NEON Workers Win Wage Theft Lawsuit Against Their Employer

About a dozen employees of the Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services won wage theft suits against their current or former employer months after the healthcare company’s financial woes came to light.

Cleveland judges sided with those who sued, agreeing NEON owed 11 workers payments from $1,400 to a bit over $5,000, Signal Cleveland reported. Workers originally claimed in February that they were owed back pay stretching to December.

Andy Schumann, an activist at the Northeast Ohio Worker Center who helped NEON workers file the complaints in small claims, questioned the nature of wage theft cases just as he commended the court system.

“I’m proud of these workers for fighting so hard,” Schumann told Scene.

“Why is it that an employer can commit tens of thousands of dollars of theft against dozens of workers and get away with it?” he added. “Yet if a worker steals several thousand from their employer, boss can call the cops and get them locked up with a felony?”

This week’s judgement is a big score for wage theft organizers frustrated by how widespread the issue is for workers often unaware of the money they’re owed or how to go to court to right the losses. Most wage theft cases are tied to daycares, restaurants, temp agencies and gas stations, according to Policy Matters Ohio.

Formed as a not-for-profit in 1967, and tax-exempt since 1969, NEON has provided low-cost healthcare from nine locations and a handful of mobile dental units. CEO Willie Austin took over in 2003.

It was under Austin that NEON seemed to have hit financial straits. A pandemic-era reliance on handouts, coupled with a fire in 2021 and a cyberattack in 2024 resulted, said Austin in an email to staff, to internal struggles—“bumps in the road,” he said—and difficulties keeping pay on schedule.

NEON’s cash reserves were depleted by the end of 2025, he said. Austin relied upon “emergency donors” and his own funds to keep the operation running.

Still, Austin recognized in his March 5 letter that he was “still on the hook for the payments that NEON is presently unable to make,” he said.

“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,” he wrote. (Austin did not return a call from Scene requesting comment.)

Austin’s plea for understanding ultimately fell on deaf ears. In a flyer, workers questioned where the allegedly approved $28 million in funding “until 2027” ended up.

“Where did it go?” the flyer stated. “This is not just management. This is a betrayal of trust.”

Workers who won this week will have to maneuver a garnishment process, which means they’ll have to decide on yet another legal process to ensure that Austin and NEON actually pay them the money the court declared they are owed.

Regardless, Schumann, the organizer, said the judgment is at least a signal to other violators that wage theft is a no-go in the city.

“The local bureaucrats and lawmakers are in for a rude awakening as the working class recognizes that these systems that allegedly deliver justice actually oppress us,” he said.

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Mark Oprea

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