Lowe’s has agreed to pay more than $14,000 in lost wages to a Louisiana worker who said he was fired in retaliation for trying to start a union.

The payment to Felix Allen was part of a settlement agreement between the big-box retailer and the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces union rights. The NLRB’s prosecutor had accused Lowe’s of illegally surveilling pro-union employees, preventing them from passing out union literature and terminating Allen for his union activity.

Allen, 28, was fired in June 2023 for what he claims were selectively enforced safety violations. Months earlier, he had been gathering signatures to hold a union election in hopes of creating the chain’s very first unionized store.

In an interview, Allen said he had considered fighting for reinstatement but decided it would take too long. Such cases often get bogged down for years on appeal as employers fight the charges, and Allen had filed the case as an individual without an attorney representing him.

“I understand the limitations of what we’re working with at the NLRB. I was surprised anything got done at all, particularly with this rolling into the Trump presidency,” he said. “It would have been nice to have the possibility to get reinstated, but I know that would have taken a year or two, if [it happened] at all.”

The settlement was reached in late May, but Allen waited to disclose it publicly until the check from Lowe’s cleared. As part of the deal, Lowe’s also agreed to inform workers at the store in writing about their collective bargaining rights under the law, and assure the company wouldn’t violate them.

“I’m glad to have it wrapped up,” said Allen, who built store displays for Lowe’s and worked for the company for two-and-a-half years.

Lowe’s did not respond to requests for comment on the settlement. The chain has roughly 1,700 stores across the U.S., none of which are unionized.

The union push by Allen and his co-workers was one of a handful of independent organizing efforts that took root at Lowe’s and Home Depot stores in 2022, as HuffPost reported at the time.

The campaigns were driven in large part by the chains’ lean staffing practices. Customers often have a hard time tracking down employees as they search for products or advice, leaving the workers to deal with frustrated shoppers.

Union supporters at a Home Depot in Philadelphia gained enough signatures to hold an election at their store, but ultimately lost 165-51.

Allen and his co-workers said they had rounded up signed union cards from around 40% of the workforce at their New Orleans store — more than enough to trigger an election — but were later forced to withdraw their petition. Because it was an independent effort, they had neglected to include a union name on their cards. Allen called it “an extreme technical error.”

At the time, Allen told HuffPost that Lowe’s “flooded” the store with supervisors from other locations and corporate headquarters once the union effort became known. “Clearly, if they can bring in that many people on short notice, they have plenty of money to adequately staff our store,” he said then.

Allen said in affidavits submitted to the NLRB that he had never faced disciplinary action from Lowe’s until after he became the known leader of a union campaign.

His first infraction came when he climbed onto a merchandise shelf to hang a display, something he claims he did previously without issue. His second came when he was told to get on a forklift and move a pallet. It turned out the forklift he drove was tagged as out of service, although the key was still in the ignition. He says he was told the following week that his forklift license was being suspended and, later, that he was fired.

“I think the turning point was after I filed the petition,” he said in one affidavit.

Allen said since losing his Lowe’s job he’s been doing the work that brought him to New Orleans in the first place: drumming in the city’s jazz clubs. He’s gotten enough work that he says he was able to share some of his Lowe’s settlement with old co-workers. He heard from a few after they received the letters from Lowe’s detailing their rights under the law, he said.

Although the store isn’t unionized, he still thinks the effort was worthwhile.

“No regrets at all,” he said.