Aegis Fires Two Workers for Sharing Stranger Article, Union and Employees Say

Imagine getting fired for sharing an article with your co-workers. Not porn, not political commentary, not raunchy jokes. A news article, just like this one. According to two employees at Aegis Living, it just happened in King County twice.

Jason Bova-Havers says that on their day off on May 27th, a former co-worker sent him something to read: a story published last month in The Stranger titled,  “What’s Behind the Gilded Doors of Aegis Living?” The article contained allegations against the senior living chain Aegis Living from employees, former employees, and families of residents, ranging from shady business practices to illegal anti-union actions, discrimination, elder neglect, and more.

Bova-Havers had worked for Aegis for the past five years, so naturally they were curious. They told The Stranger that they weren’t all that surprised about what was reported in the article, but still felt like it was worth passing along. Maybe this is something my boss should see, they remember thinking, and dropped a link to the story in a group chat he had going with a co-worker and his immediate boss.

Two days later, during their shift as a line cook at Aegis Living Shoreline, Bova-Havers was called into the General Manager’s office, their boss’ boss. “You’re going to want to sit down,” Bova-Havers says a Human Resources rep told them. “You recently sent a text message to your coworkers that was seen as ‘below board.’ So we’re letting you go.”

That was it.

Will Hudson read that same article, also passed to him by a friend. It was about the company he’d worked for the past two and a half years, first as care staff then recently as a member of the maintenance team at Aegis Living Madison. While he was at work the next day he printed the article off in the employee break room so his co-workers could read it, too. “I just wanted to inform them, see what their opinions and takes around it were,” Hudson says. Then he went back to work. “Didn’t think nothing of it.”

When Hudson came into work on June 9th, he was called into his boss’s office and questioned. He says they’d interviewed a couple of his co-workers already before he was called in to his boss’s office. “Are you the one who printed off this paper?” he says he was asked.

“Yes,” Hudson says he replied.

“We don’t allow that here. We have to let you go,” he says he was told.

Aegis did not respond to The Stranger’s request for comment about the two fired workers. They also did not respond to repeated requests for comment over months of reporting for the original article, and in the month since publication has not issued any public statement refuting the article’s wide-ranging allegations.

Since these firings, SEIU 775 has filed Unfair Labor Practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Aegis Living, alleging the company “unlawfully terminated” the two workers for “concerted, protected activities” covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

The complaint states “due to the egregious and hallmark nature of this violation” the union is seeking injunctive relief that would allow these workers to be reinstated with back pay. Even though Bova-Havers and Hudson weren’t members of the union, SEIU sees their firings as an attempt by Aegis to cool pro-union activity. “We’re going to push as hard as we can to get them to take action on these complaints,” says Adam Glickman, the Secretary Treasurer of SEIU 775.

He sees this as a first-amendment fight, made even more important in the current political climate.

“It’s just outrageous that in the middle of a workforce crisis where long-term care facilities are struggling to hire caregivers, particularly this company Aegis that pays less than most other employers, that they would fire workers for sharing newspaper articles,” Glickman says. “It seems like a slap in the face to their residents that they care so little about their care that they would fire workers for such an absurd reason. They’re so afraid, so anti-union, so afraid of their workers organizing, that they would endanger the care of their residents by firing people for sharing a news article. It’s just shocking.”

But no matter how it happened, Bova-Havers and Hudson are out of their jobs.

Luckily, both Bova-Havers and Hudson have been able to find work since. Bova-Havers is happy at his new full-time job as a pastry chef, which was his original job at Aegis. “I do miss my crew in the kitchen,” he says. “I worry about them. I hope they get better pay and protections. Or, hell, just jobs that appreciate them.”

Will has found some work dog sitting and dog walking, but he’s still looking for something long-term. And he’s still upset about what happened.

“After being fired, I was devastated,” Will says. “The residents that’d see me every day, now I don’t get to see them anymore. All because Aegis doesn’t want people to know the truth: that Aegis is corrupt.”

Have a tip about Aegis Living? Reach out at editor@thestranger.com.