The owner of a mom-and-pop dry cleaning business that did laundry for the Rockettes says he was hung out to dry by Madison Square Garden bigs over a contract dispute.

But MSG says Busy Bee Laundry is actually the one who played dirty, by paying its workers below minimum wage.

Busy Bee owner Dennis Higgins says his shop had been washing Rockette costumes and usher tuxedos from Radio City Music Hall since his father, a former New York City firefighter, started the business in 1988.

After his dad died in 2004, Higgins took over, eventually reaching a $184,000-a-year agreement with the Madison Square Garden Company in 2008 to do the laundry for the Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theatre.

The trouble started after Higgins realized in 2014 that an electronic tagging system used by MSG to calculate cleaning costs had malfunctioned — and he was out $150,000, his Manhattan civil suit states.

Then, after months of negotiation over the shortfall, he suddenly received a letter from MSG senior vice president Hal Weidenfeld terminating Busy Bee’s contract, which was supposed to run for another two years, the suit says.

“It was devastating. My life was turned upside down,” said Higgins, who is suing MSG for $500,000.
He said he was forced to shutter his family business last year after his biggest client abruptly stopped sending him their dirty uniforms.

But an MSG rep gave a different reason for leaving Higgins high and dry.

“MSG exercised its right to terminate its agreement with Busy Bee after it was made aware of very serious allegations about their mistreatment of their employees — including failure to comply with minimum wage laws,” the spokesman said.

Higgins admitted to The Post he had a wage issue but insisted it was with only one disgruntled former employee. His lawyer, Stephen Nakamura, said MSG officials never mentioned labor concerns during a face-to-face meeting in March 2015.