Dozens of companies, big and small, across the five boroughs have made New York City Comptroller Mark Levine’s second-annual list of city businesses committing the most labor violations, released ahead of Labor Day.
Coffee giant Starbucks topped the list, known as the Employer Violations Dashboard, which consolidates data from federal, state, and city enforcement agencies to identify employers who violated key labor laws across the city. Based on employee reporting and independent agency investigations, the comptroller’s office uses the dashboard to track violations of federal, state and city workplace laws, health and safety violations, wage theft, illegal interference with unionization efforts and harassment.
Starbucks took the first-place spot on the list of local labor law breakers: The company faced a nearly $40 million settlement against it last December — the largest worker protection settlement in city history — for violations of the city’s Fair Workweek Law, which requires employers to provide predictable schedules to employees.
McDonald’s, Panera Bread, Gyro House, Uniqlo, PetCo and Hot Topic also made the list for local law violations that landed them financial penalties of around $50,000 to over $100,000 for violating the Fair Workweek Law and the city’s Paid Sick Leave Law. They were joined by community center Bronx House, which had to pay nearly $75,000 due to its city law violations last year.
Topping the list of wage theft violations in 2025 is upscale Garment District Chinese restaurant Chef Yu, which didn’t pay its employees nearly $1 million they’d earned, according to the dashboard. They’re followed by Queens-based Paris Limousine Service, which owed its workers about $900,000, Mediterranean snacks company Gourmet Health Ka’a and Brooklyn’s Tasty Delicious Bakery, which owes workers nearly $400,000 in back pay, the comptroller’s office said.
While wage theft violations skewed towards smaller and mid-sized businesses, violations of local labor law were more prevalent in larger corporations, according to the comptroller’s analysis.
Employers of all sizes made the list for violating workers’ rights to unionize. Development corporations and medical and utility service providers like the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Maxwell Plumbing Mechanical Corporation, 100 Claremont Condominium and Mount Sinai appeared alongside Brooklyn’s indie Nitehawk theatre, since-closed vegan bakery Clementine, Best Friends Animal Society and the Center for Family Representation in the comptroller’s list of employers who’d been reported to the National Labor Relations Board for illegally interfering with and retaliating against employees’ unionization efforts.
The comptroller’s office analysis also took an accounting of workplaces that had been successfully sued for harassment and discrimination. INS Handbags is listed as the top offender with a settlement of over $200,000 against it for pregnancy discrimination. It’s followed by fast-casual chain Fresh & Co and FedEx, which were hit with more than $100,000 settlements for sexual harassment and discrimination against workers with criminal histories, respectively.
This tracking is important, Levine said, because it helps the public know which employers are following the law and which aren’t and helps to hold bosses accountable.
“New York City has a rich history in the labor movement to secure hard-fought rights,” Levine said in a statement. “The Employer Violations Dashboard is an essential tool to hold bad actors accountable and help working New Yorkers understand who does or does not foster a healthy work environment.”
The comptroller’s report also dinged city-contracted developers and construction companies who were performing work on city buildings or buildings getting tax breaks on the city’s dime and weren’t paying workers properly according to minimum wage and benefits laws.
More than 50 companies the city paid to do work were violating worker pay laws and were ordered to pay roughly $20 million in penalties to the city and the workers they’d shortchanged last year, the comptroller’s office found.
