The National Labor Relations Board summoned GW Hospital and its owner to court last week, escalating a trio of unfair labor practice complaints that the hospital’s nurses union filed in 2023. 

NLRB Regional Director Sean R. Marshall’s 12-page legal complaint chronicles several instances of alleged unfair labor practices that GW Hospital’s owner and operator, Universal Health Services, engaged in, including unlawfully firing a nurse for union activity, privately dissuading nurses from joining the union and surveilling employees. The complaint, filed on July 25, orders GW Hospital and UHS to a court hearing — which an administrative law judge will oversee on Oct. 21 — and argues that UHS must remedy and disclose all alleged violations. 

The legal complaint comes after regional NLRB officials reviewed and investigated unfair labor practice charges that the District of Columbia Nurses Association — the union representing GW Hospital nurses — filed in April and October 2023.

The three charges accused UHS of firing registered nurse Angelo Estrellas as retaliation for his union involvement, installing surveillance cameras in break rooms and meeting rooms after nurses announced plans to unionize, preventing and removing union promotional materials and holding mandatory meetings to discourage unionization, DCNA Executive Director Edward Smith said. 

After reviewing the complaints for about a year, last week’s legal complaint indicates that the NLRB decided its general counsel would prosecute DCNA’s charges at a court hearing.

“We were vindicated that this hospital, this corporation, this for-profit, multi-billion-dollar corporation, has violated the law on numerous occasions in shameful ways,” Smith said. “We get to show the nurses that we have a victory here, and that they should be comforted by that and continue to fight.”

GW Hospital did not return a request for comment on the NLRB’s legal complaint and the court date.

To rectify the alleged violations, the NLRB’s filing contends that UHS should send Estrellas an apology for his termination and any distress it caused, as well as a letter explaining the termination’s impact on his finances to send to credit agencies that may have reported missed payments.

The NLRB also argues that the court should require the hospital operator to redress any damages to Estrellas, including by providing back pay for monetary damages from the firing if he declines reinstatement at his former GW Hospital job. 

“I devoted my life in that hospital,” Estrellas said last month. “I’m not a bad nurse, I’m a good nurse, I think. And it affected me finding work, emotionally, psychologically and financially.”

The filing calls for GW Hospital officials to remove or disable video surveillance in break rooms and meeting rooms or, if the surveillance cameras serve “legitimate business needs,” to tell employees why they’re being monitored and ensure officials won’t use the information to interfere with union activities.

The filing additionally requests an order that UHS email employees and post notices in the hospital of all its labor law violations. 

“I’m very confident we’ll be successful there,” Smith said.

GW Hospital and UHS are required to respond to NLRB with their own filing by Aug. 8. An administrative law judge will hear the case on Oct. 21 at 10 a.m.