Clausen: Mark's Pizzeria, some delivery guys and a $1.7M settlement

Todd Clausen | Democrat and Chronicle

Delivery workers for Mark's Pizzeria are ending a nearly two-year legal battle after alleging that the local pizza maker violated labor laws by under-cutting their wages.

In a case filed in 2015, Adam Cunningham, Alex Chefalo and Remo Paglia argued that Mark's Pizzeria and founder/CEO Mark S. Crane did not properly compensate employees for overtime, vehicle-related expenses and uniforms while also failing to share delivery service charges with workers.

The trio argued in court papers that those alleged violations resulted in the workers receiving less than minimum wage while they worked at locations in Brockport, Chili, Gates and Rochester.

The two sides earlier this month agreed to a $1.7 million settlement. The pizza company acknowledging no wrong-doing. The parties said in court papers that they didn't want to drag out the class-action suit any longer.

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Mark's, of course, is not the only company to face complaints over lost wages. Such cries cut across industries and pay scales.

In fact, I've been working on a nearly two-year effort to obtain records relating to an apparent increase in cases involving wage theft and the fleecing of workers, particularly in the years after the recession.

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli blew the horn on such cases a few years back, claiming that similar cases weren't being investigated thoroughly or swiftly enough by the Department of Labor.

The agency's backlog of unresolved cases had ballooned to an annual average of nearly 2,100 unresolved cases between 2008 and 2012.

To give another perspective on the issue, there were roughly 17,000 victims of wage theft across the state in the first three months of 2016 with $10 million returned to workers, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Office.

About 400 workers in our area received a share of about $107,000. No other information was provided, by his office.

Likewise, the Department of Labor only posts regional data online with figures showing the amounts returned and the number of victims.

Regional data in our area fluctuates from year-to-year but in 2014 nearly 1,150 workers split $1.3 million in returned wages, according to the agency.

The average amount of $530 paid back to local workers — undoubtedly important to those individuals — didn’t convince me to file requests seeking more data. I wanted to know what local companies were being investigated and the status of those efforts.

My Freedom of Information request was delayed for months. Every few weeks I got a letter saying my request wasn't denied but was still being reviewed.

It took a few calls but I eventually got someone on the phone, saying that the only way to pull the information for our area was to refile my request based on ZIP codes.

The new request was sent with dozens of area ZIP codes for data covering 2015 and 2016. The goal was to put in another, yet to be filed, request seeking deeper information on a smaller number of cases.

There were 112 open investigations of the roughly 800 cases that were under investigation by the Department of Labor.

It's obvious that more work is needed to move cases. Victims, especially those on the bottom of the income ladder, shouldn't have to wait years.

Companies stealing wages shouldn't be left off the hook.

Todd Clausen is the work-life reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle. Email him at TCLAUSEN@Gannett.com, or call (585) 258-9883.