Nearly two dozen workers for Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, the low-cost medical provider that’s been plagued by mismanagement and financial turmoil in recent years, will today file individual suits in small claims court over unpaid wages totaling tens of thousands of dollars.
NEON had missed paychecks in December and paid employees irregularly since then, according to workers and a report earlier this year from Signal Cleveland.
CEO Willie Austin, who makes roughly $460,000 a year, addressed the pay issues in a lengthy email to staff on March 5, offering what seemed to be condolences for the missed payments along with a suite of explanations: “unjustifiable legal outcomes” in 2019; a fire that wrecked NEON’s Hough clinic in 2021; COVID’s strain on healthcare; and a devastating cyberattack in 2024.
These “bumps in the road,” Austin explained, are what led to NEON missing payroll in December.
NEON’s general fiscal issues are well documented: NEON also owes millions to a lender who has said its intention is to foreclose on at least some of the clinic’s properties after failing to come to a repayment resolution. That company concluded NEON does not have the resources to remain a financially viable concern.
And as for the employees who first sought help from Cleveland’s Fair Wage Employment Board and are now ready to file suit, he suggested a type of betrayal against the non-profit.
“I apologize to you for not being able to control the wolves in sheep clothing who have successfully been able to dupe many of our employees into railing against me,” Austin wrote.
The Northeast Ohio Workers Center, a local advocacy group, has assisted employees in their efforts to get backpay (including interest) along with a handful of other local organizations including DSA Cleveland and Cleveland VOTES.
Those efforts have so far been met with silence.
“The company’s been horrible with communication,” one medical assistant who’s owed more than $1,000 told Scene under the condition of anonymity in fear of losing their job. “None of the higher ups respond to emails. There’s just really no communication.”
Hence the suits, seen as a last resort from about two dozen NEON employees who believe their employer won’t pay them otherwise.
Lawyers are often so strapped with wage theft claims that they often pass up those with smaller ones, Andy Schumann, an organizer with the Northeast Ohio Workers Center, told Scene. It’s the main reason Schumann advised the NEON workers to stay in small claims court.
“This is a cheap way for workers to represent themselves in court without paying attorney’s fees,” he said. “It’s low cost, potential high award.”
Small claims courts typically place liens on a company’s property, or even a CEO’s car in some cases, to force payments that have been shown nonexistent and past-due for workers. And it’s proved effective.
“Every single wage theft case I’ve taken to small claims court, the workers won,” Schumann said. “I have a 100 percent success rate.”
A call to Austin was not returned Wednesday evening.
Workers who spoke to Scene said they simply want to be paid and continue to do their jobs.
“I don’t want to leave,” one said said. “This is my first job as an adult. I love my patients. I don’t want to leave my patients. I would be devastated if we closed.”
“But our management now is driving us into the ground,” they added. “We are the Titanic and we already hit the iceberg.”
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