‘People are leaving’: New York City’s EMS workers are struggling to make ends meet – The Guardian

‘People are leaving’: New York City’s EMS workers are struggling to make ends meet  The Guardian

EMS workers, who make life-or-death decisions in emergencies, are the lowest paid first responders After 31 years in New York City’s emergency medical services, Oren Barzilay has started giving young New Yorkers advice he never imagined giving when he began his EMS career. “Don’t come here,” he tells them. “You are only going to hurt yourself.” It is a striking reversal for Barzilay, the recently retired president of FDNY EMS Local 2507. What changed for Barzilay was not his view of work or the value of service. It was what he believes is the New York City failure to pay the people who put their lives at risk to save the lives of others.

Barzilay’s reversal comes as New York City’s EMS workforces remain locked in a years-long fight over wages and pay parity. The fight has become an early test of a contradiction facing Mamdani’s young administration. As a candidate, Mamdani built his political identity in part around organized labor, affordability and demands that employers pay workers more. As mayor, he now sits on the other side of the bargaining table, responsible for a vast municipal workforce and a finite city budget. EMS workers’ years-long campaign for higher wages and pay parity – unfolding as his administration filed a lawsuit to stop $10,000 payments to public-school paraprofessionals in court