Labaton Suckaroo - Scrooge Of The Year

"Dear Tom,

I nominate Labaton Suckaroo for the Scrooge of the season award. I worked for them at their offsite Merrill Corp hellhole earlier this year and I blogged about the infamous Blondie who was the team leader at the site. I managed to find something else, but I have some friends who are still working on the same Countrywide project back at Labaton’s headquarters downtown. They related the following to me: Labaton promised their temps, who they made short temp attorney employees, benefits after six months of service. Last week, they were called into a meeting on their six-month anniversary and told by a nasty personnel troll that they would not be receiving their paid vacation that had accrued or be paid for company holidays, Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, for this year. Some of these short term attorney employees had already planned vacation days over Christmas and got it approved, but now were told that you are not getting paid for it and that you are not getting paid for the company holidays either, and it’s too bad if you made plans. Lousy Labaton postponed all benefits until 2010 in order to avoid paying their employees for Christmas.

You can imagine what this has done for morale in a situation where they expect their short-term attorneys to build a plaintiff’s case in a multi million-dollar lawsuit against Countrywide, which was acquired by Bank of America. This is not mere document review. They expect their ex temps to do substantive work for $32 an hour flat while temps who are doing the same work, but representing a co-counsel on the same case at Labaton are making $45 an hour. Also, they recently blocked Internet access because the sleazy Guliani type COO came down and observed a few people on the Internet; apparently the same greaseball was instrumental in stopping Christmas pay.

Well, I guess Labaton Suckaroo is following in the great tradition of other ambulance chasing plaintiff firms like Paul Weiss and Milberg Weiss. I suggest you also put Labaton Sucharoo in your hall of shame. I know that they are very conscious of their image, as Paul Weiss was when you embarrassed them before, and they do monitor this blog. Thanks for providing this forum to expose the hypocrisy and abuse of these toilet law firms. I know that your blog does make a difference; Blondie almost got fired last time.

All the best!"