Three former employees of East Village Italian restaurants Frank’s Restaurant, Lil’ Frankie’s, and Supper are suing owner Frank Prisinzano over allegations of unpaid overtime wages, missing pay stubs, and other work-related complaints. The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York on April 22, marks the fifth time Prisinzano has been sued over allegations of wage theft since 2009.
Pedro Coyotl, Rene Tigre, and Juan Manuel Trejo claim to have been denied overtime pay over a multi-year period. The three workers have been employed at multiple restaurants owned by Prisinzano since 2012, 2003, and 2018, respectively, and all worked at one of Prisinzano’s restaurants until fall 2021 or early 2022, according to the suit. They say they were denied overtime pay during stretches of that period, despite occasionally working between 40 and 85 hours per week, and were not provided with additional compensation when working shifts longer than 10 hours.
Louis Pechman, an attorney with Pechman Law Group, who’s representing Coyotl, Tigre, and Trejo, estimates that damages in the case could be “well into the six figures.”
Prisinzano, who was not aware of the suit until Eater contacted him for comment, denied that he was in violation of city and state labor laws. “Absolutely can’t be true,” he says. “We pay everybody overtime, every single week, on time...If they were actually not paid by some mistake, we’ll just pay it.”
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