Former Employees Raise Concerns Over The Bread Factory Café’s Pay Practices

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Three companies and five individuals who operate The Bread Factory Café have been named in a proposed collective action that alleges the defendants violated provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law. The three plaintiffs in the case are former employees who claim they were not paid proper minimum, overtime, and spread-of-hours wages, and were denied other entitlements such as accurate wage statements and uninterrupted meal breaks.

The first plaintiff says she worked at the café as a cashier and regularly put in more than 40 hours per week without receiving time-and-a-half premium pay. She claims she was paid $9.00 per hour for all hours worked and alleges that the defendants would sometimes alter her paystubs to reflect fewer hours than she actually logged. Even further, the suit says the woman is owed compensation for untaken meal breaks, money that was automatically deducted from her hours, and reimbursement for purchasing required uniforms.

Similarly, the second plaintiff, who was employed as a bread maker, would typically work between 60 and 78 hours per week without proper overtime pay, meal breaks, or reimbursement for purchasing “tools of the trade,” the complaint attests.

The third named plaintiff was employed as a dishwasher and delivery worker, according to the suit, and was paid a fixed weekly salary that, when divided by his number of hours worked, fell below minimum wage and failed to include overtime pay. The defendants inappropriately applied a tip credit to his wages, the suit says, in that the man spent more than 20 percent of each day performing non-tipped activities unrelated to his delivery work. Further still, the case alleges the defendants withheld 15 percent of the tips the man earned from Seamless, GrubHub, and online orders, as well as failed to reimburse him for purchasing bicycles and accessories necessary to perform his job.