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<p><b><a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2010/11/26/2010-11-26_his_blood_sweat__tears_kosher_biz_refuses_to_pay_260g_in_back_wages_to_fired_wor.html" target="_blank">By Izabela Rutkowski and Erin Durkin - <i>New York Daily News</i>, November 26th 2010</a></b></p>

<p><img src="/graphics/IU460/NYCmisc/flaum-080510.jpg" align="right">A Williamsburg kosher food company is locked in a battle with former workers who charge they were stiffed out of overtime pay - and then fired when they complained.</p>

<p>National Labor Relations Board investigators found that Flaum Appetizing Corp. illegally booted the workers, and ordered the company to cough up around $260,000 in back pay. But owner Moshe Grunhut has refused to comply - saying he won't pay the workers because they're undocumented immigrants.</p>

<p>The fired employees said they spent years working as much as 80 hours a week for minimum wage with no overtime, for bosses who often peppered them with verbal abuse.</p>

<p>"I worked 11 years for that company and I never received a dollar of overtime or one holiday or one sick day, nothing," said Gustino Romero, 32, of Bushwick. "I worked from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. ... We always asked for [overtime], but they said no."</p>

<p>Maria Corona, 36, of Williamsburg, said frequent insults from her boss made the situation worse.</p>

<p>"The manager called us cockroaches, tarantulas, all kinds of offensive names," she said. "The truth is we were unfairly exploited."</p>

<p>When the workers tried to form a union and went on a brief strike in 2008, management ordered them off the Flaum premises - a move the National Labor Relations Board ruled was illegal retaliation.</p><p><a href="http://www.iww.org/en/node/5278">read more</a></p>