NEW YORK — EMTs and paramedics who lost their jobs when private ambulance company TransCare went bankrupt in February also lost their final paychecks.
NY Daily News reported that TransCare abruptly shuttered on Feb. 24 and declared itself bankrupt — sending its 2,500 employees scrambling to find work.
“The only ones who got paid are the ones who ran to a check cashing place,” Joe Pena, a former TransCare supervisor, said. “All the employees who deposited their checks, got stiffed — they bounced.”
Pena is one of 175 ex-employees who filed a claim hoping to get a piece of TransCare’s liquidation, according to the report.
“Some people are owed 36 hours or more,” he said.
Pena said he only got his last check because he was called in to help move ambulances.
“People were walking off the job, just leaving, so we got calls to come help drive ambulances to the base in Mount Vernon,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who are owed money. I know of some who have applied for unemployment and heard nothing.”
The papers filed in court name TransCare and all its affiliates as defendants, but also a private equity investment firm called Patriarch. The lawyer representing the former employees said TransCare failed to give employees at least 60 days’ notice of their terminations — which violates the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
A TransCare spokesman didn’t return calls for comment.