Uptown Dry Cleaners Stiffed Workers Out Of Overtime, Lawsuit Says

HARLEM-WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — A worker who toiled at two Upper Manhattan dry cleaners for nearly 72 hours per week without being paid overtime is taking his former employers to court, according to a lawsuit filed this month.

James Yi is accusing the cleaners on Broadway and West 151st and West 157th streets for violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and state labor laws for depriving him of overtime pay despite regularly working more than 10-hour days from Nov. 2018 until Sept. 2019, according to the lawsuit. Duties completed by Yi included greeting customers, answering phones, processing payments and sorting, tagging and packaging clothing.

The worker's shift would begin around 6:30 a.m. and wouldn't end until 6:30 or 7 p.m., according to the lawsuit. Despite working an estimated 72 hours per week, Yi was paid a wage of $1,000 in cash at the end of each week. Employers are required to pay workers at a rate of one-and-a-half times the regular rate if workload exceeds 40 hours per week, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit states that the owners and managers of the two dyr cleaners "willfully violated" federal laws by dictating Yi's rate of pay and refusing to honor the proper overtime rate. The worker said that managers said that his hours were non-negotiable and "an expressed condition of his continued employment," according to the lawsuit.

Lawyers for the worker are asking judges to grant a judgement that would pay their client his deserved overtime payments, damages equal to the "amount of unpaid overtime compensation due" and any costs associated with the legal action such as attorneys fees.

Read the full lawsuit below: