Apple sued for not paying New York Apple Store staff weekly

Filed on April 4, the attempted class action complaint by plaintiff Raven Ramos on behalf of all Apple employees in the state of New York "that engage or have engaged in manual work in the course of their employment" alleges that Apple has, and continues to, violate labor law in the state.

Under New York law, manual workers are required to be paid on a weekly basis, unless there is an express authorization from the New York State Department of Labor Commissioner allowing for payment to occur on a semi-monthly basis.

It is believed that Apple did not receive this authorization for its store staff, and that it paid wages every other week instead of weekly. The suit proposes that its store staff should be covered under the law, and therefore Apple was breaking it.

The lawsuit reckons that approximately 25% of the job responsibilities Ramos had would be classifiable as manual labor. These tasks included "working the sales floor, unboxing products, emptied cash registers, and assisted customers."

Ramos, who lives in Port Chester, was employed by Apple between October 2010 and January 2018, at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. Throughout that period, Apple only paid wages every other week, and not weekly — like nearly every other retail establishment in the United States.

It is said Ramos is injured by the failure to pay wages weekly because "she was temporarily deprived of money owed to her," and that she "lost the time value of that money."

The suit claims the class covers at least 100 members, with the total claims of individual members of the class "well in excess" of $5 million.

In terms of what the class would seek to regain from Apple, it proposes the class is entitled to recover "the amount of their untimely paid wages as liquidated damages," as well as reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, and pre- and post-judgment interest. A numerical value for this supposed loss was not offered in the filing, but is probably expected to be upwards of $5 million.