PHILADELPHIA - A federal court has refused to dismiss the complaint of a technician who said he was paid for $250 for 80 hours of work.
On Aug. 20, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied a chemical company’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit from a worker who said it didn’t pay him minimum wage or overtime.
Richard Dalanas filed the lawsuit against Uni-Kem Chemicals Inc., alleging it infringed on his rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA) by not paying him properly. Uni-Kem responded with the motion to dismiss, but Judge Gerald J. Pappert denied it.
Dalanas was hired as a Uni-Kem technician in July 2015 and noted that it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to work about 80 hours a week, including fulfilling overnight jobs that he completed twice a week. But, he said, Uni-Kem “never paid him,” according to the lawsuit. “Instead, Uni-Kem expected [another Uni-Kem] employee, Robert Albert, … to pay" Dalanas, the lawsuit said.
Dalanas said he was paid $250 a week. He filed the complaint on April 1.
Uni-Kem argued that Dalanas' claim, coming three years after the alleged activity, violated the two-year statute of limitation on the FLSA and the three-year statute of limitations on the PMWA. Dalanas said Uni-Kem didn’t post summaries of the statutes in its office, as both statutes require.
"Accepting as true Dalanas’s allegations that Uni-Kem failed to post FLSA and PMWA summaries in its Tullytown office, the amended complaint’s allegations are sufficient to toll the FLSA and PMWA’s statutes of limitations at this stage of the case,” Pappert ruled.
Uni-Kem then stated that Dalanas failed to properly state an employer-employee connection. But the court disagreed and noted that Dalanas claimed he started working for Uni-Kem’s Tullytown facility in 2015. Uni-Kem also gave Dalanas the resources he needed to complete and fulfill his job responsibilities. The court deemed this sufficient to an employer-employee relationship.
Uni-Kem also argued that Dalanas hadn’t properly alleged damages he suffered as his complaint says he was paid for the time he worked. But the court noted that Dalanas said he worked 80 hours a week and was paid $250 weekly. This shows that he wasn’t paid minimum wage or overtime, Pappert wrote. His admission that he received $250 does not prove he was actually paid for the hours he worked, Pappert wrote.