A former employee of Apple who worked at the tech giant’s world-famous Fifth Avenue retail store in New York City is suing the company, in relation to claims that she and thousands of other Apple Store workers in the state should have been paid on a weekly basis due to their roles requiring manual labor.
Attorneys for Raven Ramos of Westchester County filed for a class-action lawsuit against Apple on Monday. In doing so, they referred to a New York law that “requires companies to pay their manual workers on a weekly basis unless they receive an express authorization to pay on a semi-monthly basis from the New York State Department of Labor Commissioner.”
According to the suit, Apple has not received any such authorization. Furthermore, the suit accuses Apple of having violated, and continued to violate the law, by paying its “manual workers” every fortnight rather than every week.
The suit states that Ramos was employed by Apple to work at the Fifth Avenue location from October 2010 until January 2018, and that during this time, at least a quarter of the plaintiff’s job included manual labor. Various tasks are listed, including “working the sales floor, unboxing products, emptying cash registers, and assisting customers.”
The suit goes on to allege that the plaintiff suffered injury as a result of Apple’s failure to pay them on a weekly basis, because “she was temporarily deprived of money owed to her.”
The suit seeks to represent a class of all Apple Store employees in the state who worked as manual laborers over the last six years, said to amount to potentially “thousands” of people. The suit further seeks a jury trial, and describes the claims of damages – sought on behalf of Ramos and the entire class – as being “well in excess of” $5 million.
