An employee of MOM’s Organic Market at the Hollywood Shopping Center has asked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to throw out the result of a Jan. 13 ballot that failed to stop the local union from collecting mandatory dues and allowing the store to fire those who refuse.
In a Jan. 27 filing, employee Nora Ricse alleged that a union official tried to intimidate her co-worker, J-quan Tingling, into joining United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 by cornering him in a store bathroom while he was cleaning it.
In a separate complaint on Jan. 23, Tingling said the official claimed he would not be allowed to keep his job if he refused to sign a union membership and dues checkoff card on the spot.
Ricse has asked the NLRB to rerun the election, noting in her brief that the alleged conduct of the union official compromised the integrity of the Jan. 13 election, which resulted in 19 votes to eliminate mandatory dues and four to keep them.
The measure failed, however, because federal law says a majority of all union-eligible employees—in this case, 21 out of 40—would have had to vote to do away with mandatory dues.
“There is a possibility that other employees” acted on the belief that union officials could carry out their threats, Ricse said in a press release from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which represents her in the case.
The two challenges headline the latest chapter in a three-year saga that started with employee claims against MOM’s, which employs approximately 40 non-management staffers, of low wages, understaffing and a lack of safety training.
In December 2022, employees voted 17-4 to unionize.
Two weeks later, MOM’s, a chain with 20-plus locations at that time, announced raises for all of its employees except those working in College Park. A union complaint to the NLRB resulted in a formal settlement that required MOM’s to pay $17,302.67 in back pay to 74 current and former employees.
Still, in October 2023, MOM’s employees and community supporters picketed the College Park store and accused MOM’s management of firing at least one union organizer and limiting employees’ paid time off, sick leave, pay raises and safety training.
Yet by November 2024, negotiations between the store and the union had not yielded the first contract, and employees had not received the pay raises or benefits they apparently expected when they formed the union.
A group of frustrated employees, backed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, successfully petitioned for a decertification vote in an effort to get rid of the union.
Those employees lost; the decertification tally was 22-9 in favor of keeping the union. At that time, union supporters said they believed contract negotiations were near the finish line. They also expressed satisfaction with the union’s role in winning back pay for the College Park employees.
That payment was made in February 2025.
In late 2025, after three years of bargaining, employees rejected the contract offered by the store.
The union ratified it anyway, calling it the “last, best and final offer” from MOM’s and indicating that without an employee strike, the store was not going to offer anything better.
The contract included a clause requiring employees to pay union dues—$10 a month for full-timers and $8 for part-time workers. That led to the January 2026 deauthorization vote, which would have scrapped mandatory dues and forbidden the store from firing employees who did not pay them.
That is the measure that failed before Tingling and Ricse filed their claims.
The NLRB has not ruled on those claims.
A spokesman for the union did not respond to requests for comment for this article.