Elias Corner Restaurant Sued on Short-Pay Accusations
July 18, 2010 by Greek News
Filed under Community
New York.- BY Joe Kemp
A popular Queens restaurant is being dragged to court for not paying its employees enough – seven years after the company settled a similar suit.
Two former employees charge that Elias Corner Restaurant for Fish, a well-known Greek seafood joint in Astoria, failed to pay minimum wage and overtime rates to workers, their attorney said.
“They were paid by the hour, but for only some of the hours they worked,” said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Justin Zeller. “All their compensation was through tips.”
According to the class-action lawsuit, filed June 21 in Brooklyn Federal Court, Kinga Koziel, who had worked at the restaurant for nearly five years before she left last February, and Milan Stosic, who was employed for more than a year, are owed about $200,000 in lost wages.
But every attempt to get the cash from the eatery, which is owned by Elias Sidiroglou, has been denied, Zeller said.
“All efforts to settle this case have been exhausted,” he said.
Sidiroglou could not be reached for comment.
The ethnic food spot on 31st St. at 24thAve. has previously been slapped with a court ruling for not paying their workers properly.
In 2003, the restaurant was ordered to pay $460,000 in restitution and interest to waiters and waitresses for failure to pay them proper wages, according to published reports.
Former state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation of the eatery in late 2001 after several waiters and waitresses complained that their only earnings were from gratuities – a violation of state and federal minimum wage and overtime laws.
At the restaurant, however, other workers didn’t learn of the 2003 settlement, Zeller said.
“They had heard of some sort of charges against the company,” Zeller said of his clients. “But they had no idea [of] the specifics.”
It wasn’t until the two servers noticed the cut in their own paychecks that something smelled, well, fishy.
The two workers were denied the mandatory $4.65 per hour, which state labor laws require for waiters and waitresses, even if they make substantial earnings in tips, Zeller said. Furthermore, they weren’t given overtime pay for their average 55-hour weeks, he said.
**** From the New York Daily News, Friday, July 9th 2010
