A pizza chain with locations in New York and Massachusetts is the focus of a lawsuit that is seeking class action status and perhaps millions of dollars in back wages. Employees allege that Four Brothers Pizza, which has seven locations in New York - Amenia, Dover Plains, Hillsdale, Mahopac, Pleasant Valley, Rhinebeck and Valatie - and one in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, violated most basic labor rights.

The Department of Labor's Fair Labor Standards Act establishes that covered, nonexempt employees must receive at least minimum wage for all of their time and attendance in addition to overtime for employee attendance exceeding 40 hours in a single workweek. Moreover, employers are required to keep accurate records of all of the people on their payroll.

Four Brothers, on the other hand, failed to pay minimum wage and refused to pay workers overtime, the claim explains. Many of the workers involved in the case are kitchen staff and dishwashers.

"A lot of these workers are immigrants, a fair amount from Mexico and other Latin American countries and were really preyed upon, not just in terms of widespread wage violations, but also in terms of leveraging their vulnerability because of their immigration status in some instances and what we have seen is the employers make repeated threats against them to call immigration," worker Justice Center of New York in Kingston co-executive director Milan Bhatt, told the MidHudson News.

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