Saturday, March 22, 2014

McDonald’s Wage Theft Lawsuits Settlement is worth $500,000

New York State McDonald’s have agreed to pay $500,000 to more than 1,600 current and former employees who claimed that their paychecks were shorted while they were subject to practices that violated state labor laws.

McDonald’s - everyone around the world love to visit this fast food restaurant to enjoy snacks. But recently, fast food workers of New York McDonald’s have filed wage theft lawsuits against their restaurants and franchise owner, Richard Cisneros. They claimed that their paychecks were shorted while they were subject to practices that violated state labor laws. The lawsuits settlement is already on the side of fast food workers because the state attorney found that cashiers and other workers at the Manhattan restaurants were working off-the-clock before and after their shifts, but not received an extra allowance for time and expense regarding cleaning uniform they had to wear. In addition, they did not get an extra hour of minimum-wage pay after shifts, in which they worked for 10 consecutive hours.

McDonald's New York restaurant

As a result of that, seven New York City McDonald's franchisees have agreed to pay approximately $500,000 to workers who worked “off the clock” and were subject to other practices that dishonored state labor laws. The money will be given to over 1600 current and former McDonald's employees. Just few days before, the New York State won a $1.3 million settlement for workers at Domino’s in New York City for similar wage theft tactics.

However, McDonald’s have to pay huge amount of wage theft beyond New York, because workers have brought seven class action lawsuits against the corporate entity as well as some franchisees in three states. They claimed that they were low paid when the company forced them to work off the clock, also didn’t pay them for overtime and uniform cleaning as well as erased hours from their timecards, and denied them breaks for meals and rest.

Meanwhile, the state attorney also found that Michigan’s McDonald’s and two Detroit-area franchisees only pay their employees for the hours during which there are customers in the store. Now, McDonald’s corporation will change its franchisee agreements to create mechanism to punish those who don’t follow the law. With this lawsuits settlement, every affected worker will get payment for their working hours that were not counted as overtime.

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