Union Official: FDNY EMS Providers Will Soon Make Less than Instacart Shoppers

A flag flies on an FDNY ambulance.
Photo/FDNY

Food delivery workers in New York may soon be making more money a year than the brave men and women of FDNY EMS.

Oren Barzilay, the president of AFSCME Local 2507, sent this memo to New York City Mayor Eric Adams imploring the mayor to pay EMS providers fairly. The full letter is as follows:

As your Administration with other City Hall leaders implement a key minimum wage scale for app-based delivery drivers, who will see their compensation leap 185%, from $7/hr. to nearly $18/hr. in three weeks, and then to $19.96/hr. by April 1, 2025 – a total jump of $13/hour – the insufficient and lower wage of FDNY EMS members sticks out like a sore thumb.

Currently, FDNY EMTs saving lives every day, start at roughly $18.94 an hour, less than your new plan for fast food delivery drivers. Is the message that the city government values speedy delivery of bagels, fast food, and pizza, more than its medical professionals saving lives of other New Yorkers?

As first responders, our dedicated FDNY EMS do a difficult and dangerous job – coming into regular contact with communicable diseases, cope with significant job stress, are often attacked on the job, serve patients with significant mental illnesses, and mugged by lawless individuals brandishing weapons.

It is both sad and ironic that in approximately the last year, one of our EMTs resigned to take a job with the online grocery service Instacart, at a higher wage and without job dangers. Uncompetitive wages and poor conditions make this the norm for our job.

Despite the city’s costly investment our significant medical training, job turnover is stratospheric, with 30% departing after three years and 50% after five years, as wages are nearly 65% lower than our peer first responders at NYPD. Unless something is done, without further red tape and foot dragging, this brain drain will only get worse.

The 4,000 FDNY EMS members are The Big Apple’s Street Doctors and deserve better treatment and compensation, yet our employer is focused instead on fixing conditions and wages in the private sector, and not in its own house. It’s time to address the long simmering wage inequities at the FDNY EMS.

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