Lack of response

To the editor:

It seems increasingly unlikely that the women and men of the FDNY Emergency Medical Services will be treated "fairly" in their current contract negotiations (“City proposing civilian wage pattern for EMS workers, unions say,” The Chief, this issue).

For the last contract, negotiated in August 2021, the Office of Labor Relations disregarded the law passed by the City Council in 2001 outlining “similar” terms and conditions to those in the city’s uniformed services. 

Rather, the de Blasio administration touted that the 2021 FDNY EMS contract conformed "to the pattern reached with other civilian unions.”

But no City Council has ever pursued legal action against any mayoral administration for not following City Law 19 of 2001.

Now, the city finds itself defending against a discrimination lawsuit filed by the FDNY EMS unions after an investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that among other discriminatory and unfair labor practices, the city "improperly treated and compensated EMS first responders as civilians, when they are uniformed personnel." 

EMS EMTs and paramedics are working 16-hour days to cover staffing shortages. Patients in need of emergency medical treatment and transport are waiting longer. And at the same time the city is recouping, is it hundreds of millions of dollars, by billing patients and their health insurance companies for EMS emergency medical treatment and transport. And the city can't be "fair.”

It's like living on "Bizarro World".  The mayor, the Council speaker, the chair of the Council’s Finance Committee and the Council have all said, many of them publicly and repeatedly over years, that they favor parity for the approximately 4,400 FDNY Emergency Medical Technicians and paramedics.  So far, no elected official has ever made that a reality.

Helen Northmore