Union leader advises EMTs to request transfers out of congestion pricing zone to avoid toll

The head of a union representing FDNY EMS employees is advising his members who work at three stations within Manhattan’s congestion pricing zone to request transfers to avoid the toll. Oren Barzilay, the president of Local 2507 of District Council 37, which represents EMTs, paramedics and fire protection inspectors, said his members are already suffering from “poverty wages” and will be “pickpocketed” by the new tax.  

“We are mandated by our employer, the city, where to work and we have zero option to work remote,” the union president said in a statement released last week. “FDNY’s financially struggling EMTs and Paramedics can simply no longer afford to protect the inhabitants of Manhattan from 60th Street to the Battery, and our members have been asking for transfers out of the three stations serving Midtown and Lower Manhattan — Station 4, Station 7 and Station 8.”