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NYC ambulance workers, decrying low wages, seek new contract
By
Matt Katz
Published Jul 2, 2024
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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
By
Matt Katz
Published Jul 2, 2024
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New York City ambulance workers have started negotiating their long-expired contract, arguing that their pay is so low they’re struggling to pay for food, transportation and housing.
Negotiations began last month for a new contract for the city’s Emergency Medical Technicians and paramedics. Union leaders say low pay – which starts at around $39,000 a year – has led to high turnover and low staffing levels. They say those, in turn, have contributed to the longest response times to emergencies since the height of Covid, as Gothamist previously reported. The contract for EMS workers expired two years ago.
The unions primarily want to close the pay gap with firefighters and other uniformed first-responders. When he was running for mayor in 2021, Eric Adams pledged to provide “pay parity” for EMS workers, but so far that hasn’t happened.
“We’re just overworked and burnt. With no hope in sight,” said Anthony Almojera, a lieutenant paramedic and vice president of the EMS officers’ union. He said the staffing levels simply can’t handle what workers say are a skyrocketing volume of 911 calls each day.
Last week, Almojera said, he had a crew that was dispatched to Rikers Island in Queens from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, because no closer crews were available.
Michael Fields, chief of EMS operations for the FDNY, said EMTs and paramedics are fully staffed at the amount budgeted by the city, but he would nonetheless accept more staff, which would reduce response times.
“You give me more ambulances, you give me more people, we can definitely decrease response items,” Fields said. “But we have to be fiscally responsible. The mayor is responsible for the entire budget for the city.”
Annual EMT salaries start at $39,386, which is just below that of an app delivery worker earning the new city minimum wage of $19.56, plus tips, working 40 hours a week. EMT salaries max out at $76,472; salaries for more highly trained paramedics top out at $92,635. Members say that even though they’re first-responders who are part of the FDNY, they earn far less than firefighters and enjoy less generous benefits while responding to far more emergencies per shift.
The result is that some quit, new members don’t take the positions and there aren’t enough EMTs and paramedics to respond to emergencies quickly enough, according to EMS union leaders.
EMS is losing about 20% of its employees each year due to poor pay, said Oren Barzilay, president of the union representing EMTs and paramedics.
By his count, EMS Chief Fields said that attrition is just 8%.
Danielle Gustafson, executive director of the nonprofit EMS FDNY Help Fund, said she just wrote a check so an EMS member can pay to rent a subsidized apartment in New Jersey. The member had been living in his car and taking showers at the EMS Training Academy. On the weekends, his union had been paying for a hotel room for him to stay with his kids.
About a quarter of the approximately 4,300 EMS members set aside a small piece of their paychecks to support the nonprofit, Gustafson said.
“A lot of what we do is related to how poorly paid these paramedics and EMTs are,” Gustafson said. “A lot of them survive on overtime.”
Some, she said, live as far away as Pennsylvania for the cheaper cost of living.
Taking in about $1,300 per paycheck, EMS member Maggie Hope said she couldn’t afford to live anywhere near her EMS station in the Bronx, so she commuted nearly two hours to work each day from Middletown, NY. She was paying about $500 in gas and tolls each month for her commute.
“It got to the point, about six months ago, I looked at my bank account and I had $17, and I legitimately wasn’t sure how I was going to get to work,” she said. “I realized I was putting way too much into an organization that wasn’t putting anything back into me.”
Hope recently quit, and found another job.
“It was hard because I loved what I did so much. I loved going to work and knowing I was helping even one person that day,” she said. “But if you can’t pay the bills, then it’s not working out.”
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new york city
public safety
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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