New York City Department of Sanitation service trucks outside Garage 10 in Harlem. (Credit: Callum Foote)
Nearly 700 New York City sanitation workers are looking forward to a payout in the thousands of dollars, as they are expected to settle their lawsuits over unpaid overtime. If successful, they will join thousands of other municipal workers who have brought similar claims against the city in recent years.
Sanitation workers and supervisors alleged in two suits that they were systematically underpaid for time spent working outside of their scheduled shifts — and that even when they were given overtime, the city underpaid their wages.
Several weeks ago, though, their lawyers told a U.S. District Court judge that they expect “to resolve this matter through settlement discussions and mediation,” with a conference planned for the end of September.
The amounts due employees aren’t yet clear, but if previous settlements are any indication, they could be significant. A case run by the same law firm on behalf of 1,199 child protective workers triggered a payout of $42.9 million in 2021. That came to $35,779 per worker before deductions for legal fees, which equaled roughly a quarter of the total.
Molly Elkin, partner at McGillivary Steele Elkin, the firm running both cases, said in an interview that the city is regularly failing to pay sanitation employees for more than two hours of pre-shift work a week.
“The reality is, everybody comes to work early to get themselves prepared, and they stay after the shift to clean up and do reports and continue working. And they get paid just for the shift hours,” she said.
The workers filed their suit last November.
An additional 214 sanitation supervisors are plaintiffs in a separate case, also filed in November, and they too are anticipating a settlement, according to court documents.
McGillivary Steele Elkin, a Washington, D.C.-based employment law firm, has successfully run more than 20 similar cases against the city over the past decade. The lawsuits allege that the city has violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
Court documents say that sanitation workers were regularly required to engage in unpaid, pre-shift preparations to avoid punishment for not getting on the road quickly enough. These tasks usually resulted in 15 to 30 minutes of combined pre-shift work per day.
Jimmy Parker, a trustee with Teamsters Local 831, also known as the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said that pre-shift work is important “to make sure the vehicle is up and running.”
Parker, however, says that this pre-shift check takes less time than what was alleged by workers’ lawyers. “You could do that in five to seven minutes,” he said. “A lot of guys go out with the same truck every shift. So they’re very aware of how their equipment is.”
Supervisors argued that they were also required to work unpaid overtime in excess of the 15 minutes pre-shift that is included in their collective bargaining agreement.
Elkin says that records obtained by her firm “show that these supervisors … are coming in 30 to 45 minutes, and sometimes even an hour, early to get started”.
Both lawsuits also allege that even when workers were paid overtime, the city failed to include additional benefits, such as longevity pay or add-ons related to night work.
The city has “a really bad math problem,” she said.
Over the past decade, McGillivary Steele Elkin has settled or won at least 21 overtime cases against the city, according to an analysis of court records by Labor New York. This has resulted in payments of more than $165 million in back pay, damages and legal fees.
A spokesperson for the Law Department told Labor New York: “The city is committed to supporting its workforce in every way possible. We are looking into the issues raised in these cases. We cannot comment further while this case is pending.”
McGillivary Steele Elkin has six other overtime cases underway against the city, representing employees from seven departments.
About the author(s)
Callum Foote is a Stabile Investigative Fellow. He has previously reported on finance and politics in Australia.