Four Days, Four Violations

Carrie Matteson and Michael Gareau own North Mountain Foothills Apartments, a 194-unit complex in Phoenix. During the summer of 2021, Phoenix baked through a heatwave. The complex’s aging HVAC system couldn’t keep up, and work orders piled up.

To handle the overload, Matteson posted an opening for a maintenance technician. Jasper Press applied. Matteson was impressed enough to offer him $25/hour plus a free three-bedroom apartment in the complex valued at $1,500/month. Press started August 10, 2021.

On his very first day, Press mentioned his pay and housing benefit to coworkers Jose Diaz and Cassidy while on work orders together. He also discussed the state of the building: cockroach infestations, constant leaks, aging equipment. He told Diaz the work was worth it because of his compensation. He said the same thing to Cassidy.

Word Travels Fast When the Building Has Cockroaches

Press also mentioned his compensation to coworkers Scott and Cosgrove. Cosgrove passed the information to Mims. Mims then reported it to property manager Noemi Soto. According to court documents, Mims personally believed Press “should not have been discussing his compensation with others,” despite the company having no written policy prohibiting wage discussions.

By August 12, Press’s third day, Matteson approached him by the mailboxes looking visibly upset, speaking faster than normal, her voice pitched higher. She demanded to know how other workers found out what he was earning. Press lied and said he didn’t know.

That same morning, Matteson called a closed-door meeting. Press secretly recorded it. The recording became the centerpiece of the entire federal case.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What You Can’t Put a Number On

Jasper Press showed up to his first day of work willing to take on a building that was, by his own description, in “dilapidated condition.” Cockroaches. Constant leaks. An HVAC system that couldn’t handle a Phoenix summer. He told his coworkers the work was worth it because of what he was being paid. That was it. That was the totality of the offense.

What happened next is what power looks like without accountability. Within 72 hours, his employer had interrogated him about private conversations, called his openness with coworkers a “crisis,” labeled his wage discussions a “red-hot issue,” and compared the situation to a “hornets’ nest” requiring “damage control.” Every one of those phrases came from the mouth of the person who had the power to end his employment — and eventually did. The word “crisis” was not about broken AC units or cockroach-infested apartments. It was about a worker who told another worker what he made.

The cruelest detail is the pretext. Press was not told on August 12 — during the meeting where his boss expressed open fury about his wage discussions — that his job was in danger over his work performance. That conversation focused entirely on compensation and building conditions. Then, the very next day, Press worked a full shift without incident. And then, after close of business, the phone rang. He was fired. The reason given: he hadn’t completed his work orders. The court found that explanation to be, in legal terms, unsupported by substantial evidence. In plain terms: it was a cover story.

Press was also told, explicitly, to stop discussing pest control problems with residents. Think about what that directive means in a building where tenants had already been displaced by cockroach infestations. A maintenance worker, by definition, is someone tenants trust with the state of their homes. Matteson ordered Press to stay silent about that state. The residents of North Mountain Foothills didn’t just lose a maintenance worker when Press was fired. They lost the one person on staff who was willing to acknowledge, out loud, that the building was in poor condition and that it needed to be fixed.

The deeper betrayal is systemic. Press was a new hire, still learning the layout of the complex, still building trust with his coworkers. He had no union. He had no shop steward. He had no one to call. The only protection he had was a federal law he may not have even known existed. When Matteson sat across from him in that closed-door meeting and told him his discussions had “not built camaraderie at all,” she was using the language of team spirit to punish him for exercising a right that has been federal law since 1935. The weaponization of workplace culture against legal rights is the oldest trick in the landlord-employer playbook.

Legal Receipts: The Quotes That Sealed the Case

What Matteson Said in the Room

“Over the course of the conversation, she stated that this was making her ‘life really tough,’ that it had become ‘just this red-hot issue,’ that Press had created a ‘crisis situation,’ that she now had a ‘hornets’ nest to deal with,’ and that she had to ‘figure out damage control on [her] end.'”

— Ninth Circuit Opinion, quoting from the secretly recorded meeting of August 12, 2021

“When Press stated that he was ‘very sorry that everybody [knew] how much [he was] being paid,’ Matteson responded, ‘So am I.'”

— Ninth Circuit Opinion, quoting verbatim from the recording

“Matteson then forbade Press from discussing pest control issues with residents and stated that ‘[his] work conditions [were] nobody’s business but [his] except for that now everyone [was] aware of them.'”

— Ninth Circuit Opinion, describing directives issued during the meeting

“Matteson told Press that his discussions with the other workers about his compensation had ‘not built camaraderie at all,’ and Soto emphasized that these discussions had ‘backfired, really bad.'”

— Ninth Circuit Opinion, on the closing minutes of the August 12 meeting

“Neither Matteson nor Soto raised the issue of Press’s work performance during their closed-door meeting with him the day before he was discharged. Instead, Matteson and Soto repeatedly referenced and expressed frustration about Press’s compensation-related discussions with the other workers.”

— Ninth Circuit Opinion, on the pretextual nature of the stated reason for firing

The Court’s Takedown of the Company’s Defense

“NMFA’s claim that it has discharged other new hires under similar conditions is based on vague and conclusory testimony by Gareau, Mims, and Scott, only one of whom, Mims, provided the name (and only the first name) of a new hire who had been so discharged.”

— Ninth Circuit Opinion, rejecting NMFA’s affirmative defense

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: Residents Were Living in This

The cockroaches at North Mountain Foothills weren’t a punchline. A tenant had already been displaced from one unit in the complex because of the infestation before Press even started working. That detail is buried in the court record as a minor background fact. For the tenant who had to move twice in the same building, it was anything but minor.

Press observed and reported “constant leaks from aging equipment” and a building in “dilapidated condition” on his first day of work. These weren’t aesthetic complaints. Persistent water leaks in apartment buildings breed mold, which is a documented respiratory hazard, especially for children, the elderly, and anyone with asthma or compromised immunity. An HVAC system too outdated to handle a Phoenix summer means residents at risk of heat-related illness in one of the hottest cities in America.

When Matteson ordered Press to stop discussing pest control issues with residents, she cut off a channel of information that tenants needed to protect their own health and safety. Residents of a 194-unit complex, most of whom are renters without the legal or financial leverage of a homeowner, rely on maintenance workers as their primary point of contact for building problems. Silencing that contact does not make the cockroaches go away. It just means residents stop hearing about them officially.

Economic Inequality: The Wage Secrecy Machine

Matteson’s response to Press discussing his wages was not embarrassment or discomfort. It was panic. She called it a “crisis.” She called it a “hornets’ nest.” She assigned it the language of emergency management. That reaction reveals exactly what wage secrecy is worth to an employer: it is worth firing someone over.

When workers don’t know what their coworkers make, employers hold all the leverage in any individual pay negotiation. The moment workers share wage information, that leverage evaporates. Matteson’s “hornets’ nest” was other workers potentially realizing they were underpaid relative to Press or relative to what the job actually demanded, especially during a crisis of backlogged work orders in a Phoenix summer. The “damage control” she referenced wasn’t about reputation. It was about compensation expectations.

The NLRB has held since at least 1979 — documented in the court’s citation to Triana Industries — that the right to discuss wages is protected under federal law precisely because “wages are a vital term and condition of employment.” Despite that, North Mountain Foothills had created an informal culture of wage silence enforced by peer surveillance. Mims didn’t report Press’s wage discussions to management because there was a written policy against it. He reported it because the culture of the workplace had trained him to view it as reportable behavior. That kind of invisible enforcement is harder to prosecute and harder to fight than any written rule.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now: Who’s Watching and What You Can Do

Corporate Roles Named in the Record

• Carrie Matteson — Operations Manager, North Mountain Foothills Apartments; co-owner with Michael Gareau; personally conducted the illegal interrogation and issued the illegal gag directive.
• Michael Gareau — Co-owner, North Mountain Foothills Apartments; provided vague and conclusory testimony the court found insufficient to support the company’s defense.
• Noemi Soto — Property Manager; present during the closed-door meeting; personally delivered the termination call to Press.

The Watchlist: Who Has Jurisdiction Over Landlords Like This

• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): The federal agency that brought this case and won. File a complaint at nlrb.gov if your employer retaliates against you for discussing wages. This is a federal right. It is free to file.
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): Persistent leaks, mold risk, and inadequate HVAC in residential buildings with maintenance staff implicate worker safety regulations. Maintenance workers have OSHA rights too.
• Arizona Department of Housing / Local Code Enforcement: Cockroach infestations severe enough to displace tenants and “dilapidated conditions” as documented in the court record are reportable to local housing authorities. Tenants in Phoenix can contact the City of Phoenix Housing Department.
• Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Consumer Protection Division: Tenants subjected to uninhabitable conditions in a managed apartment complex have consumer protection options at the state level.

What Grassroots Resistance Actually Looks Like Here

Jasper Press did the thing that changes workplaces: he talked. He told a coworker what he made, and that conversation rippled through an entire maintenance team. The company’s panicked response confirms that wage transparency works. You do not need a union card to start that conversation — but you do need one to protect yourself after you have it. If you rent from a large apartment complex, look up your state’s tenant organizing rights. Tenant unions in Arizona have won habitability protections, rent freezes, and maintenance accountability through collective action. If you work maintenance, janitorial, or similar trades for a property management company, connect with your local AFL-CIO chapter — the federation filed as a friend of the court in this very case. Mutual aid starts with telling someone what you make.