New York, NYRefusing to pay overtime? Let’s hope that Mother Monster isn’t Born That Way. Her former assistant, Jennifer O’Neill, has filed an overtime lawsuit against Lady G, claiming that she is owed $393,000, plus damages for more than 7,000 hours of unpaid overtime.
The New York Post, which obtained legal records from Gaga’s six-hour deposition last August, quoted Stefani Germanotta (AKA Lady Gaga) as saying that, “Not that people who do that don’t deserve their hourly pay, but I’m just pointing out that I deserve everything I’ve worked for. I deserve every dollar of it. And she deserves every dollar of her $75,000 that we agreed to. But she does not deserve a penny more.”
O’Neill was paid $75,000 per year “essentially as a favor”, according to Gaga, and lived the champagne and caviar life. “And you know what, she didn’t want to be a slave to one, because in my work and what I do, I’m the queen of the universe ever day.”
Hmm, didn’t Gaga say that everyone was a superstar?
Postmedia News quoted Gaga as saying that O’Neill “knew exactly what she was getting into, and she knew there was no overtime. And I never paid her overtime the first time I hired her, so why would she be paid overtime the second time?”
Gaga went on to say that “I’m going to give all the money that she wants to my employees that work hard for me now that deserve it…I’m not going to give it to her so she can go to Intermix and buy herself a new tube top.”
The overtime lawsuit was filed two years ago, when O’Neill claimed she was at the singer’s “beck and call” from 2009 to 2011. Superstar or not, Gaga, you’ll have to let the Court decide whether O’Neill should be compensated for overtime pay.
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