Mike Greco was concerned. At the beginning of March 2020, New York City had confirmed his first case of Covid-19 and the vice president of Local 2507, the union that represents the city’s emergency services (EMS) workers, knew how overworked and exhausted EMS workers already were. At a special hearing of the city council On March 5, he testified that EMS is already handling 1.5 million calls a year. “If you had half a million calls left in a pandemic, you would be overwhelmed by the system,” he said.
Hundreds of rescue workers and paramedics from the New York Fire Department (FDNY) contracted Covid-19 last spring, and the city relied on reinforcements from across the country. Until the end of 2020 five paramedics and paramedics at the FDNY had died of Covid-19. Three more died by suicide .
“Treatment for EMS has left the city completely unprepared,” Greco, a 13-year EMS veteran in New York City, recently told me. “That March 5th prophecy was not a great prophecy. We have been shouting from the rooftops for many, many years that the city should be prepared for the worst possible event.”
Rescue workers in NYC have been protesting low wages and what they see as disregard for the city government since the 1980s. Mayors from Ed Koch to Bill de Blasio have said that EMS work is “different” than policing or firefighting, which means that the pay gap is a result of skill levels or the dangers one is exposed to at work. In the minds of paramedics and paramedics, however, the past year should have erased any notion that their work was less valuable or less dangerous than that of other first responders. ”
Today’s rescue workers and paramedics say low wages are driving them out of the job. The EMS collective agreement expired in 2018, and negotiations, which have been suspended due to the pandemic, have started again. Workers say the city’s emergency medical system will be more fragile than ever if the new contract doesn’t raise wages and improve conditions.
After five years, rescue workers only make $ 50,604 and paramedics $ 65,226. For comparison after the same period Firefighters Take $ 85,292 home and you can earn an additional $ 25,631 in overtime, vacation pay, better retirement plans and unlimited sick leave. The union says inequality is also a question of racial justice: fifty-nine percent of the EMS workforce are colored people 77 percent of New York City firefighters are white.
Greco said his local often pays hotel rooms for paramedics and paramedics who live out of their cars or sleep in their stations because they can’t afford rent. “You cannot afford to live in the city where you serve,” he said. “Nobody who saves lives for a living should worry about where their next meal will come from.”
Second class worker In March 1988, the ambulance and paramedics in New York City were angry and frustrated. Her contract had expired. Dragging Ambulance response times and staff shortages made headlines . Lots Quit the job because of low pay . Then Mayor Ed Koch reportedly noted at an EMS graduation ceremony that they did not earn the same salary as firefighters and police.
Paramedics and paramedics had heard enough. Hundreds of union members voted to participate in an unauthorized illness that violates Taylor Law, which prohibits city workers from striking. Almost half of the rescue workers and paramedics in the armed forces did not show up for work. 45 temporary employees were later fired . But the tactic put pressure on the city, and the new EMS contract , signed July 1988, included a 5 percent raise.
In the 1980s, EMS was part of the Health and Hospitals Department. In New York City, early ambulance workers were hospital nurses who drove with doctors. Gradually the work required more complex skills and certifications, but the pay remained low.
“To say that what we did as paramedics and later as paramedics was not dangerous is one of the most ridiculous arguments of all,” said Bruce Wolk, a former Manhattan paramedic and paramedic in the 1980s. “We routinely put ourselves at risk all the time.”
Wolk, who is now a writer and lives in Colorado, said he loved the job but the pay was too low to hold on to. “I lived in Manhattan, and even in those old days it was ridiculous what they paid us.”
EMS also followed other first responders in terms of benefits such as paid time off for injuries and illness in the workplace, an issue that came to the fore in 1990. On August 13, Correction Officers (COs) blocked the bridge to Rikers Island in a subsequent slowdown in a series of conflicts with detainees. When EMS arrived for medical care, COs prevented ambulances from picking up patients and injured eight rescue workers and paramedics. (“Two days of prison guards against everyone” read the New York Times Heading)
“Emotions were so high we basically had the leverage at this point,” said work organizer Alan Saly, a former assistant to the President of Local 2507. “We said we were going to call a strike and we didn’t care. ” what the penalties will be. ”
The city was forced to negotiate. Until September it had agreed to pay full wages for up to 18 months for those injured at work.
The next big changes to EMS came in March 1996 under Mayor Rudi Giuliani when the service merged with the FDNY. This followed a nationwide trend as the number of fires decreased and fire departments tried to maintain their budgets and workforce. The merger has increased the number of EMS employees, which has eased the pressures of staff shortages and shortages somewhat Reduced response times . However, being part of the fire brigade did not result in equal pay.
“A lot of people thought that after the merger they would get these benefits through osmosis,” Saly said. “But it didn’t turn out that way.”
The merger opened the way for rescue workers and paramedics to become firefighters, but many rescue workers rejected the idea of being “promoted” to fight fires.
“Most of the base did not want to join the fire department,” said Wolk. “We wanted to keep our independence. That way we could have broadened and found our professionalism [related] Career paths. ”
Other rescue workers say that the skills of a paramedic or paramedic are different from those of a firefighter. Carl Gandolfo, the current admissions secretary of Local 2507, said he had staff who left EMS to become firefighters but that they miss patient contact that is essential to medicine. “They really don’t like the job on this side that much,” he said. “They love EMS, but they had to go to the fire because of the pay.”
Gandolfo said the EMS alliance has additional benefits for the FDNY, which has long been persecuted by racial and gender discrimination lawsuits. Several jurisdictions have forced the department to hire more women and people of color. The merger with EMS improved the overall diversity figure of the FDNY while the fire fighting workforce remained largely white and male.
“You can take advantage of the fact that we have the majority of women and people of color,” said Gandolfo. “It is a sad state of affairs that you have a mayor who preaches diversity and then actually hurts every round when it comes to our working members here.”
An FDNY spokesman said the department did not combine the diversity of EMS and fire, adding, “The department had carried out extensive recruitment campaigns over the past decade to diversify the ranks of firefighters.”
Covid crisis In early 2020, as the coronavirus threat loomed, Mayor Bill de Blasio assured New Yorkers that the city had it “ the best emergency response teams in the nation . ” But when the wail of the ambulance sirens began to fill the streets, his government did little to support the workers who rushed to the aid of the people.
Al is a paramedic in Brooklyn who only wanted to use his first name for fear of reprisals. (In 2020, the fire department suspended or deployed four rescue workers and paramedics for violating operating procedures shortly after speaking with reporters.) Al said he had been at risk of coronavirus transmission for months, and as more and more rescue workers and Paramedics got the virus and the station was understaffed, he often had to work 16-hour shifts. He also told me that he cannot support his family with a paramedic’s salary and that he is supplementing his income by delivering pizzas. “There is no future here. There is no future at all, ”he said. “I wouldn’t recommend the job to my son or daughter.”
In early April, de Blasio responded when paramedics and paramedics like Al responded to coronavirus calls answered a question on equal pay by saying: “ It is not time to invent something spontaneously in the middle of a crisis. ”
Al described the city’s indifference to the paramedics and paramedics as a “slap in the face.”
Despite being hailed as heroes, newbies still live on the poverty line and veteran paramedics have quit, escaped, and burned out. Ambulance workers have told news outlets that they are working through the pandemic and then Processing of George Floyd’s murder and other acts of violence against black people have brought them to a breaking point. In June an EMT at the private ambulance company Senior Care was suspended after supporting protesters from Black Lives Matter in uniform.
Low EMS wages were in the news in December 2020 when the New York Post published an article on Lauren Kaitlyn Kwei, a medic who uses an OnlyFans page to supplement her income. Instead of bowing to the pressure, Kwei put on weight social media and talked about the exploitative conditions EMS workers face.
Kwei, who works for a private ambulance company, wrote that many of their employees have to take on a second or third job. She spoke for many in her profession when she wrote, “I LOVE my job and I love taking care of people. … I want to serve the City of New York.”
cost cutting New York City is now facing the largest budget deficit in decades. FDNY is a public emergency medical service, but it relies on income from patient insurance companies. When it comes to EMS, the city acts like a private company trying to keep labor costs down while maintaining revenue from transportation charges.
“This is a problem that inevitably lands on the back of a paramedic or paramedic,” said Josh Seim, a sociologist at the University of Southern California and author of Association, sorting and hectic
With the public paying attention to the requests to avoid non-urgent emergency calls, the market demand for emergency services declined. The FDNY switched the EMT and paramedic shift from eight to 12 hours without warning. In December, the FDNY raised how much it costs for patient transport. An FDNY spokesman told me that the service fees are regularly increased, and yet: “The EMS revenues do not nearly cover the full costs of operating EMS.”
Paramedics and paramedics in private ambulance companies are feeling the pressure even more. Seim said the profit motive leads to longer shifts, short and informal breaks, and burnout.
Seim noted that during the height of the New York City pandemic, there were some ambulance companies in other parts of the country Shorten hours and face layoffs .
“It shows what happens when you have capitalist medicine running on a processed system,” Seim said. “It will not address people’s needs, but the conditions of the market.”
Greco, the 2507 local vice president, said to me, “Lord knows that without unions, management would have no incentive to actually do the right thing. It’s about numbers, just the bottom line.”
The city says it needs to keep costs down, but EMS union leaders point out that increasing their pay compared to spending on police and fire department salaries would be a drop in the ocean. “The past year has shown the importance of having a strong EMS agency,” said Greco.
While EMS wages are low in many cities, New York City has a particularly high cost of living. And in Boston and the District of Columbia. EMTs start at $ 57,000 and $ 48,731 each higher than the $ 35,254 in New York.
Boston, Saly said, “is a good example of how political circumstances can change the situation for the workforce. … EMS was championed by Boston mayors.”
EMS is one of the few unions work in New York City under an expired collective agreement. The city commissioner has argued Since the private sector pay for UMS is comparable, the FDNY does not need to increase the pay.
The New York Labor Relations Bureau (OLR) is now back at the negotiating table. The result will show how much the city values the first responders who risked their lives to provide medical care during the pandemic. The OLR declined to comment on this article and the mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
“This is the time to correct 30 years worth of unfair compensation practices and ultimately lead EMS into the 21st century,” said Greco. “If the city doesn’t do this right after the pandemic, they’ll have completely lost EMS as a service.”
