Plaintiffs John Reilly, Patrick Derosa, Sean O’Brien, Adolfo Redillo, and Aloko Khan have filed a complaint against The City of New York and The New York City Police Department’s Building Maintenance Section (BMS). The plaintiffs bring this action on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated trade employees for damages and equitable relief based on BMS’s systemic and continuous violations of the overtime provisions on the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The FLSA mandates that employers pay employees who work overtime – that is, over forty (40) hours in a workweek – at least “one and one-half times” their “regular rate” of pay, yet the defendants failed to do so.
The New York City Police Department’s Building Maintenance Section provides maintenance related services in over two hundred facilities occupied by the NYPD including 77 precincts, 12 transit districts, 9 housing police service areas, and administrative, training and storage facilities. BMS employs approximately one hundred trade employees including to work as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, laborers and metal, mason and maintenance workers. Plaintiffs were assigned work vehicles, which were essential to servicing numerous NYPD facilities located throughout the City of New York. BMS maintained its work vehicles in various designated NYPD storage facilities. However, they failed to pay Plaintiffs for all their work time, including but not limited to time spent retrieving, storing, and driving work vehicles between NYPD storage facilities and worksites before the start and after the end of their scheduled shifts.
BMS also engaged in an unlawful time-shaving scheme wherein they automatically deducted meal break time from each of the Plaintiffs’ daily and weekly hours — despite Plaintiffs actually working through one to two meal break periods per week to complete assignments. The pre-shift, post-shift and meal period work caused the plaintiffs to frequently work in excess of forty (40) hours per week without any overtime compensation. On average, the plaintiffs who were scheduled to work thirty-five (35) hours per week were not compensated for between two (2) and five-and-a-half (5.5) hours of overtime each week. The plaintiffs who were scheduled to work forty (40) hours per week were not compensated for between seven (7) and ten-and-a-half (10.5) hours of overtime each week.
To avoid detection, the defendants systemically shaved hours each week from the plaintiffs’ time records. BMS also directed the plaintiffs to submit false time entries which were inconsistent with the actual overtime hours they worked. Additionally, BMS directed the plaintiffs not to punch in or out from NYPD storage facilities to avoid documenting the overtime hours they worked.
District Judge Arun Subramanian Grants Plaintiffs’ Motion for Conditional Certification
On August 7, 2024, District Judge Arun Subramanian of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered an Order granting the Plaintiffs’ motion to conditionally certify this lawsuit as a “collective action” under federal law. A “collective action” is a lawsuit where multiple Plaintiffs join together to assert their rights to receive their unpaid wages when they are “similarly situated,” meaning when they suffered the same harms as the named Plaintiffs in the lawsuit. This Order permits Joseph & Norinsberg to send a Court-approved Notice of this lawsuit to all current and former members of the NYPD’s Building Maintenance Section who may be similarly situated to the 70+ Plaintiffs who have already joined the case. The Court Authorized Notice provides a clear explanation of the nature of the case, while explaining the rights and responsibilities of those who may wish to join as plaintiffs and share in any potential judgement or settlement that may be awarded in the Plaintiffs’ favor.
The plaintiffs bring this action on behalf of themselves, individually, and all other similarly situated current and former BMS trade employees, pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards, to remedy violations of the wage and hour provisions of the FLSA by the defendants that have deprived the plaintiffs and others similarly situated of their lawfully earned overtime wages.
If you worked for the City of New York City Police Department’s Building Maintenance Section and believe you have information to help with the case, we encourage you to reach out to our employment attorneys at Joseph & Norinsberg.
