NYC’s Pay Parity Crisis is a Matter of Life & Death for FDNY EMS EMTs & Paramedics

FDNY EMS Officers Union Local 3621 VP Anthony Almojera with comrades Timothy Cusack and Terence Lau. [l to r]

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By Joe Maniscalco

Editor’s Note: Work-Bites recently had the opportunity to talk to Anthony Almojera, Vice-President of FDNY EMS Officers Union Local 3621, about the crisis facing New York City EMTs and paramedics. This is Part I of a two-part report.   

We are more than halfway through New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first year in office and the unaddressed crisis facing municipal EMTs and paramedics has grown so bad FDNY EMS Lieutenant Anthony Almojera reports that three colleagues battling suicidal ideation have reached out to him for help in the last six weeks alone.

“The most recent one this past Friday,” Almojera told Work-Bites on Monday.

Fourteen FDNY EMS personnel have actually succumbed to suicide since 2020. Almojera, on the job since 2004, began keeping a personal log of all the times co-workers pressed beyond their limits have reached out to him seeking support. At last count that grim tally was up to 47.

Chronically insufficient pay coupled with the increasingly super-human demands of the job have pushed New York City EMTs and paramedics to the brink, according to Almojera, who also serves as vice president of the FDNY EMS Officers Union Local 3621. So much so that the entire system is now toeing the “precipice of total collapse.”

FDNY EMS is hemorrhaging as many as 10 to 15 EMTs and paramedics every week as a result of New York City’s ongoing failure to achieve pay parity with cops and fighters, according to Almojera. The total number of personnel lost by year’s end, he estimated, could reach as high as 900.

Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams famously vowed to bring pay parity to FDNY EMS EMTs and paramedics if elected.

“For years our EMTs, paramedics & fire inspectors have been shamefully denied pay parity—that comes to an end when I become mayor,” he said in a social media post on June 4, 2021.

Adams, nevertheless, left office failing to move the needle on FDNY EMS pay parity.

“Mayor after mayor—all the way back to [Ed] Koch—has just let EMS rot,” Almojera said.  “And so, we're at the precipice of total collapse.”

Almojera attributes much of the problem to the City’s “insane” adherence to pattern bargaining when negotiating wages and benefits with municipal labor unions.

“You’re telling me we can’t fix EMS because [the City is] worried the other unions are going to come and say, ‘Well, we want whatever you gave them?’” Almojera said. “They’re not entitled. They’re not entitled to what they gave us—they’re not in the same shoes.”

Council Member Joanne Ariola [R-District 32] is now calling for new legislation providing FDNY EMS EMTs and paramedics with a $20,000 to $25,000 “workforce stabilization payment” after New York City Council members backed a similar one-time, non-pensionable payment scheme for hard-pressed paraprofessionals whose starting salaries amount to less than $32,000 a year.

But that solution falls far short of adequately addressing the crisis facing FDNY EMS EMTs and paramedics, according to Almojera.

“It's appreciated. It's it's nice to see somebody saying, ‘Hey, there's an issue here with pay.’ But a one-time bonus, non-pensionable, paid out quarterly over the year, while it will provide relief, it’s not what’s needed here,” he said. “It’s not going to keep anybody here.”

The number one thing struggling FDNY EMS EMTs and paramedics are missing, according to Almojera, is the institutional knowledge and experience that could be coming from well-seasoned colleagues who have experienced the worst the job has to offer. But they do not have the vital support because of the constant flow of seasoned personnel fleeing the job.

“There’s a bunch of people who are 20 years or more—and then there's about 75-percent that are five years or less experience,” Almojera said. “There's nobody in the middle. So, there's nobody there to say, ‘I went through this, too. This is how I handled it.’ There’s no mentorship.”

Almojera said he still has hope Mayor Mamdani and his administration will finally achieve pay parity for FDNY EMS and fix the crisis threatening City EMTs and paramedics.

Work-Bites reached out to the Mayor’s Office for comment on this story—but we have yet to get a response.