The High Cost of a $1 Slice
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
There might be a high cost for those dollar pizza slices.
A class-action lawsuit is charging the Jewish owners of New York City’s with putting employees through 60- to 70-hour workweeks for less than minimum wage and no overtime, the Daily News reported today.
Eli and Oren Halali and their father Joshua, who own the chain, “built their dollar pizza empire on the backs of my clients and other workers by grossly underpaying them,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Adam Slater, told the News. “It’s just unfair.”
But the Halalis’ lawyer denies it all. “2 Bros. pays its employees in compliance with city, state and federal law and categorically denies the claims made by the plaintiffs. 2 Bros. is confident that it will prevail on the merits, attorney Howard Davis of Meister Seelig & Fein LLP told the Forward in an e-mail.
It’s not the first time Eli Halali’s made news. In a 2012 Associated Press report on questionable contributions to disgraced former Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm, Halali was identified as the agent of a company that distributed porn movies – and a close associate of controversial Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto. The Forward reported on a top Pinto aide’s porn links in 2011.
2 Bros, in the meantime, continues serving the cut-rate ‘za that won it top prize in a Cheap Dollar Slice Pizza Showdown from the blog SeriousEats.
Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
