DAILY NEWS – Opinion Page
By Voice of the People | New York Daily News | September 16, 2025
Dangerous and lifesaving work deserves fair pay
Whitestone: Our FDNY EMS personnel work in harsh, dangerous conditions — often at shootings, stabbings, overdoses, cardiac events or communicable disease scares — to protect New Yorkers, yet City Hall shamefully refuses its medical first responders respect and fair pay.
Your story (“Eric’s fail on EMT pay,” Sept. 7) spotlights Adams administration leaders openly denigrating our work and lifesaving impact on Gotham. Our 4,000-plus EMTs and paramedics are not just ambulance drivers. We are specially trained medical professionals providing on-the-spot medical triage as New York City’s street doctors.
All we’ve asked and the mayor actually committed to was a wage commensurate with our peer first responders at the NYPD, FDNY firefighters or Nassau County EMS. We are tired of the mayor lying to the press, the public and us, saying the administration looks forward to settling on a fair contract, as they have not yet negotiated in good faith.
The result is frightening for public safety — a 70% attrition rate — since the mayor and his cronies think that all we’re worth is $18 an hour. Ask the 1.63 million patients we provided care for in 2024 if they think that is reasonable.
The members of the EMS think New Yorkers’ lives and our lifesaving medical work is worth so much more.
Oren Barzilay, president, FDNY EMS Local 2507