$3.7 Million Payout for Chicago Paramedics

July 04--Chicago officials have issued more than $1.2 million in penalty payment checks to hundreds of paramedics who a federal court judge determined had been shortchanged on overtime pay.

In addition to the penalty payment checks, the city also issued checks totaling nearly $2.5 million for the overtime it owed to paramedics but had not paid -- for a total of more than $3.7 million to more than 700 paramedics, according to court documents and city officials. Paramedics recently began receiving those checks.

U.S. District Judge John Darrah ordered the payments to make up for underpaid overtime wages dating as far back as 2004. Four separate class-action cases filed between 2006 and 2012 led to the order.

The cases relate to the odd hours worked by the paramedics in the Chicago Fire Department Bureau of Emergency Medical Services. Paramedics work 24-hour shifts, with days off between, often logging 48 hours a week. For all hours that exceed 40 per week, they get paid overtime, at a rate of one-and-a-half times their salary.

For years, the city was paying that overtime, but erred in its calculations of base pay, the court said. Before figuring the base pay on which overtime was calculated, the city improperly deducted the cost of duty availability pay -- a stipend for always being on call -- and other nontraditional wages paid out to paramedics, according to court documents.

Other nontraditional wages included stipends for passing an annual fitness exam, filling a role above their designated assignment and having specialty training qualifications.

The city also failed to include pay for taking part in continuing education training, the court documents show.

Darrah ruled last year that those amounts should not have been deducted from the base pay and ordered the city to make payments for prior miscalculations and also pay penalties. The city earlier this year changed the way it calculates overtime to avoid the problem in the future, according to court documents and city officials.

The city has the money on hand to cover the recent payments and does "not anticipate having to borrow for it," city spokeswoman Libby Langsdorf said.

The $3.7 million in payments won't break the bank at City Hall, with its $7.3 billion annual budget, but they come as Mayor Rahm Emanuel and aldermen are trying to find ways to close next year's projected 2016 budget gap of nearly $1 billion.

Most of that gap is the result of a state requirement that the city dramatically step up payments to the police and fire pension funds, which are a combined $10 billion short of what they need to cover required retirement future benefit payments.

hdardick@tribpub.com

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