How North Mountain Foothills Apartments Punished Wage Transparency and Tenant Advocacy

📎 Source Note: Transparency is essential in journalism. The facts and figures presented in this article are derived directly from the legal filings in this case. A copy of which can be found at the bottom of this article. We encourage readers to review the primary source document for themselves.

TL;DR:
At a 194-unit apartment complex in Phoenix, management hired a maintenance worker to tackle a flood of repair requests in a building plagued by cockroaches, leaks, and an aging HVAC system.

Within four days, after he talked with co-workers about his pay and described the harsh conditions tenants faced, management treated his speech as a “crisis,” tried to shut down conversations about wages and pests, and then fired him.

The federal NLRB labor authority found that the evil corporation illegally interrogated him, gagged him, threatened him, and fired him for taking part in protected workplace conversations, and a federal appeals court later enforced that ruling.

The story shows how a landlord used its power to silence a worker who connected his own treatment to the conditions residents endure. It also shows how a profit-driven model in housing encourages managers to chase “return on investment” while pushing workers and tenants to absorb the cost.

Introduction: A Maintenance Worker Fired for Talking About Wages and Cockroaches

The case centers on North Mountain Foothills Apartments, a rental company that owns and manages a 194-unit complex in Phoenix, Arizona. During a heatwave in the summer of 2021, the complex’s outdated air-conditioning system failed to keep up. Work orders surged. Tenants lived with cockroach infestations and constant leaks from aging equipment.

To deal with the crisis, the company hired a new maintenance technician, Jasper Press, at $25 an hour plus a three-bedroom unit in the complex, described by management as a “$1500 monthly investment” from the company. Management linked that benefit directly to higher “return on investment” over the year.

Within days, after Press talked openly with co-workers about his pay and housing benefit and described the “dilapidated” state of the property (including shit the cockroach infestation) to both staff and a resident, management reacted with anger. Senior leadership called his conversations a “red-hot issue,” a “crisis situation,” and a “hornets’ nest,” then barred him from talking about pests with residents and told him his work conditions were “nobody’s business” but his. The next day, after he worked a full shift, management fired him by phone after hours.

A federal labor authority later ruled that the parasitic landlord illegally questioned him, tried to gag him, threatened reprisals, and discharged him for engaging in actual or perceived protected activity. A federal appeals court upheld that decision and ordered the company to reinstate him and make him whole.

The Corporate Misconduct and Retaliation

At its core, the case describes a landlord using its managerial power to stop workers from talking about money and conditions (two of the most basic topics in any workplace) and punishing the one worker who refused to keep quiet.

The federal labor authority found four specific violations of workers’ rights under federal labor law:

Interrogation – Management questioned Press about his conversations with other workers regarding his wages.
Gag Orders – Management issued an oral directive that barred him from talking about his wages and housing subsidy with other employees and from discussing pest control issues with residents or “third parties.”
Threats of Reprisals – Management threatened unspecified consequences if he continued engaging in protected conversations about work conditions.
Retaliatory Discharge – Management fired him because of his actual or perceived protected activity, including his discussions of pay and conditions.

The NLRB’s order required the company to:

Stop interfering with employees’ rights to discuss wages and workplace conditions.
Offer Press reinstatement within 14 days.
Make him whole for lost earnings and benefits.
Compensate him for any negative tax impact from a lump-sum backpay award.
Remove all references to his unlawful discharge from its files.
Post a notice informing employees of their rights and the company’s violations.

A federal appeals court granted enforcement of that order after reviewing the evidence and the legal standards in detail.

Timeline of Corporate Misconduct and Enforcement

Date / Period	Event	What Went Wrong
Summer 2021	Heatwave hits Phoenix; outdated HVAC system leads to a surge of work orders at the 194-unit complex.	Company had allowed infrastructure to deteriorate to the point that basic cooling and building systems could not handle predictable weather stress.
Pre-August 2021	Company advertises for “Apartment Maintenance Technician/General Laborer/Handyman.”	Staffing levels and skills had fallen behind the demands of a neglected property.
August 10, 2021	Press starts work; tells co-worker about backlog, his $25/hour pay, and $1,500 housing subsidy; describes cockroach infestations and constant leaks; reassures a tenant that the company will work on correcting the issue!	Worker begins linking his own labor to tenant conditions and exposing the gap between corporate promises and actual living conditions.
August 11, 2021	Co-workers complete work orders originally assigned to Press; one co-worker reports Press’s conversations about pay to management.	Management receives internal complaint framed around wage discussions, not building conditions, and starts treating pay transparency as misconduct.
Morning of August 12, 2021	Operations manager confronts Press by the mailboxes about how others know his pay.	Company shifts focus from fixing conditions to controlling information about compensation.
Later August 12, 2021	Closed-door meeting: management calls the situation a “crisis,” a “hornets’ nest,” and “damage control”; blames him for eroding “trust and confidentiality”; bans him from discussing pests with residents; says his work conditions are “nobody’s business but [his].”	Management issues a gag order on wages and health-related building conditions, turning a worker’s basic conversations into a disciplinary “crisis.”
August 13, 2021	Press works a full shift without incident; that evening, after close of business, management calls to fire him, claiming he failed to complete work orders.	Company uses work-performance as a post-hoc justification for a firing rooted in anger over protected conversations.
After August 2021	Press files a labor complaint over unfair labor practices.	Worker turns to public law because internal channels offer no protection.
February 21, 2024	Labor agency issues an order finding multiple violations and requiring reinstatement, back pay, and corrective measures.	Official decision confirms that management’s actions violated workers’ rights.
October 28, 2025	Federal appeals court enforces the order after rejecting the company’s constitutional and factual challenges.	Court confirms the violations and requires the company to comply with the remedies.

Regulatory Capture, Weak Oversight, and Neoliberal Housing

This case grew out of a familiar landscape: weakened housing standards, understaffed regulators, and corporate landlords operating under a model that rewards cost-cutting and short-term returns.

The record describes a large residential complex with an outdated HVAC system, a heavy backlog of work orders, and a known cockroach infestation and leaks from aging equipment.

The evil company only moved to hire a specialist when the heatwave and maintenance backlog created operational strain. This reactive posture fits a system where enforcement usually begins only after harm is obvious.

Across the economy, deregulation and budget cuts leave agencies with limited capacity to monitor every building or workplace. Corporations operate with wide discretion. Under neoliberal capitalism, managers learn that risk of enforcement is low and that it often arrives years after the underlying conduct. In this case, the events occurred in 2021. The order enforcing worker protections came in 2024, and the appellate decision arrived in 2025.

The delay benefits the company and leaves workers and residents exposed in the meantime.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs: “Return on Investment” Over Human Needs

In the hiring email, management described Press’s three-bedroom apartment as a “monthly $1500 investment from the company” and tied his housing and wage package to “increased [return on investment] over the course of the year.”

That language reveals a mindset:

Housing is framed as a financial instrument, not as shelter.
The worker is an “investment,” expected to generate measurable financial returns.
Performance is evaluated in terms of ROI, not community wellbeing.

Under this incentive structure, speaking openly about real conditions (which here is cockroaches, leaks, backlog, and the strain of under-resourced maintenance work) threatens the “investment” narrative. When Press told co-workers and a tenant about the dilapidated condition of the complex, management did not move to systematically repair the property, at least in the record presented. Instead, management focused on controlling information and treating his words as damage that required “hornets’ nest” level “damage control.”

This is how profit-maximization works in practice:

Costs are socialized onto workers and residents through overwork, unsafe conditions, and silence.
Returns are privatized through higher occupancy, lower maintenance spending, and strict control over narratives about the property.

Exploitation of Workers: Gag Orders and Retaliation Against Basic Speech

Federal labor law protects workers who talk with each other about wages and working conditions and who raise concerns that affect more than one worker. The appeals court agreed with the labor authority that Press’s conversations about his pay and the difficult conditions in the complex counted as protected activity.

The facts show a sharp pattern:

Press talked about his $25 hourly wage and housing subsidy with several co-workers, framing the job as a “challenge” worth taking because of that package.
He described the “poor condition” of the complex, “infestation of cockroaches,” and “constant leaks from aging equipment.”
Co-workers shared this information among themselves. One reported his wage discussions to management.
Management summoned him to a closed-door meeting, where the operations manager said his conversations had created a “crisis situation,” made her life “really tough,” and forced her into “damage control.”
She barred him from talking about pest issues with residents and told him his work conditions were nobody else’s business.
The next day, after he worked a full shift, management fired him by phone and claimed it was because he failed to complete work orders.

The labor authority and the court applied a standard test:

Did the worker engage in protected activity?
Yes. Talking about pay and shared conditions with co-workers qualifies.
Did management know and did that activity motivate the firing?
Evidence from the recorded meeting (like management’s repeated references to wages, housing, pests, and “crisis”) supported a finding that those conversations mattered in the decision.
Would the company have fired him anyway?
The company asserted a performance-based reason. But management never mentioned performance in the key meeting the day before the firing and offered only vague testimony about firing other new hires in similar ways. The court agreed with the labor authority that this evidence was weak and that the supposed performance reasons looked like pretext.

When a worker loses a job and housing tied to that job for simply talking about pay and conditions, it sends a clear message: keep quiet or risk your livelihood. That message undermines corporate social responsibility in the most concrete way: by punishing the people who try to make the workplace transparent.

Public Health and Living Conditions: Cockroaches, Leaks, and Silence

The record describes the complex’s “dilapidated condition,” including “infestation of cockroaches” and “constant leaks from aging equipment.”

One tenant told Press she had already been forced to move from a different unit in the complex because of cockroaches. Press assured her that the company would “work on correcting the issue.”

A landlord that disciplines and fires the maintenance worker who talks frankly about pests and infrastructure problems discourages workers from flagging health-related issues in the future. This chills information flow in a setting where informational transparency is essential for public health:

Maintenance staff are the first to see mold, leaks, and infestations.
Tenants rely on workers to take complaints seriously and push for repairs.
Workers rely on one another’s experiences to assess whether conditions are normal or unsafe.

By ordering Press to stop talking about pests with residents and framing those conversations as a betrayal of “trust and confidentiality,” management turned normal maintenance concerns into confidential corporate information.

In a system of neoliberal capitalism where housing is treated as an asset class, this dynamic is common:

Information that could trigger repairs or regulations becomes a reputational risk to be managed.
Public health problems inside buildings are treated as “sensitive” internal matters.

Community Impact: How a Single Firing Echoes Through a Complex

The case focuses on one worker and one building, but the consequences reach further.

Co-workers watched a colleague hired for his HVAC skills lose his job after just four days, immediately following management’s anger over his pay and pest discussions.
Tenants lost a worker who had acknowledged the poor conditions and promised to “work on correcting the issue.”
The workforce received a clear signal: management treats open talk about wages and conditions as a threat.

This chills collective action. When workers fear retaliation, they avoid raising concerns about heat, leaks, infestations, or understaffing, even when those problems affect entire communities.

Neoliberal housing policy often concentrates ownership in the hands of companies that manage large portfolios of units. Residents deal with corporate structures that feel distant and unaccountable. In that environment, the maintenance worker who speaks plainly becomes one of the few people who connects tenants’ reality to management’s decision-making. Firing that worker weakens one of the last informal checks on corporate behavior.

The PR Logic: Damage Control Over Corporate Ethics

In the recorded meeting, the operations manager described the fallout from Press’s conversations as:

“Just this red-hot issue”
A “crisis situation”
A “hornets’ nest”
A problem requiring “damage control”

These are the words of crisis communications, not human-centered management. The focus was on the internal shock of workers knowing what one colleague makes and hearing a frank account of conditions, rather than the underlying reality: a dilapidated complex in a heatwave with serious pest and leak problems.

Under corporate PR logic:

Wage transparency is treated as a threat to morale.
Honest descriptions of building conditions are treated as reputational risk.
Managers feel pressure to restore “confidentiality” and “trust,” which often means sealing off information and isolating the worker who spoke up.

Actual corporate ethics would prioritize fixing the conditions that workers and tenants describe. Ethical corporate governance would treat the maintenance staff’s reports as early warning signals. Instead, management framed transparency as betrayal.

Corporate Accountability Fails the Public

The labor agency’s order requires reinstatement, back pay, correction of records, and a posted notice.

The appeals court enforced these remedies. The decision restores some measure of justice for the individual worker.

Yet the structure of accountability remains narrow:

The order focuses on making the worker whole, not on broad, forward-looking reforms inside the company.
There is no discussion in the record of personal accountability for executives or managers who directed the unlawful conduct.
The remedies revolve around compliance (cease and desist from violations, inform workers of their rights) without reshaping the incentive system that produced those violations.

Under contemporary capitalism, this pattern is common:

Companies treat labor violations as a cost of doing business.
Remedies arrive years later, after workers have endured job loss and instability.
Structural power (ownership of hundreds of apartments, control over who gets housing and employment) remains in the same hands.

The case shows that legal enforcement can correct individual abuses but rarely transforms the underlying model that rewards aggressive control over workers and the suppression of inconvenient truths.

Legal Minimalism: The Performance Pretext and the Appearance of Compliance

When challenged, the company claimed it fired Press because he failed to complete work orders, and it suggested that it had discharged other new hires quickly when they did not perform.

The record shows key gaps in that explanation:

Management did not raise performance problems in the closed-door meeting the day before firing him.
That meeting centered on wages, housing benefits, pests, and the impact of his conversations on co-workers.
Testimony about firing other new hires was vague and thin. Only one witness supplied even a first name for another worker who was supposedly dismissed under similar conditions.

The appeals court agreed that this evidence supported the labor authority’s conclusion that the performance rationale was pretext.

This fits a broader pattern in late-stage capitalism:

Firms create paper rationales that appear compliant with employment law.
Managers frame retaliatory decisions as neutral judgments about performance or “fit.”
The law requires workers to prove that these justifications are pretext, which demands recordings, witnesses, and years of litigation.

The company’s performance-based story created a surface of legality. Under scrutiny, that story collapsed. The underlying conduct (anger at wage discussions and pest complaints) revealed how the system rewards employers who treat legal compliance as branding, while using their discretion to punish inconvenient speech.

How Capitalism Exploits Delay

The events inside this Phoenix complex unfolded in August 2021. The labor authority’s order arrived in February 2024. The appellate decision enforcing that order was filed in October 2025.

During those years:

The worker lived with the consequences of sudden job loss and the loss of housing tied to that job.
Co-workers and tenants received an uncorrected message that talking about pay and conditions carries high risk.
Management continued operating the building and could adjust staffing or messaging long before final judgment.

In a capitalist system that treats time as money, delay works like a financial tool:

Harm is immediate; accountability is deferred.
Companies can spread the cost of violations over years of appeals and challenges.

This case still ended with a clear enforcement order. Yet the time gap shows how even “successful” accountability can leave workers exposed for years while corporations continue to collect rent and manage properties.

This Is the System Working as Intended

The outcome of this case may look like a victory: the worker wins reinstatement and back pay, and the company faces a formal rebuke. But the underlying logic remains intact.

The system allows a landlord to:

Run a 194-unit complex with an outdated HVAC system and dilapidated conditions until a crisis moment.
Hire workers under a strict “return on investment” mindset.
Punish open conversations about wages and conditions.
Litigate for years before enforcement kicks in.

The labor agency and courts step in when the most obvious lines are crossed: interrogations, gag orders, threats, and retaliatory firings. They do not redesign the incentive structure that encourages landlords to treat workers and tenants as variables in a profit formula.

The case is not an accident in an otherwise fair system. It is a predictable outcome when corporate power, weak enforcement, and profit-maximization shape the way housing and labor are organized.

Conclusion: Corporate Accountability, Economic Fallout, and Wealth Disparity

The firing of one maintenance worker at a Phoenix apartment complex shows how deeply corporate greed can shape everyday life. A company framed housing and labor as an “investment” aimed at boosting return. When that worker used his voice to talk about pay and conditions that affected everyone, management tried to silence him and then removed him.

The legal process restored part of what he lost. It did not erase the message sent to other workers who saw what happened to him. It did not directly repair the conditions tenants endured in a dilapidated complex with pests and leaks.

Corporate accountability here took the form of reinstatement and back pay, not structural reform. Wealth and power remained concentrated with the owners and managers who set policy.

Workers and tenants continued to live in a system where speaking honestly about wages and conditions can still feel dangerous, even when the law formally protects them.

Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?

This was a serious case.

The federal labor authority held a full evidentiary hearing.
It found multiple violations, including interrogation, gag orders, threats, and retaliatory discharge.
A federal appeals court examined the record and the legal standards and granted enforcement of the order.

The harms were real: job loss, loss of housing benefit, silencing of wage and condition discussions.

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD V. NORTH MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS APARTMENTS, LLC, No. 24-2223 (9th Cir. 2025)Download

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NOTE:

This website is facing massive amounts of headwind trying to procure the lawsuits relating to corporate misconduct. We are being pimp-slapped by a quadruple whammy:

The Trump regime's reversal of the laws & regulations meant to protect us is making it so victims are no longer filing lawsuits for shit which was previously illegal.
Donald Trump's defunding of regulatory agencies led to the frequency of enforcement actions severely decreasing. What's more, the quality of the enforcement actions has also plummeted.
The GOP's insistence on cutting the healthcare funding for millions of Americans in order to give their billionaire donors additional tax cuts has recently shut the government down. This government shut down has also impacted the aforementioned defunded agencies capabilities to crack down on evil-doers. Donald Trump has since threatened to make these agency shutdowns permanent on account of them being "democrat agencies".
My access to the LexisNexis legal research platform got revoked. This isn't related to Trump or anything, but it still hurt as I'm being forced to scrounge around public sources to find legal documents now. Sadge.

All four of these factors are severely limiting my ability to access stories of corporate misconduct.

Due to this, I have temporarily decreased the amount of articles published everyday from 5 down to 3, and I will also be publishing articles from previous years as I was fortunate enough to download a butt load of EPA documents back in 2022 and 2023 to make YouTube videos with.... This also means that you'll be seeing many more environmental violation stories going forward :3

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Aleeia (owner and publisher of www.evilcorporations.com)

Also, can we talk about how ICE has a $170 billion annual budget, while the EPA-- which protects the air we breathe and water we drink-- barely clocks $4 billion? Just something to think about....