Park Slope Pizza Chef Fired After Having A Stroke At Work: Suit

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A Fifth Avenue pizzeria cook was underpaid for more than a decade and then fired after he had a stroke at work, a new lawsuit claims.

Manuel Yunganaula, who worked as a cook for Princess Pizza on the corner of 14th Street for 13 years, has filed a lawsuit against his former employer, who he says discriminated against him by not letting him come back to his job after being hospitalized for a stroke.

The lawsuit lays out nine charges against the pizzeria and two of Yunganaula's bosses for firing him, and for what lawyers say was years of underpayment.

Yunganaula worked as much as 86 hours a week for the pizzeria while getting just barely or below minimum wage with no overtime pay, the lawsuit claims.

"This case is about an employer taking advantage of someone who doesn’t know their legal rights" Doug Lipsky, Yunganaula's attorney, said. "Someone who is working these long, hard hours should have been paid far more than what he was paid and that is unacceptable and illegal."

Yunganaula's pay started to fall below the minimum wage in 2015, when he earned just $8.33 per hour when minimum wage was $8.75, the lawsuit claims.

It would dip even further under the minimum wage in 2017, 2018 and 2019 when he was working 12 or 13-hour days, six days a week without so much as a lunch break, according to the suit.

The pizzeria also violated labor laws by not paying Yunganaula any overtime when he worked more than 10 hours a day or 40 hours in a week, the lawsuit claims. At times, when his bosses would go on vacation, Yunganaula worked as much as 86 hours a week by working seven, 12-hour days.

The Princess Pizza bosses did not return a request for comment.

Things went from bad to worse for Yunganaula one day in May this year when he had what he later would discover was a stroke at work.

Yunganaula showed up for work in the morning and started acting confused and forgetful around 8:30 a.m. But his boss, Nelson Garcia, did nothing to help, the lawsuit claims.

"Despite Plaintiff Yunganaula acting unwell, having trouble speaking and doing strange things, like putting cooked food in the fridge and frozen food to be served to clients, defendant Garcia kept him working," the lawsuit says.

Garcia would ultimately tell Yunganaula to go home around 1 p.m., without offering him help or calling a doctor, even though by that point Yunganaula didn't even know where he was, the lawsuit said.

Yunganaula wandered around his home for hours until a family member found him and took him to the hospital, where he would stay for three days after doctors diagnosed his stroke, according to the lawsuit.

His Princess Pizza bosses assured Yunganaula that his job would be waiting for him when he recovered, the lawsuit said, but eventually Yunganaula would come back to work to find another cook had been hired.

"As a result of Defendants’ callous treatment of Plaintiff Yunganaula, which endangered his life by delaying his medical treatment on the day he suffered a stroke, discrimination and wrongful termination after 13 years of employment, he has suffered and continues to suffer severe emotional distress, including, insomnia, depression, night sweats, and other emotional pain and suffering," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit demands the pizzeria pay Yunganaula the wages they owe him and damages for violating labor laws.