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Co-op City Turmoil as Workers Sue Management, Alleging Unpaid Overtime



Coop City cooperative apartment complex owes workers $5 million in OT, lawsuit claims. Employees who help run the Coop City Bronx cooperative apartments contend that they've been cheated out of compensation including overtime pay. Some of the plaintiffs make just $29,000 a year.

Those who work at the sprawling Bronx cooperative apartment complex, Co-op City, allege in a lawsuit that their employer, Riverbay Corporation, has not paid them all compensation to which their entitled, such as overtime.

Workers at Coop City in the Bronx are claiming in a class action that the companies that run the complex have cheated them out of at least $5 million. The RiverBay Corp.; which manages the sprawling, storied complex in The Bronx, has denied the allegations.

The lawsuit claims Co-op City's roughly 900 - 1,000 workers, including some who make as little as $29,000 a year, have been bilked out of overtime pay and other compensation to which they were entitled under the law.

"This is an employer who over the last six years hasn't been paying the money he owes," said Seth Goldstein, business agent at Local 153 OPEIU (Office & Professional Employees International Union), which represents about 50 of the plaintiffs in the Manhattan federal court lawsuit, which won class status in December. The OPEIU, which represents roughly 50 of the plaintiffs, is one of seven labor unions at Co-op City that have been impacted.

The lawsuit is directed at Riverbay Corporation, an entity started by the co-op board to handle the day-to-day running of the complex, which employs the workers, and Marion Scott Real Estate Inc., an outside firm paid to manage RiverBay.

Co-op City workers claim they've been bilked out of $5 million by their employer.

From left: Qaadir Murid'Allah, business representive of Local 153 OPEIU, which represents about 50 plaintiffs in the lawsuit; Marissa Cruz; Lorna Thomas; Kathy Bell; Alberta Abrams; and Seth Goldstein, business representitive of Local 153 OPEIU.

Also named in the suit is Marion Scott Real Estate, the Manhattan company that works with RiverBay to manage Co-op City. "Any notion that Marion principal Herbert Freedman or Marion Scott Real Estate Inc. are making a profit at the expense of RiverBay's employees is simply false," attorney Scott Trivella of Trivella & Forte & Smith, the defendants' lawyer, told the Daily News. Marion Scott receives a fixed annual management fee separate from the budget that pays the workers, said Scott Trivella, lawyer for the defendants.

In September, RiverBay enacted a two-year, 1% maintenance fee hike for Co-op City residents. In 2012, it closed a deal, backed by the federal government, to refinance its mortgage and save $400 million over 35 years.

Coop City must follow the rules when it comes to paying its employees, said Lee Shalov, lawyer for the plaintiffs. "It's important for working class people to get paid in accordance with federal and New York law, because every penny counts," he said.

The lawsuit cites employees being offered comp time, which is illegal and working without pay or at illegal rates during meal breaks and before and after their shifts.

Freedman said the workers were paid in strict accordance with their union contracts.

The workers in December amended their previously filed complaint to adding RiverBay's director of finance, Peter Merola, as a defendant. The amendment claims Merola "at which RiverBay's compensatory time policy was terminated, researched and attended a webinar about RiverBay Corporation's payment policies after the present lawsuit was filed, authorizes employee requests for overtime and regularly responds to Board of Director inquiries about payroll issues and wages'" according to the legal-industry website Law360.

On Jan. 27, the defendants argued to dismiss that motion, stating that Merola - whose position, the workers said, gave him much discretion over wages - was not directly the workers' employer. The court has made no decision on whether Merola can be added to the lawsuit. The defendants also say the workers have no basis to sue until they first exhaust their collective-bargaining grievance procedures on the matter.

Past Coop City employee issue:
Coop City - a middle-income cooperative whose 15,372 residential units in 25 high-rise buildings and seven clusters of townhouses make it the largest single residential development in the country - experienced a strike by 500 porters, handymen, garbage collectors and groundskeepers with Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union in June 2010, following unlawful-lockout charges the SEIU filed with the National Labor Relations Board against RiverBay Corporation.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/co-op-city-owes-workers-5-million-ot-lawsuit-article-1.1603845

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