City of Chicago pays $3.7 million to more than 700 Chicago Fire Department paramedics - roughly an average of over $5,000 per paramedic

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.

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