Class/Collective Action Suit Filed Against Sareh Bridal, Two Others

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A proposed class and collective action complaint filed in New Jersey claims defendants Sareh Bridal, LLC and two individuals broke state and federal laws by failing to pay proper overtime wages. The two named plaintiffs, who worked for the defendants as tailors, summarily claim they regularly worked more than 40 hours per week without being paid proper time-and-a-half overtime wages.

It is worth noting that this complaint lays out far more than just alleged wage and hour violations. For one, both plaintiffs claim they were in fact paid for overtime hours worked, just not at the time-and-a-half hourly rate. Instead, the plaintiffs claim they were paid at their straight-time rate for all hours worked past 40 in a week.

One plaintiff said she, in December 2014, was paid on a piecemeal basis and was compensated per dress rather than hourly. This back-and-forth between getting paid either hourly or on a piecemeal basis continued for both the plaintiffs, the complaint continues, yet at no point were they paid proper time-and-a-half hourly overtime.

In September 2014, one of the individual defendants allegedly began hiding from one of the plaintiffs that the other was working overtime. This was done, the case says, “by having [the plaintiff] work weekends under a pseudonym,” of which the other plaintiff had no knowledge.

Upon discovering that her work was being passed off as having been done under a pseudonym, the plaintiff complained to one of the individual defendants, bringing up that she was not being paid for all the work done by the pseudonymous employee, according to the suit. Even further, this plaintiff alleges one of the individual defendants, in retaliation, would often sabotage her dresses by, for example, giving her cheap materials to make defective garments.

Staying with this alleged pattern of abuse, the individual defendant in question would also allegedly slander the plaintiff’s work, telling her that she was slow and unreliable. According to the complaint, the defendant would even steal this plaintiff’s work while favoring another employee not involved in the case, who would be given “the best and most expensive dresses to sew.”