For weeks, Cleveland’s Fair Employment Wage Board had tried to meet with the head of NEON health services to find out when the nonprofit was going to pay workers the back wages it owed them. On Tuesday, board members and a contingent of supporters showed up — unannounced — to demand some answers from President and CEO Willie Austin.
Austin agreed to meet with Bishop Eugene Ward Jr., the wage board’s vice chair. The men met for more than an hour. When Ward emerged from the meeting, he had some answers that raised questions.
“The employees are supposedly paid – according to him,” Ward said. “I told him that we will investigate whether that is true.”
John Ryan, the board’s consultant, quickly checked with some employees to see whether they had received the two missing weeks of pay from December. They told him they hadn’t.
Signal Cleveland asked to speak with Austin after he had met with Ward and was told he was in a meeting. We will update this article with his comments when he responds.
Austin agreed to meet with the full board at a date to be determined, Ward said. He also agreed not to retaliate against employees who have been in touch with the board, Ward said. The board is protecting the employees’ identities because they fear losing their jobs for speaking up.
“I told him that we don’t want them to be punished in any type of way because they are talking to us,” Ward said.
Ward and Ryan were among about 15 who showed up at the Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services Inc. Payne Avenue headquarters seeking a meeting with Austin. The group included other organizations that had contacted Austin about employees not receiving back pay.
The Board was established by city law to stand up for working people under various situations.”
Jan. 12th email Cleveland’s Fair Employment Wage Board sent to NEON CEO Willie Austin requesting a meeting to discuss back wages for employees.
Austin only agreed to meet with Ward, even though board Chair Matt Ashton sought to meet with him. A staffer first told the vice chair that the CEO had tried to return Ward’s call, but his voicemail was full. Ward said Austin told him he had returned his call. Ward said he has no record of receiving a call from Austin.
NEON operates seven health centers, primarily in East Side Cleveland neighborhoods, and two mobile units. Another clinic in Hough has been closed since a 2021 fire. Last summer, a lender sued the nonprofit in federal court after it defaulted on a loan. A judge agreed to place NEON under the control of a receiver, but late last year that process was paused after the lender and NEON began negotiations to try and resolve their dispute
Cleveland’s wage board aims to ‘stand up for working people’
In December, NEON failed to pay its employees and promised to catch up, though pay stayed irregular for the next several weeks. Many employees told Signal Cleveland their paychecks weren’t deposited or paper checks they received bounced. Some staff members said they were unable to pay rent or bills.
The nonprofit has since caught up on some of the back pay. But two weeks in December are still in question.
The board was prompted to take action after reading in Signal Cleveland in early January that NEON employees hadn’t been paid, said Ashton, the board’s chair. The board doesn’t have direct authority to order NEON to give workers their back pay. Its purview over wage theft is limited to employers with city contracts of at least $75,000. Wage theft occurs when an employer doesn’t pay workers what they are owed. Companies found to have engaged in wage theft can be barred from doing business with the city.
The board is using its bully pulpit to help attack wage theft. Ashton and other board members view the board’s mission as helping to improve the living standard of Clevelanders by addressing workplace issues, especially those relating to pay, in one of the nation’s poorest big cities.
The board was dormant for more than two decades. A few years ago it was reestablished with new members. By late last summer, with all of the housekeeping chores of reorganizing completed, the board started gearing up to do its work. Working on getting NEON workers their back pay is the board’s first public action, Ryan said.
“The Board was established by city law to stand up for working people under various situations,” Ryan wrote on behalf of the board in its Jan. 12 email to Austin requesting a meeting “to discuss this dire situation.” The board also asked what NEON was doing to get workers their pay. After Austin didn’t respond to the email, Ward was assigned to call him to set up a meeting.
Community groups, including the Northeast Ohio Worker Center, emailed Austin Jan. 23 requesting that workers be paid and also asking that he meet with them to discuss the matter. Like the board, the organizations never heard back from him, according to Grace Heffernan, the worker center’s executive director, who joined the board Tuesday at NEON headquarters.
About two dozen groups have joined the worker center in lobbying for the workers to get paid. They include Cleveland VOTES, DSA Cleveland and Collaborate Cleveland. The North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor also sent a letter to Austin and never received a response, according to Brian Pearson, who leads the labor organization, and was part of Tuesday’s group. (NEON workers are not unionized.)
Ashton said when the board learned of faith and community-based groups galvanizing around NEON workers not getting paid, they decided to bring them into the board’s effort to get workers their back pay.
“We feel like we’re pretty uniquely positioned to gather these people together and try to put some pressure on this man,” he said of Austin. “I mean, he’s making half a million a year or more. He should be able to at least work with his employees to make sure that they get paid.”
Austin made $460,652 in 2023, according to the last available form the organization filed with the IRS regarding its finances. Nonprofits are required to file Form 990 annually. The board doesn’t know how many employees haven’t been paid or if Austin continued to be paid when workers didn’t receive their wages, Ashton said.
The worker center helps wage theft victims recover their wages, but it hasn’t yet heard from any NEON employees, Heffernan said. NEON has also stopped paying workers’ monthly health employment premiums, Ashton said. Heffernan said this is also a form of wage theft.
“We want the workers to know that there are organizations and groups that can support them through this process [of recovering their wages], and we want to send a signal to other employers who may be thinking about stealing from their workers that there are consequences,” she said.
Ashton agreed.
“Furthermore, the workers are incredibly fearful of retribution and have been a bit reticent to speak. We hope being visible will help them feel emboldened to trust us and allow a legal process to move forward,” he said.
Wage board has other concerns about NEON employees not getting paid
Board members and community groups have not only been outraged that workers haven’t been paid. They’re appalled that Austin partly blamed employees for not getting paid, saying that they hadn’t done enough “to see that revenue is coming in to cover all the expenses the organization incurs.”
Ashton, who owns Lekko Coffee on Detroit Avenue, couldn’t believe that Austin would email such sentiments.
“I’ve only got 14 employees and I can’t imagine having even a down day or a down week, and saying that my staff are the reason that I chose not to open up the pocketbook and make sure that they’re paid for the hours they put in.”
The email also shocked Ward, pastor of Greater Love Baptist Church on East 116th Street.
“I’ve been pastoring the church for 43 years, and if there’s ever a problem with people getting paid, I make sure I don’t take my salary first,” he said. “I make sure the people get paid, because I need their service. I need their time. I need their energy.”