A former Apple employee has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming it failed to meet its obligations in New York by paying its employees every other week instead of weekly.
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The attempted class action lawsuit, filed April 4 by plaintiff Raven Ramos on behalf of all Apple employees in New York state “who are engaged in or have been engaged in manual labor during the course of their employment,” alleges that Apple has and continues to violate labor laws.
Under New York law, manual workers must be paid on a weekly basis unless there is express authorization from the Labor Commissioner of the New York Department of Labor that allows payment on a semi-annual basis.
It is believed that Apple did not obtain this authorization for its store staff and that it paid salaries every other week instead of weekly. The lawsuit suggests that its store staff should be covered by the law and therefore Apple was violating it.
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The lawsuit estimates that about 25 percent of Ramos' job responsibilities could be classified as manual labor. These tasks included "sales-level work, unpacking products, emptying cash registers and assisting customers.".
Ramos, who lives in Port Chester, worked at Apple from October 2010 to January 2018 at Apple Store . During that time, Apple paid wages only every other week, rather than weekly, like almost every other retailer in the United States.
It is said that Ramos suffered losses from the inability to pay weekly wages because he was “temporarily deprived of the money he was owed” and that he “lost the time value of that money.”.
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The lawsuit claims to cover at least 100 members, with the total claims of individual class members “in excess of” $5 million.
As for what the lawsuit will seek to recover from Apple, it is “the amount of untimely wages paid as damages,” as well as reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, and pre- and post-judgment interest. A numerical value for this alleged loss was not offered in the filing, but it is likely expected to be over $5 million.
