There should be no special consideration for private business owners to circumvent the law and pay less then minimum wage. Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics, are averaging less than minimum wage, because CA state legislators have allowed private ambulance providers to NOT pay their employees during the employee’s entire period of work. They justified this by manipulating the amount of time a medic has in-between calls, or late at night. Medics do not get the down time that their employees claim; they have to remain on duty, under a uniform code, on the work site premise, OR parked in ambulance someplace in the city. When they do get to go back to a stations, they still have station duties, and they also have to clean, stock, and inventory their ambulances, as well as finalize and submit paper work. 24 hour shift fact, science, facts and truth; circadian rhythms, a person can get no rest in-between calls, even if there are only sitting in an ambulance or at a work station, if they have 30, 45, or even 60 minutes minutes to do so in-between responding to emergencies and transport calls. This extortion is nothing less than a way for private business owners to extort their staff. This allows employers to have 24 hour staffed operations at 1/3 cost. They lied and said it was so the medics can have rest, but there is no rest. Employers should have only staff 12 hour shifts if they do not want to work a medic so hard, but they don’t, because it has nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with exploiting their staff. This is something we would expect to see in a corrupt third world country, not the US. Amend the law, make it a requirement for medics to be paid for every hour they are at work. This is completely un-American, unfair and an abuse of our emergency responders. We demand that medics, and emergency responders be paid for every hour they are at work and not allowed to leave their work sites, duties, and ambulance. If an organization requires that they be fit for duty, on a work site and or available for work, than they employee should be paid for every hour they do so.
