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🗞️ A Florida Stone Company Fired a Worker for Talking to a Union. A Federal Judge Says That Was Illegal.

A federal labor judge ruled that RJ Staab Stone Company illegally fired, shorted, and delayed wages for an employee who raised pay complaints and helped organize a union, ordering reinstatement and full back pay.

onthelaborfront

onthelaborfront

— 4 min read
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🗞️ A Florida Stone Company Fired a Worker for Talking to a Union. A Federal Judge Says That Was Illegal.

Ronald Hemenway was earning $17 an hour cutting and installing decorative stone at a small family-run shop in Newberry, Fla., when he started noticing that his paychecks did not add up. So did his colleagues. By early January 2024, workers at RJ Staab Stone Company were openly grumbling that the company was shorting their hours, and Hemenway had begun doing something about it.

He intervened when the owner tried to fire a co-worker who complained about missing pay. He helped arrange a meeting with organizers from the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, Local 8 Southeast, and ultimately secured signed union authorization cards from all of his colleagues, personally delivering a card to the one employee who had not attended the organizing meeting. Then, on January 26, 2024, after texting the owner, Ronald Staab, that he planned to file a formal wage complaint with the Florida Department of Labor, Hemenway got his answer. Staab replied by text: "My choice is you're fired."

On April 21, 2026, Administrative Law Judge Kimberly Sorg-Graves ruled that the firing was illegal, as were two additional steps the company took against Hemenway after the fact. His final paycheck arrived late, and his hourly rate for his last pay period had been quietly cut from $17 to $12, the Florida minimum wage, without any advance notice. Diana Staab, who handled the company's human resources, testified that she had called a government labor office and been told she could make the reduction. Judge Sorg-Graves was not persuaded.

The case turned on the Wright Line framework, the National Labor Relations Board's established test for cases where an employer's motivation is in dispute. Under that standard, the government must show that a worker engaged in federally protected activity, that the employer knew about it, and that the employer's hostility toward that activity was a motivating factor in the adverse action taken. Once the government meets that threshold, the burden shifts to the employer to demonstrate it would have acted the same way regardless. The Staabs could not make that showing.

The credibility contest was lopsided. Judge Sorg-Graves found the Staabs' testimony vague and internally inconsistent, frequently consisting of broad claims without supporting detail. Mrs. Staab asserted Hemenway had been insubordinate but could not describe a single specific incident. The company also defied a subpoena, producing only the documents it believed would help its case while citing limited resources for the rest, even after Ronald Staab acknowledged on the stand that complying with most requests would have taken little time. Meanwhile, Hemenway and union representative Robert Barker gave specific, consistent, and mutually corroborating accounts. At one point, Ronald Staab appeared to begin telling the court that his office assistant had flagged the union activity, then caught himself and reversed course. The judge noted the slip.

The remedy is substantial for a company of this size. The order requires RJ Staab Stone to offer Hemenway his job back, pay him full back wages with daily compounded interest, cover any other foreseeable financial losses tied to the discharge, compensate him for any tax consequences of receiving a lump-sum back pay award, and clear his personnel file of any reference to the unlawful actions. A notice of employees' rights must be posted at the facility for 60 consecutive days.

The ruling lands as the NLRB navigates a turbulent stretch of its own. President Trump fired the agency's general counsel and a board member in January 2025, leaving it without the quorum needed to decide cases for most of the year. The Senate confirmed two Republican-appointed board members and a new general counsel in December 2025, restoring normal operations. The new leadership is expected to pursue a more employer-friendly enforcement agenda, though the core legal precedents at issue in this case, including the Wright Line standard, remain in effect and would require three board votes to overturn.

Key Points

  • Hemenway was fired on January 26, 2024, immediately after texting that he would contact the Florida Department of Labor over unpaid wages, an act the judge found to be federally protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act.
  • The company separately delayed his final paycheck and cut his hourly rate from $17 to $12 without prior notice, actions the judge also found retaliatory.
  • Four of five Staab Stone employees attended the union organizing meeting on January 13, 2024; all five ultimately signed authorization cards. The four who attended wore union T-shirts to work two days later.
  • The judge found the Staabs' insubordination defense unsupported by any specific facts, and their credibility was undercut by inconsistent testimony and near-total non-compliance with a document subpoena.
  • Under the Wright Line framework, once the government established a prima facie case of retaliation, the burden shifted to the employer to prove it would have fired Hemenway anyway. It could not.
  • Discussing wages with co-workers and stating an intent to contact the Department of Labor over unpaid wages are both protected under federal labor law, the latter recognized by the NLRB as a natural extension of collective workplace advocacy.
  • The remedy draws on the NLRB's Thryv, Inc. (2022) standard, which expanded make-whole relief to cover direct and foreseeable financial harms beyond lost wages, including job-search costs.
  • The NLRB is now operating under a Republican-majority board confirmed in late 2025; enforcement priorities are shifting, but established precedent remains binding absent a formal board vote to reverse it.

Primary Source Author: Kimberly R. Sorg-Graves, U.S. Administrative Law Judge

Primary Source: RJ Staab Stone Company of Florida, LLC and International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, Local 8 Southeast, AFL-CIO, Case 12-CA-334616, JD-22-26 (Apr. 21, 2026)

Primary Source Link: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/12-CA-334616

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