A few of our stories and columns are now in front of the paywall. We at The Chief-Leader remain committed to independent reporting on labor and civil service. It's been our mission since 1897. You can have a hand in ensuring that our reporting remains relevant in the decades to come. Consider supporting The Chief, which you can do for as little as $3.20 a month.
To the editor:
The City Council's Fiscal Year 2026 budget response to the mayor’s spending plan recommends a salary increase for FDNY emergency medical technicians: "Addressing pay disparities is critical to stabilizing the EMS workforce and maintaining reliable emergency response citywide." The Council is not alone in sounding the alarm. FDNY Commissioner Tucker recently acknowledged that within the department’s emergency medical services, the situation is "critical."
The Council's proposal is not the parity that Mayor Adams promised. The Council has advocated EMS wages to be comparable to other city "first responders" since 2019. It has never accomplished more than to print its aspirations.
The historically out-of-kilter EMS wages mean it's increasingly harder for the city to recruit and retain medically trained and experienced first responders. In 2024, city EMS personnel responded to more than 600,000 calls for life-threatening medical emergencies, the kind that can kill. But on a recent day, just 70 percent of the city's target for EMS ambulances were in service, while the number of fire trucks in service was over 90 percent. Soon, hundreds will be moving from the EMS to the firefighting side.
The seemingly impossible-to-budge wage and benefits disparity between two groups of FDNY first responders — firefighters and EMS personnel — led EMS unions to file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2021, the commission’s investigation found that "workloads, working conditions, training, and risks to EMS First Responders and Firefighters are comparable, with a substantial degree of overlapping duties, especially with respect to medical emergencies" and that "the two groups have comparable accountability and responsibility.”
A 2024 audit indicates that the FDNY EMS netted over $450M for NYC, eight times more than the projected tax dollars budgeted to run the EMS for FY 2026. No other NYC first responder group so nearly pays for itself, while giving thousands whose hearts had stopped a second chance.
Helen Northmore
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here