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By Bob Hennelly

Unions representing the mostly women and people of color who comprise the majority of FDNY EMS first responders in New York City tell Work-Bites efforts by the City Council to better protect the workforce from deadly attacks on the job only underscores the pay and benefit disparity between them — and the mostly white males who constitute the bulk of FDNY firefighters.

Last week, the City Council voted to require that all FDNY EMS workers get a properly fitted bullet resistant vest as well as de-escalation training. The legislation comes several weeks after press reports revealing that assaults and threats to EMTS had skyrocketed from just 15 incidents in 2011, when the FDNY started tracking them — to 363 in 2022.

Sponsors of the package also cited the September 2022 fatal stabbing of FDNY EMS Captain Allison Russo, 62, and the March 2017 murder of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo, a single mother of five, who was run over when her rig was carjacked.

“Both of these situations may not have been stopped by a ballistic vest but both of these might have been resolved with some de-escalation training,” said Council Member Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island). “These folks don’t have a choice whether to respond to an incident or not. We expect them to go wherever the danger is….they are our angels and we should treat them like that, and make sure they have the best chance to come home safely to their loved ones.”

According to the  FDNY, which supported the legislation, the bills merely codify into municipal law existing practices at the agency, including issuing a ballistic vest to EMTs after they graduate, as well as providing de-escalation training.

Oren Barzilay, president of DC 37’s Local 2507, which represents FDNY EMTs, paramedics, and fire inspectors, expressed some concerns about the Council’s legislation.

"I am grateful for the council's work. However, the bills fall short of what our members need,” Barzilay wrote in response to a Work-Bites query. “The department has issued ballistic vests to us for years, but the issue is its replacement policy. These vests expire after five years and according to the FDNY's policy, you get the vest the first time in your career, and you're done.”

Barzilay continued, “I also think it should be outlawed for our members to be by themselves in the back of an ambulance. We need to move on three-man crews. The council should also prioritize passing legislation giving us pay parity. Everyone acknowledges and agrees EMS deserves it."

The EMS unions point out the existing inequity extends to sick time, with uniformed members of the NYPD, FDNY and the Department of Sanitation enjoying unlimited sick time, as contrasted with FDNY EMS, still considered non-uniform civilians, who get 13 days of paid sick leave in what is a high-risk job title.  

Lieutenant Vincent Variale is the president of DC 37’s Local 3621, which represents FDNY EMS officers. 

“For close to a quarter of a century, since the City Council first passed the law that granted us our rightful uniform status and it was vetoed by Mayor Giuliani, the City Council has let the great social and economic injustice fester even though they did override that veto,” Variale said during a phone interview. “If this kind of pay and benefit race and gender-based inequality existed in a private company, the politicians would have no trouble expressing outrage.”

Firefighter Regina Wilson is president of the Vulcan Society, the support organization for the FDNY’s Black civilian, firefighting and EMS employees that prevailed in a landmark federal employment discrimination lawsuit that led to a $98 million settlement in 2014 and ongoing monitoring by a federal judge.

“It’s nonsensical,” Wilson told Work-Bites. “You spend all this money buying body armor knowing what kind of city we live in and the hazardous risks that EMS takes. You are equipping them in case something happens to them — which means you have already foreseen they are going to need extra protection, but you don’t pay them for that extra risk they have to take to do their job.”

Retired FDNY EMY Marianne Pizzitola is president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees. She told Work-Bites that back in 2000, EMS personnel were issued vests for the first time and they were never replaced.

“I was issued one of the first body armor vests and then we had to pay for outer carriers and additional protection plates,” Pizzitola recounted. “Kevlar has a warranty of five years and then the manufacturer can no longer promise that their product will stop a bullet or knife. Not replacing them timely is like telling your workers their life is only important to the City for the length of the warranty and then you are on your own. “

Pizzitola continued, “EMTs and Paramedics work side-by-side with our Fire and Police counterparts, and our jobs are just as demanding and dangerous. They have too long been forgotten by this city and it is time they were given parity promised to them with when the City Council recognized us as Uniformed in 2001.  But if the City recognizes their jobs are dangerous enough to provide body armor but not the need for paying them, we still have a problem.”

At City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams April 11, press conference previewing the EMS bills just before passage by the full City Council, Adams disclosed that her daughter had been promoted from being an FDNY EMT to paramedic.

Work-Bites asked Speaker Adams to address the ongoing pay and benefit disparity which is now the subject of a federal employment discrimination lawsuit brought by both Local 2507 and Local 3621. She conceded there was “a tremendous gap” between the two titles.

“You are well aware of the fight that this Council has been in on behalf of our EMS workers for a long, long time — we are still at the table trying to ensure equity…we are still working as a Council at our best to make sure that happens,” Adams said, adding that achieving parity would require the engagement of Mayor Adams and working through the existing collective bargaining process.

Council Member Borelli, the EMS bills’ lead sponsor, also expressed support for improving FDNY EMS compensation, but said the City had recently “taken steps to compensate EMTs better.”

Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams reiterated his support for full pay parity between the FDNY EMS workforce and the firefighting side of the department.

“My goal is to rectify and correct it,” Mayor Adams said in response to a Work-Bites query about pay parity. “It’s only been two years and two months — I know it’s hard for people to believe it — but it’s only been two years and two months.”

The mayor originally declared, “For years, our EMTs, paramedics & fire inspectors have been shamefully denied pay parity — that comes to an end when I become Mayor,” in a Tweet sent out on June 4, 2021.

Last summer, Work-Bites reported on the growing frustration and desperation overworked and underpaid paramedics and EMTs are experiencing waiting for Mayor Adams to make good on his campaign promise.

“He has not come through on anything that he said that he would fix,” EMS veteran Jennifer Aguiluz told Work-Bites in July. “We’re now two years in — and there's been nothing.”

Mayor Adams said the first half of his first term in office had been taken up dealing with COVID, the migrant crisis, crime control, and the city’s economic recovery.

“So, the goal is to look at all of these inequities and start peeling back these inequities as we finish this term, and once I am elected to the next term we'll be able to get more [done],” he said. 

The efforts by Local 2507 and Local 3621 to use the federal courts to accomplish what the city’s elected officials have failed to do for a generation got a boost last month when U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres denied the Adams administration’s motion to dismiss the unions’ class action employment discrimination case.

In denying the City’s motion, Torres ruled the EMS unions had “plausibly alleged that the City’s practice of paying EMS first responders the civilian pattern increase and the fire first responders the uniformed pattern increase is a facially neutral policy that has disproportionately and adversely affected EMS first responder compensation.”

The two City Council bills only cover the FDNY EMS workforce and not the EMS workers in community based volunteer corps or those who are hospital based that answer a third of all New York City’s 911 calls.

The FDNY EMS workforce, rank and file as well as officers, is close to 5,000. According to the EMSPAC, a non-profit advocacy group, NYC’s has a total of 14,500 EMS workers divided into four “distinct deployment models with different funding channels, varying benefits, uniform colors, vehicle colors, conditions, and levels of prestige–FDNY 911 Municipal, Voluntary Hospital 911, Private Inter-facility Transport, and Community Volunteers.”

Back in 2022, an investigation by this reporter revealed the alarming statistics showing a dramatic spike in violent assaults on the FDNY EMS workforce were only a partial picture of challenging workplace conditions faced by the entire industry in New York City that includes volunteer and private sectors EMS also serving throughout the city alongside their civil service colleagues.

International and national occupational health reports have flagged a troubling uptick in violent assaults on EMS workers  as COVID paced unprecedented stress on public health systems.

Not captured in this FDNY tracking are incidents like the 2022 shooting of EMT Richard McMahon, 25, who works for Staten Island’s Richmond University Medical Center, which provides EMS coverage for the city’s 911 system. McMahon is a member of SEIU 1199. 

McMahon, who has subsequently been released from the hospital, was shot on May 18, in the shoulder after he and his partner responded to a 911 “unknown condition” call that brought them to the Funkey Monkey Lounge on Forest Avenue and Llewellyn Place. 

The Richmond University Medical Center EMS crew tried to provide aid to Thomas McCauley, 37, who according to multiple press reports, they had found severely intoxicated  outside the Funky Monkey.

“I was taking down the guy’s information on my tablet and happened to look up and see a gun pointed at my face,” McMahon told the Staten Island Advance. “Sooner than I could react, I heard a loud bang and immediately felt pressure on my left shoulder, got up,[and] screamed, ‘I’m shot! I’m shot!’ to my partner.” 

The wounded EMT managed to grab the shooter’s wrists and disarm him. McCauley tried to flee but was caught by two passersby, retired NYPD detective Marty Graham and Sanitation Department Environmental Police Lt. Joseph Perrone. Press reports said the suspect also had a knife and pepper spray on him.

“It’s very confusing — there are so many different agencies providing EMS related service in New York City,” said Josh Kimbrell, chief communications officer with EMSPAC. “The FDNY statistics doesn’t include any of the agencies outside the 911 system whether volunteer, private EMS, or transit EMS who obviously can also get assaulted and find themselves disabled facing the same financial hardships related to those attacks your civil service EMS worker can face.”