Island Hospital, 259 NLRB at 593. Moreover, around the time of Young’s
letter, Ronan himself expressed agreement with criticism that he was having insufficient contact
with those directly providing patient care. Ronan conceded to employees that he needed to be
more visible and present in patient care areas, promised to round the floors more frequently,
and said that management’s handling of the physician contracts was confusing and frustrating. 10
Similarly, Young’s statement that management was working in the administrative building, not
where patient care was taking place, is consistent with the evidence that Ronan’s office was, in
fact, housed in a building separate from the patient care building and that Ronan told employees
he needed to be more visible in the patient care areas. Young’s criticism of how the hospital
board’s chairwoman was performing was based on an accurate recitation of the chairwoman’s 15
own public statement. Young’s communication about factors that she believed were causing
employees’ work-related problems at the hospital were part and parcel of the efforts to improve
working conditions and do not deprive her of the Act’s protections.14
For the reasons discussed above, I find that the Respondent discriminated in violation of 20
Section 8(a)(1) and (3) of the Act on September 21, 2017, when it discharged Young for
engaging in protected concerted and union activity by submitting a letter-to-the-editor protesting
employees’ working conditions and making common cause with coworkers in their labor dispute
with the Respondent.
25
B. Section 8(a)(1): Respondent’s Media Policy
The General Counsel challenges the Respondent’s Media Policy, which prohibits
employees from releasing any information about the Respondent or EMHS to the news media
without the “direct involvement” of the Respondent and also requires any employee who 30
receives an inquiry from the media to refer that inquiry to the Respondent for an answer. The
General Counsel alleges that this policy, although facially neutral, is overbroad and

13 It is telling that in arguing that Young’s statements were so disloyal as to forfeit NLRA protection,
the Respondent finds it necessary to invent rhetorically charged statements and then pretend that Young
said them. For example, it describes Young as calling the hospital chairwoman a “traitor” and managers
“ineffectual bureaucrats fiddling while the hospital was burning.” Brief of Respondent at Page 27. Young
did not say either of those things and did not resort to any similarly intemperate rhetoric.
14 The Respondent makes a novel argument that even if Young’s letter is activity protected by the
Act, the discharge was lawful because the Respondent would have discharged Young based on
particular, allegedly unprotected, portions of the same letter. Brief of Respondent at Page 33, citing
mixed motive analysis set forth in Wright Line, 251 NLRB 1083 (1980), enfd. 662 F.2d 899 (1st Cir. 1981),
cert. denied, 455 U.S. (1982), approved in NLRB v. Transportation Corp., 462 U.S. 393 (1983). This
argument fails because the comments the Respondent attempts to separate out and rely on to justify
Young’s discharge – i.e., those about management being out-of-touch and the chairwoman’s allegiance
to management – were themselves protected for the reasons discussed above. Moreover, the negative
statements in Young’s letter about management and the chairwoman were part of the res gestae of her
protected protest about working conditions and did not depart from that res gestae. Therefore, even
assuming that those negative statements would be unprotected if they were made in isolation, the
Respondent could not lawfully discharge Young based on those elements of the letter since they were not
made in isolation, but rather as part of the res gestae of a protected protest regarding working conditions.
Cayuga Medical Center, 365 NLRB No. 170, slip op. at 23 (2017), citing Goya Foods, 356 NLRB 476,
477 fn. 8 (2011).
JD–71–18
18
discriminatory under the analytical framework the Board announced in Boeing Co., 365 NLRB
No., 154 (2017), reconsideration denied 366 NLRB No. 128 (2018). In Boeing, the Board stated
that, unless a rule is of a type that the Board has already designated as being uniformly lawful
or unlawful, the lawfulness of a facially neutral rule will be evaluated using a balancing test.
First the Board will determine whether the rule is one that employees would “reasonably 5
interpret[]” as “potentially interfer[ing] with the exercise of NLRA rights.” If it is,
the Board evaluates whether “the nature and extent of the potential impact on NLRA rights”
outweighs the “legitimate justifications associated with” the rule. Slip op. at 3-4, and 16.
“Employees have a clear right under the Act to publicize labor disputes,” and this 10
extends to efforts to do so “through channels outside the immediate employee-employer
relationship.” Schwan’s Home Services, 364 NLRB No. 20, slip op. at 4 (2016); see also Eastex,
Inc., 437 U.S. at 565 (employees have the right “seek to improve terms and conditions of
employment . . . through channels outside the immediate employee-employer relationship”).
The Respondent’s Media Policy would reasonably be interpreted to interfere with employees’ 15
exercise of that clear NLRA right. Moreover, in this case the interference is not speculative
since, as already discussed, the Respondent invoked the Media Policy to discharge Young for
exercising her NLRA rights by submitting her letter to the Ellsworth American. Indeed, not only
was the Media Policy invoked to discipline Young for exercising her NLRA rights, but that was
the only time the policy had been invoked to discipline anyone working at the Respondent or in 20
the entire EMHS system. Thus the Media Policy not only would reasonably be interpreted to
interfere with the exercise of NLRA rights, but it has only ever been invoked to interfere with
such rights.
The Media Policy significantly burdens the exercise of NLRA rights. The Board has 25
repeatedly recognized the importance of employees’ communications to the media and other
third parties as a means of publicizing labor disputes15 and drawing an employer’s attention to
the need for improvements to working conditions. See, e.g., Valley Medical Center, 351 NLRB
at 1252; Hacienda de Salud-Espanola, 317 NLRB at 962 and 966; Mount Desert Island
Hospital, 259 NLRB at 589 fn.1 and 593. Employees’ rights to contact the media are unlawfully 30
interfered with not only when the employer categorically prohibits all employment-related media
contact, but also when, as here, it requires employees to obtain the employer’s permission or
use a specific internal process before contacting the media. See Trump Marina Casino Resort,
354 NLRB 1027, 1027 fn.2 (2009), affd. and adopted by 355 NLRB 585 (2010), enfd. 435 Fed.

15 The term “labor dispute” encompasses, inter alia, any controversy regarding employment
conditions regardless of whether there is a union involved or ongoing activity such as a strike or picketing.
Endicott Interconnect Technologies, 345 NLRB 448, 450 (2005), enf. denied, 453 F.3d 532 (D.C. Cir.
2006). The Respondent argues that its staffing levels were no longer the subject of an ongoing labor
dispute at the time Young submitted her letter because the employees had not done anything else about
the issue between the time they submitted their petition on August 28 and when Young submitted the final
version of her letter 3 weeks later on September 17. This argument is frivolous. Even if the employee
petition was the only evidence of an ongoing dispute regarding staffing there is no basis on which to
condemn the labor dispute to so premature a death. This is especially true in light of the fact that the
Respondent had not yet made a response to the petition. At any rate, the labor dispute over staffing
levels consisted of more than just the employees’ August 28 petition and Young’s September 17 letter.
As discussed earlier, staffing was a major bone of contention during the last round of contract
negotiations and after the contract was reached the employees continued to raise concerns about the
subject. Long herself had notified the Respondent of her concerns regarding staffing levels in a June 23,
2017, email to Lundy. Moreover, employees’ concerns were not baseless since even Ronan conceded
that there were staffing shortages during this period. Under these circumstances, the Respondent’s
argument that there was no ongoing labor dispute regarding staffing levels when Young submitted her
letter is wholly without merit.
JD–71–18
19
Appx. 1 (D.C. Cir. 2011); Valley Hospital, 351 NLRB at 1254; Saginaw Control & Engineering,
Inc.,339 NLRB 541, 546 and 553 (2003); and Brunswick Corp., 282 NLRB 794, 794-795 (1987).
In this case, the magnitude of the Respondent’s interference with employees’ Section 7
rights is heightened by the breath of the rule. The Respondent’s restriction on employees’ 5
communications with the media is not limited to circumstances in which the communication
involves confidential or proprietary information, or those in which the employee purports to
speak on the Respondent’s behalf. Rather the restriction pertains to any employee
communication to the media “about EMHS or its member organization.” Cf. Schwan’s Home
Services, Inc., 364 NLRB No. 20, slip op. at 2, 4 (2016) (restriction on employees contacting the 10
media is unlawful where it is not limited to circumstances where the employees are “speaking
on the [employer’s] behalf”). One of the restrictions in the policy does not even include language
explicitly limiting the restriction to employee communications about EMHS and its members, but
rather states than any employee who receives “an inquiry from the media will direct that inquiry
to [the Respondent] for appropriate handling.” Because the Respondent’s rule is not limited to 15
communications about confidential or proprietary information, or to circumstances when the
employees purport to speak on behalf of the Respondent, the burden that the rule places on the
exercise of Section 7 rights is heavy.
The burden that the Respondent’s Media Policy restrictions impose on NLRA activity far 20
outweighs any legitimate justification the Respondent has offered for the policy. The purpose of
the restrictions, as stated in the policy itself, is: “To present EMHS and its various member
organizations to the general public in a manner consistent with the brand and supporting the
mission statement of EMHS.” At the hearing, the EMHS chief communications officer stated
that the policy was designed to protect the hospital’s reputation as a safe place to come for care 25
and also to protect the privacy concerns of patients. However, the policy is not limited to
communications that relate to the hospital’s safety or to confidential or private information. Thus
even assuming that the Respondent is accurately describing the intended purposes of the
Policy, the interference with NLRA activity is not tailored to address those purposes. Moreover,
one may reasonably question whether a hospital’s desire to keep potential customers in the 30
dark about even accurate negative reports regarding hospital safety is a “legitimate” justification
for purposes of the Boeing analysis. Assuming that such a justification is legitimate, I find that it
is outweighed by the health care employees’ need – long recognized by the Board and affirmed
by the Courts of Appeal – to exercise their Section 7 rights by communicating with 3rd parties
about staffing and other problems in an effort to improve working conditions. See, e.g., Manor 35
Care, supra; Valley Hospital, supra; Mount Desert Island Hospital, supra. Although the calculus
might change in individual disciplinary cases if the employee communications are flagrantly
disloyal or maliciously/recklessly false, that does not rescue the Respondent’s policy since that
policy is not limited to such statements, but by its terms applies even to communications that
are respectful, loyal, and accurate. 40
In considering the relative weight to give to, on the one hand, the rule’s interference with
NLRA rights and, on the other hand, the justifications proffered by the Respondent, it is worth
repeating that the only time the Respondent or EMHS has ever invoked the Media Policy
against any employee was to punish Young for her NLRA-protected letter. This indicates that 45
the Respondent’s supposed justifications are not very important to the Respondent except when
the media contact is part of employees’ protected efforts to seek improvements to working
conditions. Another piece of evidence indicating that the Respondent’s legitimate interests in
the Media Policy are not particularly weighty is the laxity of the Respondent’s efforts to
communicate and explain it. Young was not aware of the Policy before it was invoked as a 50
basis for discharging her and even the Respondent’s president, Ronan, had only learned of the
Policy a few months earlier. An internal company document from September 20, 2017 – the
JD–71–18
20
day that Young’s letter appeared in Ellsworth American’s digital edition – concedes that some
managers may never have seen the Policy. The Respondent’s apparent lack of interest, prior to
discharging Young, in educating managers and employees about the Media Policy belies any
claim that the Policy is so important to the Respondent that the need for the policy outweighs its
substantial interference with employees’ exercise of their NLRA rights. 5
For the reasons discussed above, I conclude that from June 28, 2017, until January 14,
2018, the Respondent maintained a Media Policy that unlawfully interfered with employees’
exercise of their Section 7 rights in violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the Act.16
10
On January 15, 2018, after Young filed the unfair labor practices charges that give rise
to this litigation, the Respondent added “savings clause” language to the Media Policy. That
language states that the policy’s restrictions on employee contacts with the media do not apply
to communications “concerning a labor dispute or other concerted communications for purpose
of mutual aid or protection protected by the National Labor Relations Act.” The Respondent 15
argues that even assuming that the Media Policy violated the NLRA prior to the addition of this
language, it may maintain the policy because it is lawful in its current form.
I find that the addition of the savings clause language does not remedy the unlawful
character of the Respondent’s Media Policy. Savings clause language “may, in certain 20
circumstances, clarify the scope of an otherwise ambiguous and unlawful rule,” First Transit,
Inc., 360 NLRB 619, 621-622 (2014) (emphasis added),17 but in this case the relevant
circumstances do not change the result under the Boeing analysis. Specifically, the amended
policy would still be “reasonably interpreted” by employees as “potentially interfer[ring] with the
exercise of NLRA rights,” and the circumstances relevant to the Boeing balancing test are not 25
meaningfully changed. Regarding potential interference, the most significant obstacle for the
Respondent is that it has, in fact, applied the policy to unlawfully discharge an employee –
Young – for exercising her NLRA-protected rights and it has not repudiated that action. In First
Transit, the Board stated that one of the types of circumstances that bear on the success of
savings clause language is whether the employer has enforced the overbroad rule in a way that 30
shows employees that the savings clause does not safeguard their Section 7 rights. See also
Care One at Madison Avenue, 361 NLRB 1462, 1465 fn. 8 (2014), enfd. 832 F.3d 351 (D.C. Cir.
2016). Although the Respondent discharged Young for her NLRA-protected activity prior to
adding the new language, the Respondent continues to maintain that Young was properly
discharged pursuant to the Media Policy and that the savings clause language has not 35
substantively changed the policy. Thus, despite the placement of the saving clause in the
relatively brief Media Policy, the only logical conclusion is that the Policy still unlawfully prohibits
NLRA protected activity such as that engaged in by Young. In addition, the Respondent’s
savings clause language fails to address the “broad panoply of rights” that employees enjoy

16 As discussed earlier in this decision, the Respondent discharged Young because she engaged in
protected concerted and union activity and therefore the discharge violated Section 8(a)(1) and (3) of the
Act. The General Counsel states that even if that were not the case, Young’s discharge would be a
violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the Act because the Respondent was applying its overbroad Media Policy.
Brief of General Counsel at Page 50, citing Continental Group, Inc., 357 NLRB 409 (2011). Since I have
already found that Young’s discharge violated both Section 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(3) of Act, I do not rule on this
alternative basis for finding a violation.
17 The “certain circumstances” the Board considered in First Transit included: whether the language
“address[es] the broad panoply of rights” protected by Section 7; the length of the document and the
placement of the savings clause in relation to the ambiguous rules that it is claimed to remedy; whether
the savings clause and the ambiguous rules reference each other; and whether the employer has
enforced the overbroad rule in a way that shows employees that the savings clause does not safeguard
their Section 7 rights. 360 NLRB at 621-622
JD–71–18
21
under the NLRA. See First Transit, supra. The savings clause does not, for example, reference
union activity or state that employees will not be punished for contacting the media for the
purpose of forming or assisting labor organizations. At best, the Respondent has “create[d] an
ambiguity” about the meaning of the Media Policy, and that ambiguity “must be construed
against the Respondent” as the “drafter” of both the prohibition and the savings clause. Century 5
Fast Foods, Inc., 363 NLRB No. 97, slip op. at 11 (2016).
Regarding the balancing test, the Respondent’s amendment does not narrow the Media
Policy to address only its stated objectives or reduce the weight of the burden it places on
employees’ exercise of their NLRA rights. For example, the Respondent has not made changes 10
to limit the reach of the prohibition to communications that involve proprietary or confidential
information, or that are flagrantly disloyal, or maliciously or recklessly false.
I find that the Respondent’s Media Policy, as amended on January 15, 2018, interferes
with employees’ exercise of their Section 7 rights under the Act in violation of Section 8(a)(1) of 15
the Act.18
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
20
1. The Respondent is an employer engaged in commerce within the meaning of Section
2(2), (6), and (7) of the Act and a health care institution within the meaning of Section 2(14) of
the Act.
2. The Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee/National 25
Nurses Union (the Union) is a labor organization within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act.
3. The Respondent discriminated in violation of Section 8(a)(1) and (3) of the Act on
September 21, 2017, when it discharged Young for engaging in protected concerted and union
activity by submitting a letter-to-the-editor protesting employees’ working conditions and making 30
common cause with coworkers in their labor disputes with the Respondent.
4. From June 28, 2017, until January 14, 2018, the Respondent maintained a Media
Policy that unlawfully interfered with employees’ exercise of their Section 7 rights in violation of
Section 8(a)(1) of the Act.35
5. Since January 15, 2018, the Respondent has maintained an amended Media Policy
that unlawfully interferes with employees’ exercise of their Section 7 rights in violation of Section
8(a)(1) of the Act.
40

18 Even assuming that the amended version of the media policy was lawful, that would not cure the
violation the Respondent committed by maintaining the earlier version of the policy. In order to be
relieved of responsibility for the violation based on the earlier version of the Media Policy, the Respondent
would have to show that it repudiated its unlawful conduct in the manner the Board set forth in Passavant
Memorial Area Hospital, 237 NLRB 138 (1978). The Respondent has not repudiated, and does not claim
to have repudiated, the violation. To the contrary, the Respondent continues to assert that the policy has
always been lawful, was lawfully applied to discharge Young, and was clarified (not changed), by the
addition of the new language.
JD–71–18
22
REMEDY
Having found that the Respondent engaged in certain unfair labor practices, I shall order
it to cease and desist therefrom and to take certain affirmative action designed to effectuate the 5
policies of the Act. The Respondent, having discriminatorily discharged Karen-Jo Young, must
offer her full and immediate reinstatement and make her whole for any loss of earnings and
other benefits. Backpay shall be computed in accordance with F. W. Woolworth Co., 90 NLRB
289 (1950), with interest at the rate prescribed in New Horizons for the Retarded, 283 NLRB
1173 (1987), compounded daily as prescribed in Kentucky River Medical Center, 356 NLRB 6 10
(2010). The Respondent shall file a report with the Social Security Administration allocating
backpay to the appropriate calendar quarters and shall also compensate the discriminatee for
the adverse tax consequences, if any, of receiving one or more lump-sum backpay awards
covering periods longer than 1 year, Latino Express, Inc., 359 NLRB No. 44 (2012).
15
On these findings of fact and conclusions of law and on the entire record, I issue the
following recommended Order.19
ORDER
20
The Respondent, Maine Coast Regional Health Facilities d/b/a Maine Cost Memorial
Hospital, the sole member of which is Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, Ellsworth, Maine, its
officers, agents, successors, and assigns, shall
1. Cease and desist from 25
(a) Maintaining or enforcing any unlawful work rule or system policy that prohibits
employees from communicating with the news media about the Respondent or Eastern Maine
Healthcare Systems (EMHS) or that requires employees to involve, or obtain permission from,
the Respondent or EMHS before doing so.30
(b) Applying rules or policies, including the Media Policy (EMHS system policy # 12-
000), to restrict employees’ Section 7 Activity.
(c) Discharging or otherwise discriminating against employees for engaging in protected 35
concerted activities and/or for supporting Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses
Organizing Committee/Nation Nurses United, or any other labor organization.
(d) In any like or related manner interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in
the exercise of the rights guaranteed them by Section 7 of the Act.40
2. Take the following affirmative action necessary to effectuate the policies of the Act.
(a) Rescind the EMHS Media Policy (EMHS system policy # 12-000), or revise it to make
clear that it does not prohibit employees from communicating with the news media, with or 45
without the involvement or permission of the Respondent, regarding employees’ terms and
conditions of employment or union activity.

19 If no exceptions are filed as provided by Sec. 102.46 of the Board’s Rules and Regulations, the
findings, conclusions, and recommended Order shall, as provided in Sec. 102.48 of the Rules, be
adopted by the Board and all objections to them shall be deemed waived for all purposes.
JD–71–18
23
(b) Advise all employees that work for EMHS member organizations that the Media
Policy (EMHS system policy # 12-000) has been rescinded or revised and will not be used to
discipline them for communicating with the news media, with or without the involvement of the
Respondent, regarding employees’ terms and conditions of employment or union activity.
5
(c) Within 14 days from the date of the Board’s Order, offer Karen-Jo Young full
reinstatement to her former job or, if that job no longer exists, to a substantially equivalent
position, without prejudice to her seniority or any other rights or privileges previously enjoyed.
(d) Make Karen-Jo Young whole for any loss of earnings and other benefits suffered as 10
a result of the discrimination against her in the manner set forth in the remedy section of the
decision.
(e) Within 14 days from the date of the Board’s Order, remove from its files any
reference to the unlawful discharge, and within 3 days thereafter notify Karen-Jo Young in 15
writing that this has been done and that the discharge will not be used against her in any way.
(f) Preserve and, within 14 days of a request, or such additional time as the Regional
Director may allow for good cause shown, provide at a reasonable place designated by the
Board or its agents, all payroll records, social security payment records, timecards, personnel 20
records and reports, and all other records, including an electronic copy of such records if stored
in electronic form, necessary to analyze the amount of backpay due under the terms of this
Order.
(g) Within 14 days after service by the Region, post at its Ellsworth, Maine, facility and at 25
all other facilities where the EMHS Media Policy has been in effect, copies of the attached
notice marked “Appendix.”20 Copies of the notice, on forms provided by the Regional Director for
Region 1, after being signed by the Respondent’s authorized representative, shall be posted by
the Respondent and maintained for 60 consecutive days in conspicuous places including all
places where notices to employees are customarily posted, including all bulletin boards in break 30
rooms located on units where bargaining unit employees work. In addition to physical posting of
paper notices, the notices shall be distributed electronically, such as by email, posting on an
intranet or an internet site, and/or other electronic means, if the Respondent customarily
communicates with its employees by such means. Reasonable steps shall be taken by the
Respondent to ensure that the notices are not altered, defaced, or covered by any other 35
material. In the event that, during the pendency of these proceedings, the Respondent has gone
out of business or closed the facility involved in these proceedings, the Respondent shall
duplicate and mail, at its own expense, a copy of the notice to all current employees and former
employees employed by the Respondent at any time since June 28, 2017.
40
Dated, Washington, D.C. November 2, 2018.

_____________________ 45
PAUL BOGAS
Administrative Law Judge

20 If this Order is enforced by a judgment of a United States court of appeals, the words in the notice
reading “Posted by Order of the National Labor Relations Board” shall read “Posted Pursuant to a
Judgment of the United States Court of Appeals Enforcing an Order of the National Labor Relations
Board.”
,_St 3E'-"`C.---
JD–71–18
APPENDIX
NOTICE TO EMPLOYEES
Posted by Order of the
National Labor Relations Board
An Agency of the United States Government
The National Labor Relations Board has found that we violated Federal labor law and has
ordered us to post and obey this notice.
FEDERAL LAW GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO
Form, join, or assist a union
Choose representatives to bargain with us on your behalf
Act together with other employees for your benefit and protection
Choose not to engage in any of these protected activities.
WE WILL NOT do anything to prevent you from exercising the above rights.
WE WILL NOT maintain or enforce any unlawful work rule or system policy that prohibits you
from communicating with the news media about Maine Coast Memorial Hospital or Eastern
Maine Healthcare Systems (EMHS) or that requires you to involve, or obtain permission from,
Maine Coast Memorial Hospital or EMHS before doing so.
WE WILL NOT discharge or otherwise discriminate against any of you for engaging in protected
concerted activities or for supporting Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses
Organizing Committee/Nation Nurses United, or any other labor organization.
WE WILL NOT in any like or related manner interfere with, restrain, or coerce you in the
exercise of the rights guaranteed you by Section 7 of the Act.
WE WILL rescind the EMHS Media Policy (EMHS system policy # 12-000), or revise it to make
clear that it does not prohibit you from communicating with the news media, with or without the
involvement or permission of the Maine Coast Memorial Hospital or EMHS, regarding
employees’ terms and conditions of employment or union activity.
WE WILL advise you in writing of the manner in which we have rescinded or revised the EMHS
Media Policy (EMHS system policy # 12-000) and further advise you that the policy will not be
unlawfully used to discipline you for communicating with the news media, with or without the
involvement or permission of Maine Coast Memorial Hospital or EMHS, regarding employees’
terms and conditions of employment or union activity.
WE WILL, within 14 days from the date of this Order, offer Karen-Jo Young full reinstatement to
her former job or, if that job no longer exists, to a substantially equivalent position, without
prejudice to her seniority or any other rights or privileges previously enjoyed.
WE WILL make Karen-Jo Young whole for any loss of earnings and other benefits resulting
from her discharge, less any net interim earnings, plus interest compounded daily.
JD–71–18
WE WILL file a report with the Social Security Administration allocating backpay to the
appropriate calendar quarters.
WE WILL compensate Karen-Jo Young for the adverse tax consequences, if any, of receiving
one or more lump-sum backpay awards covering periods longer than 1 year.
WE WILL, within 14 days from the date of this Order, remove from our files any reference to the
unlawful discharge of Karen-Jo Young, and WE WILL, within 3 days thereafter, notify her in
writing that this has been done and that the discharge will not be used against her in any way.
MAINE COAST REGIONAL HEALTH FACILITIES
d/b/a MAINE COAST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, the
sole member of which is EASTERN MAINE
HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
(Employer)
Dated By
(Representative) (Title)
The National Labor Relations Board is an independent Federal agency created in 1935 to
enforce the National Labor Relations Act. It conducts secret-ballot elections to determine
whether employees want union representation and it investigates and remedies unfair labor
practices by employers and unions. To find out more about your rights under the Act and how to
file a charge or election petition, you may speak confidentially to any agent with the Board’s
Regional Office set forth below. You may also obtain information from the Board’s website:
www.nlrb.gov.
10 Causeway Street, 6th Floor, Boston, MA 02222–1072
(617) 565-6700, Hours of Operation: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Administrative Law Judge’s decision can be found at www.nlrb.gov/case/01-CA-209105 or
by using the QR code below. Alternatively, you can obtain a copy of the decision from the
Executive Secretary, National Labor Relations Board, 1015 Half Street, S.E., Washington, D.C.
20570, or by calling (202) 273-1940.
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE AND MUST NOT BE DEFACED BY ANYONE
THIS NOTICE MUST REMAIN POSTED FOR 60 CONSECUTIVE DAYS FROM THE DATE OF
POSTING AND MUST NOT BE ALTERED, DEFACED, OR COVERED BY ANY OTHER
MATERIAL. ANY QUESTIONS CONCERNING THIS NOTICE OR COMPLIANCE WITH ITS
PROVISIONS MAY BE DIRECTED TO THE ABOVE REGIONAL OFFICE’S
COMPLIANCE OFFICER, (617) 565-6700.