February 12, 2008
Metro NY
(AP)
62.5 KBMANHATTAN - A popular retail clothing chain has agreed to pay more, than 1,000 current and former employees $1.4 million in unpaid wages and overtime.
Yellow Rat Bastard, which opened its first store in SoHo and specializes in streetstyle fashion, and affiliated stores paid employees as low as $5.25 an hour and failed to pay them overtime, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said yesterday. The state's minimum wage is $7.15 an hour. Overtime pay is one and a half times an employee's regular hourly pay after 40 hours a week.
The chain also retaliated against employees believed to be cooperating with investigators by reducing their work hours and even firing them illegally, Cuomo's office said.
