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New York Editorial: EMS Deserves Pay Equality

Daily News Editorial Board

08/11/2021

New York Daily News

A call to 9-1-1 in an emergency could bring a fire department paramedic or a fire department firefighter racing to help. Both professionals are highly trained to save lives. But for reasons going back years (like paramedics being civilian employees, while firefighters are uniformed), their pay is wildly divergent, with paramedics and their emergency medical technician colleagues compensated far below the firefighters.

The injustice of an arrangement we already knew to be unfair was magnified in the years before COVID, when paramedics and EMTs answered a growing share of 9-1-1 calls, and was magnified further in the depths of the pandemic, when paramedics and EMTs rushed to even more scenes and were heralded as essential workers. Still, embarrassingly low salaries persisted, with EMTs often forced to moonlight just to make ends meet.

What could have been a big step toward parity should have come last week with a new contract deal between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the two Emergency Medical Services unions. But it is more parody than parity, with the only equality being the EMS workweek moving from their old 37.5 hours per week to the 40-hour standard used by firefighters.

As for higher pay, the deal calls for the same pattern increase that was approved for the other civilian unions. Any ground they make up to get closer to their fellow FDNY lifesavers will slip away with the next round of firefighter bargaining. The EMS unions are suing to be recognized as uniformed employees, entitling them to the stepped-up tier.

The proposed contract only runs until July 28, 2022 (having been backdated several years). That allows the next mayor, taking office on Jan. 1, to take further necessary steps to raise up the 4,500 women and men in EMS towards their firefighters peers.

It has been more than 25 years since EMS was joined to the FDNY. After a quarter century, the second-class status cannot continue. Lives are being saved every day and that is work the city must fairly appreciate.