Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
(TNS)
The federal government wants the city to resolve the massive salary gaps between its firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics — a bombshell determination that has become the backbone of a new class action discrimination lawsuit for equal pay among the city’s first responders, the Daily News has learned.
About 25 current and retired city Emergency Medical Service workers have signed onto the lawsuit, which centers around the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s decision that City Hall has “discriminated against current and former first responders of the FDNY’s EMS, based on race and sex, from at least November 8, 2018 to the present with respect to pay, benefits and terms and conditions of employment.”
The feds recommended in December 2021 that the city “reach a just resolution of this matter” and opened the door for a potential lawsuit if the city “declined to enter into conciliation discussions.”
With no further movement on the issue, EMS unions stepped through that door on Dec. 7 with the class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal court seeking to correct the pay disparity.
Citing the EEOC report, the 57-page suit argues that the city “suppressed the salaries of EMS First Responders despite the fact that they perform work that is substantially equal in the required skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions as their fire side colleagues.”