A new lawsuit accuses a private ambulance company of wrongly deducting workers' pay for traffic tickets they received while driving ambulances on medical assistance calls.
"These EMTs and Paramedics had earned wages taken directly out of their paychecks without prior or concurrent authorization, allegedly to pay for moving violations the company had received from the City of Chicago and/or other municipalities, issued to their ambulance vehicles," said the class action lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Courte against Elite Medical Transportation, LLC. "This amounts to theft of wages."
The complaint cites paycheck deductions of $50 and $100 to pay for the moving violations.
Named plaintiffs in the action include Andreas Maynor, Sara Flynn and Pablo Acevedo.
"Plaintiffs do not have employment agreements with Elite which authorize specific deductions from Plaintiffs’ pay for moving violations issued to the Company," the lawsuit states.
The company requested that some of the employees sign a pay deduction authorization after the deduction had been made, but they refused, the suit says.
Illinois law "requires employers to pay their employees according to their agreements and to pay employees all earned wages or final compensation," the suit states.
"A key common question of law and fact involves whether Elite made these deductions without authorization," the lawsuit says. 'Similarly, all the proposed class members have had unlawful deductions made from their pay."
The employees seek reimbursement for the deductions with interest and attorney fees.
"This case is filed on behalf of the scores of current and former EMTs and paramedics during the statutory period who, despite devoting thousands of hours per year to critical life-saving work, have not been paid their promised, agreed, and earned wages for their work," the suit said.
The plaintiffs are represented by Ramsin G. Canon, of Canon Law Group, of Chicago.