NYC: Yellow Rat Bastard's owner turns out to be a scumbag

[Omaha Steve]

http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2008/02/nyc-yellow-rat-bastards-owner-turns-out.html

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Everything on the Yellow Rat Bastard site has an original price with a slash trough it, thats great, because it would make one think that the real original price is the marked down price in which they are now advertised. $22 dollars for a Brooklyn t-shirt, marked down no less, you gotta be kidding me right? I guess not. So there you see the methods in which the owner of the chain operates, I for a fact know that the company is quite a bit underhanded, having known someone who worked there, who claimed that they allegedly had contests which no one ever won, and worked in a rat infested water leaking basement office space without windows. So what I just read isn't very surprising. Yellow Rat Bastard has been paying its employees below minimum wage, without overtime, without taxes and has retaliated against employees who complained.

The New York Times reports:

Yellow Rat Bastard, a trendy apparel retailer based in SoHo, has agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit over unpaid wages and overtime, the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, announced on Monday.

The settlement grew out of a lawsuit that Mr. Cuomo’s predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, filed 14 months ago, seeking more than $2 million on the grounds that Yellow Rat Bastard’s flagship store in SoHo and its 10 affiliates had repeatedly cheated its employees.

Donald Paul, who worked in the company’s main warehouse, applauded the settlement. Mr. Paul said he worked 60 to 70 hours many weeks, but was hardly ever paid extra wages for overtime. He said he was often paid $5.25 an hour, even when the state minimum wage was $6.75.

“Everything was off the books,” he said. “The settlement is great. We’re going to get the money we deserve.”

The lawsuit covers more than 1,000 current and former workers, not just at the flagship store at 478 Broadway in SoHo, but also at the chain’s other stores in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Those stores include Boys and Chicks, Dirty Jane/Sloppy Joe, Rubber Sole, Antique Orange, Tempo, and FAT Jeans and Shoes. Because of concerns that the company’s founder, Henry Ishay, was hiding assets, Mr. Cuomo’s office persuaded a state judge to freeze nearly $1 million in bank assets held by Mr. Ishay’s wife, Alla Levy.

They should throw this Piece of sh.t in jail, just paying money he owed isn't enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they caught him but it took a lot of work by independent agencies to do it. According to a press release by the RWDSU a branch of the Commercial Food Workers:

The Retail Action Project fights to improve the working lives of NYC retail workers.

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union represents 100,000 workers throughout the U.S. and Canada. The RWDSU is affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers.

The Good Old Lower East Side fights for housing and economic justice in the Lower East Side.

[C_U_L8R]

1. At least there's truth in advertising

and they've lived up to their name