Southwest Side pizza joint owner cheated drivers out of wages, lawsuit claims

Four delivery drivers say the owner of a Southwest Side pizza restaurant cheated them out of thousands of dollars by paying them per-delivery, instead of by the hour.

Santos Nava, Javier Castillo, Asael Espinosa and Juan Rosales have filed a lawsuit against Naty’s Pizza, 5129 S. Kedzie Ave. in Gage Park, claiming the restaurant misclassified them as independent contractors.

By doing that, they say, owner Abel Rodriguez stole their wages.

The lawsuit alleges Rodriguez paid the men “per delivery,” though they were doing the work of regular employees, which should have entitled them to minimum wage and overtime pay.

And though they were reimbursed for some gasoline expenses, that was done improperly, as well, costing them even more money, according to the lawsuit.

“We want to be paid what they owe us,” Nava, 65, said Wednesday at a press conference outside the restaurant. Nava worked at Naty’s for three years, leaving in June.

The McKinley Park resident said Rodriguez also had the drivers do jobs around the store, including cleaning bathrooms and washing windows.

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Arise Chicago, a workers rights group supporting the men, said the attorney representing Rodriguez hasn’t responded with how they will plead the case since it was filed in August, which prompted the group and the drivers to hold Wednesday’s news conference outside Naty’s Pizza. Rodriguez’s attorney declined to comment. A court date is set for early December.

The drivers can’t say exactly how much they are owed until they can review the pizzeria’s business records, but an Arise Chicago representative said the total is expected to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Nancy Rodriguez, Abel’s daughter, said if the workers didn’t like the contract, they could have left. “We’ve been here 30 years and never had a problem like this,” she said.

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Espinosa, 46, joined Naty’s after delivering for Domino’s Pizza. He expected that as an independent contractor, he would just make deliveries, as he had at the multinational pizza chain.

His boys were ages 4 and 11 when he started and by the time he realized all the other work he’d be doing, he couldn’t leave. “It’s not like I had other work waiting,” he said.

After 10 years, he said, he joined the lawsuit because he couldn’t put up with it anymore. He continues to work at Naty’s, however, and though he hasn’t been retaliated against since the filing, he worries it still could happen.

“The truth is, I’m afraid,” he said.

Espinosa’s sons are nearly grown. The eldest, also named Asael, said he took the morning off work at his job at an auto body shop to attend the news conference.

“I came out to support my dad,” he said. “It’s not just, what happened.”

Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.

Brian Rich/Sun-Times