In Thompson v. Corizon Health, Inc., et al, 18 Civ. 7139, 2021 WL 105767 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 12, 2021), the court, inter alia, held that plaintiff’s claim for unpaid wages, under the New York Labor Law, survived summary judgment.
From the decision:
The New York Labor Law permits recovery against an employer for unpaid wages and overtime. See, e.g., Maria v. Rouge Tomate Chelsea LLC, No. 18 Civ. 9826, 2020 WL 6049893, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 14, 2020). Defendant mandates a thirty-minute lunch break and deducts 0.5 hours automatically from employees’ time records as uncompensated lunch time. Plaintiffs Thompson and Unneland claim that while they were employed by Defendant, they worked through their lunch breaks but were not paid for their additional 2.5 hours of work per week. Unneland claims she worked an additional four hours per week, for which she was not paid overtime. To prevail on their wage-and-hours claims, Plaintiffs must show that Defendant had “actual or constructive knowledge that [they were] performing uncompensated work.” Kuebal v. Black & Decker Inc., 643 F.3d 352, 365 (2d Cir. 2011) (analyzing NYLL claim under the same standards as a Fair Labor Standards Act claim). Thompson and Unneland do not dispute their testimony showing that they did not formally report their unpaid work to Defendant or their union, but note their testimony that they told supervisors they were working through lunch, and that their supervisors saw them working off the clock. Construing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs as the non-movants, a reasonable jury could conclude that Defendant was aware of this unpaid work.