A Brooklyn man who signed up as an emergency snow shoveler during February’s historic blizzard is hauling the City of New York into federal court, claiming he was paid for only a sliver of the hours he actually worked. In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, he accuses the Department of Sanitation of shorting him on storm shifts and earlier call-ins, saying the missing time adds up to dozens of hours. He is seeking unspecified damages.
What The Complaint Alleges
According to court papers reported by the New York Post, plaintiff Jacob Jackson says he logged roughly 40 hours between Feb. 22 and Feb. 28 but was paid for only eight of those hours. The check for that period came to $153.12, and Jackson says he was ultimately paid for just 16 hours total across the entire season.
The complaint says Jackson signed on as an emergency shoveler in November and reported to a Sanitation Department garage in Brooklyn. His lawyer is listed on the filing, which seeks unspecified damages for the unpaid time.
Pay Rates And Conflicting Numbers
The emergency shoveler information page for the Department of Sanitation, DSNY, states that pay starts at $19.14 per hour and rises to $28.71 per hour after the first 40 hours in a workweek. The same page tells workers who have not received a paycheck after six weeks to contact the department.
During the storm itself, though, public discussions of the job often highlighted a $30-an-hour rate for shovelers, as reported by the Associated Press and other outlets. Jackson’s lawyers argue that those mixed messages and what they describe as gaps in how his hours were calculated are key to their Fair Labor Standards Act claim.
City Response And Payment Status
The New York Post reports that a DSNY spokesperson said thousands of checks have already been mailed out to emergency shovelers and directed anyone who still has not been paid to the department’s inquiry email address…