Watkins v. First Student, Inc.
| Decision Date | 28 February 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 17-CV-1519 (CS),17-CV-1519 (CS) |
| Parties | DORINE R. WATKINS, Plaintiff, v. FIRST STUDENT, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Appearances:
Dorine R. Watkins
Mamaroneck, New York
Plaintiff Pro Se
Leslie M. DiBenedetto
Ivan R. Novich
Littler Mendelson, P.C.
Melville, New York
Counsel for Defendant
Before the Court is Defendant First Student, Inc.'s Motion to Dismiss. (Doc. 24.) For the reasons stated below, Defendant's motion is GRANTED, but Plaintiff may amend.
The following facts are drawn from Plaintiff's Complaint, , her letter to the Court dated May 17, 2017, requesting leave to amend the Complaint, (Doc. 12 ("May 2017 Letter")), her letter to the Court dated June 13, 2017, detailing her demand for each claim, (Doc. 14 ("Demand Letter")), and her brief opposing Defendant's motion to dismiss, (Doc. 22 ("P's Mem.")).1
Plaintiff Dorine R. Watkins is a White woman who began working as a school bus driver for Defendant, a student transportation business, in or about January 2009. (Complaint ¶¶ 2, 3; May 2017 Letter ¶ 1.)2 During the course of her employment, she drove buses and vans and worked out of New Rochelle, New York and Mount Vernon, New York. (Complaint ¶¶ 3, 15; see Demand Letter ¶ 3.) She was also a member of a union, Local 338 (the "Union"). (Complaint ¶ 6.)
Plaintiff points to a number of problems with Defendant's pay practices. First, she describes a problem with the application of pay rates to certain hours. The collective bargaining agreement ("CBA") between Defendant and the Union provided four pay rates for operatives3: regular pay, trip pay, non-driver pay, and safety meeting pay. (Demand Letter ¶ 4.) The regular pay rate applied to mandatory driving tasks such as performing routes, fueling the bus, orreturning the bus to the garage for repairs. (Id.) The non-driver pay was "$8.00 per h[ou]r less" and applied to tasks such as performing "lot work" or attending safety meetings.4 (Id.)
Plaintiff filled out exception forms indicating extra work incurred outside of the regular schedule. (Complaint ¶ 4; Demand Letter ¶ 4.) Such work could include spending time in traffic and transporting buses to and from the garage. (Complaint ¶ 4.) It is not clear which pay rate applied to work shown on an exception form. Regardless, Plaintiff noticed some sort of a discrepancy between the hours she worked and her exception forms dating back to when she began working for Defendant, but did not "make a big deal out of it." (Id. ¶ 4.) Plaintiff also noticed that many of her exception forms were denied and that the non-driver pay rate was applied to her exception form time. (Demand Letter ¶ 4.)
Plaintiff next takes issue with the lack of compensation for certain time during her workday. Specifically, she takes issue with not receiving compensation for the time she spent waiting for a safety meeting to begin or waiting between school runs and trips. (Id. ¶ 5.) She also criticizes the method for counting regular pay time - based on the time the operative's bus was moving according to a GPS system - because it did not include the time spent walking to the bus, inspecting the bus before a trip, or waiting for other drivers to exit the lot. (Id.) Finally, Plaintiff alleges that she never received an additional hour of compensation for days where she started at 6:00 A.M. and worked until 9:00 P.M. (Id. ¶ 6.)
In or about September 2013, Plaintiff placed a bid to become a "tripper," an assignment that requires availability at all times. (Complaint ¶ 5.) Plaintiff does not allege when she became a tripper but her allegations suggest she received the assignment sometime betweenSeptember 2013 and February 2014. The demand placed on trippers caused Plaintiff to work many overtime hours. (Id.) Early in the school year, Plaintiff noticed that she was not receiving the correct compensation for her overtime hours - many of the hours were "going into categories not known to [Plaintiff], [and] being paid at many different rates of pay." (Id.) The May 2017 Letter identifies four workweeks - specifically, "12/15/13, 01/05/14, 01/12/14,-1/26/14" - in which Plaintiff worked more than 40 hours but was not paid overtime wages. (May 2017 Letter ¶ 4.) And the Demand Letter identifies another 36 workweeks - different from those alleged in the May 2017 Letter - in which Plaintiff "was not appropriately compensated for [her] overtime." (Demand Letter ¶ 7.) Plaintiff identified those 36 workweeks based on a review of her checking account. (Id.)
She broached the issue of overtime pay with John Polomino, the operations manager, but he would tell her that her pay was correct. (Complaint ¶ 5.) Plaintiff also complained to her union representative, Christine Ciprianno, about the discrepancies in her pay, and Ciprianno would tell Plaintiff that she would speak to Polomino. (Id. ¶ 6.) And then, days later, either Polomino or Ciprianno would tell Plaintiff that her pay was correct. (Id.) In February 2014, Plaintiff went to the New York State Department of Labor ("NYSDOL") in White Plains, New York for help, only to find that the Department could not do anything because she was represented by a union. (Id. ¶ 7.) Plaintiff does not specify when she spoke with Polomino or Ciprianno but it is reasonable to infer that these conversations occurred between September 2013 (when she placed the bid to become a tripper) and February 2014 (when she went to the NYSDOL).
Shortly thereafter, Plaintiff's hours were reduced drastically and her bus was denied necessary repairs. (Id. ¶ 8.) In or about February 2014, Plaintiff was asked to cover what areknown as "shapper runs," which were usually done by experienced drivers that have basic knowledge of all of the runs. (Id.) Shapper run drivers were paid a flat salary for 35-40 hours per week. (Id.) Plaintiff was forced to perform these duties for 25-30 hours per week and was assigned only a few trips. (Id.) For unspecified safety reasons, Plaintiff returned to a "regular run of 23 hours [per week]." (Id.)
Plaintiff says she called Defendant 200 times and Ciprianno 30 times asking to file a grievance, to no avail. (Id. ¶ 9.) In or about March 2014, Plaintiff filed some sort of charges against the Union and the Defendant. (Id. ¶ 10.)5 Three months into the investigation of Plaintiff's charges, the field investigator asked Plaintiff to drop her charges because the government would not take her case any further. (Id. ¶ 12.) Plaintiff eventually filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB") in April 2014 and September 2014 alleging improper payment of overtime wages. (P's Mem. at 2-3.)
In May 2014, Plaintiff "begged and pleaded" with Defendant for leave time to be with her sons, both of whom were set to have surgery in Florida. (Complaint ¶ 13; May 2017 Letter ¶ 3.) Polomino denied the request for leave and told Plaintiff that there was no one to cover her runs. (Demand Letter ¶ 1; May 2017 Letter ¶ 3.)
That same month, on May 20, 2014, the fuel tank of Plaintiff's bus was punctured. (Complaint ¶ 13.) She was on her way to pick up students for an extracurricular activity when she noticed the bus had no fuel. (Id.) After refueling, she picked up the students and drove them to their activity. (Id.) While she was waiting for the students to return, a bystander told her that the bus was leaking fuel. (Id.) She confirmed the leak, and called the "go-to person," NathanielMartin, to let him know, but he told her that nobody was going to bring her another bus. (Id.; see P's Mem. at 3.)6 As a result, she drove the bus back, students and all, even though the fuel tank had a leak. (Complaint ¶ 13.) She reported the issue to Defendant later that evening but Defendant was dismissive and failed to take any action. (P's Mem. at 2.) Defendant instead claimed that the problem was an overflow of antifreeze. (Complaint ¶ 13.)
In October 2014, Plaintiff began helping Stan Outerbridge start up the vehicles every morning. (Id. ¶ 15; May 2017 Letter ¶ 1a.) When Defendant learned that Plaintiff was helping Outerbridge, an unidentified lot worker began to lock the doors of many of the vehicles, forcing Plaintiff to access them from the back. (Complaint ¶ 15; May 2017 Letter ¶ 1a.)
Plaintiff was also driving a van around that time, in the fall of 2014. (See May 2017 Letter ¶ 1b ().) Plaintiff alleges that the bus monitor for Plaintiff's van was "insane" and threatened Plaintiff. (Complaint ¶ 15.)7 During the colder months - about November 2014 through February 2015 - someone would move Plaintiff's van without her knowing, thus causing her to walk all over trying to find it. (Id.; May 2017 Letter ¶ 1b.) Plaintiff alleges that Defendant had the van moved but she does not identify who moved it. (May 2017 Letter ¶ 1b.) Someone also wrote "complainer" in the dust on the back of Plaintiff's van in or around January 2015 and again in the spring of 2015. (Id. ¶ 1f; see Complaint ¶ 16.) At another unspecified time, someone urinated in the water bottle that Plaintiff stored in her van, and Plaintiff accidentally drank from the bottle. (Complaint ¶ 17.)
Plaintiff was reprimanded ten minutes before a mandatory physical in 2014. (Id. ¶ 18.) In 2015, the safety manager sent her for a drug test thirty minutes before a mandatory physical,causing her to experience stress about possibly missing the physical. (Id.; May 2017 Letter ¶ 1g.)
On April 23, 2015, Plaintiff picked up her son from a hospital in Florida. (Complaint ¶ 19.) He was seriously ill and Defendant was aware of his condition because the Florida hospital had sent an email or fax to Defendant's office. (Id.)
On May 7, 2015, an unidentified employee crashed a bus into Plaintiff's car while it was located in front of Defendant...
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