An administrative law judge has ruled against North Memorial Health Care for disrupting union activities around the time of a June 2014 demonstration and firing a worker who clashed with a hospital official over placing a flier on a bulletin board.

Ruling on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board, the judge ordered North Memorial to allow union officials to freely talk and interact in public places of the hospital with their members, and to hire back the fired employee to an equivalent job with back pay.

"We are pleased that the board has vindicated our rights to represent our union," said Joe McMahon, a labor-relations specialist with the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA), in a statement released Friday.

Melvin Anderson was fired June 27, 2014, under the pretense of his attendance record, but he also had argued with a hospital official over a flier he posted in the department where he worked.

The ruling also found that a North Memorial human resources executive erred on June 23, 2014, the day before a scheduled demonstration, when confronting two union organizers who were talking with members in a public space in the hospital and calling security to escort them out.

Hospital officials also erred on the day of the demonstration, conducted by MNA and SEIU Healthcare, when they told off-duty workers and union officials that they couldn't wear union T-shirts inside publicly accessible spaces in the hospital, the ruling stated.

Union officials had asked that North Memorial read aloud to workers their violations of labor practices. However, the judge said the hospital didn't have the kind of history of violations that would merit such a step.

A call to North Memorial for comment was not immediately returned Friday.

Jeremy Olson • 612-673-7744