A purported class and collective action lawsuit was filed on Friday against eBay Inc. alleging that eBay failed to pay its manual workers in New York on a weekly basis. The lawsuit alleges that such failure constitutes a violation of New York’s wage payments laws, and, as a result, also a violation of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which is interpreted to require “timely” payment of wages. Although all potential class members were paid their wages, the claim seeks liquidated damages (in the amount of late pay) based on the theory that eBay was late in paying them every other week.
The lawsuit is one of many filed in the past few years making such claim. In January, an Appellate decision in New York’s Second Department held that there is no private right of action under New York law for failure to pay manual workers weekly, disagreeing with an earlier decision by a First Department Appellate court; but since January, Federal courts have mostly sided with the First Department and allowed such lawsuits to proceed. The proposed New York budget for FY25 included proposed legislation that would have confirmed that employees may not be awarded liquidated damages for a failure-to-pay-weekly claim, but the proposal did not make it into the final budget.
New York employers with manual workers (defines as “a mechanic, workingman or laborer,” and generally interpreted to be individuals who spend more than 25% of working time engaged in “physical labor” in a broad sense) should be sure to pay them weekly to limit their risk.
Although The New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in New York) may eventually side with the Second Department and hold that there is no private right of action for this claim, as the eBay lawsuit shows, plaintiff’s lawyers are aggressively bringing these claims now and will likely continue to do so unless and until the high court rules against them or there is a change in the law.