A few of our stories and columns are now in front of the paywall. We at The Chief 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:
A bill to separate the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from the Fire Department was on the agenda at a November 2025 NYC City Council hearing. Driving the bill is years of frustration over low wages and lack of parity between the FDNY EMS and the fire division.
In 2021, the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission had already determined that the city "failed to adjust the pay scales of EMS first responders to keep pace with the changes to their duties since the City merged EMS with the Fire Department in 1996.”
An hour and forty minutes into November's hearing, the Committee on Fire and Emergency Management chairperson expressed her own frustration to Daniel Pollack, first deputy commissioner of the NYC Office of Labor Relations (OLR), the agency responsible for EMS' contract negotiations.
Joann Ariola's remarks included, "If OLR was not so obstinate in truly collective bargaining with our EMS and with our paraprofessionals . . . we would not have to legislate. . . . I paid my intern this summer more than a (DOE) paraprofessional and an EMT gets. How is that fair? . . . I am so tired of hearing just pushback from bureaucrats in OLR and pushback from the mayor's office saying there's nothing they can do. . . negotiate with them honestly."
Such words won't buy groceries. In 2022, the year in which the last EMS contracts expired, the cost of buying food to eat at home rose 11.4 percent. In 2023, that cost increased another 5 percent, and another 1.2 percent in 2024, and another 2.3 percent in 2025.
In a first for an FDNY Commissioner, Lillian Bonsignore's "2026 State of the FDNY" address included, "EMS is the lowest paid first responders . . . and that is unacceptable . . I believe in pay parity."
Is City Hall listening?
Helen Northmore
1 comment on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
JTKerr
I applaud the Commissioner for supporting EMS workers and hope that Mayor Mamdani is listening and takes action! But arity alone will not solve the deeper challenge.
When EMS was transferred to FDNY in 1996, the promise was that emergency medical care would become fully integrated into the Department’s mission, priorities, and leadership structure with equal standing to fire suppression. Nearly three decades later, experience has shown that this institutional shift has yet to occur.
Medical emergencies outnumber structural fires in New York City by about five to one. In practice, emergency medical services are the predominant reason New Yorkers call FDNY. Yet EMS has never received the same institutional focus, cultural priority, or sustained investment that fire operations have enjoyed.
That disparity has operational consequences. Fire response times average four to five minutes — a national benchmark. EMS response times for life-threatening medical calls are far longer, often exceeding ten or eleven minutes in boroughs where demand is highest and hospital delays are most severe. In fact, response time is currently higher than it was when FDNY became responsible for EMS in 1996.
Pay parity for EMS workers is absolutely essential though parity alone will not solve that deeper challenge. What is required is sustained executive leadership, backed by the Mayor, that explicitly recognizes EMS as a core mission of the department and embeds that recognition into budget and staffing decisions, deployment priorities, training, and performance measurement.
Absent a genuine and sustained commitment to that cultural change filtering down from the highest levels, the City would ultimately be better served by establishing EMS as an independent mayoral agency, with the resources, compensation, governance, and infrastructure necessary to protect lives across all five boroughs. Doing so would require ongoing mayoral stewardship to ensure EMS funding is protected as it competes with larger agencies—but it would also stand as a tangible demonstration of what principled, progressive public-safety governance can achieve.
Fire response is already a national model. With the right leadership choices and institutional commitment, there is no reason emergency medical services cannot be one as well.
Shouldn’t New York City EMS be recognized as a national success story too?
Friday, February 13 Report this