After 31 years in New York City’s emergency medical services, Oren Barzilay has started giving young New Yorkers advice he never imagined giving when he began his EMS career. What changed for Barzilay was not his view of work or the value of service. It was what he believes is the New York City failure to pay the people who put their lives at risk to save the lives of others.
Barzilay’s reversal comes as New York City’s EMS workforces remain locked in a years-long fight over wages and pay parity. The fight has become an early test of a contradiction facing Mamdani’s young administration. As a candidate, Mamdani built his political identity in part around organized labor, affordability and demands that employers pay workers more.
As mayor, he now sits on the other side of the bargaining table, responsible for a vast municipal workforce and a finite city budget. EMS workers’ years-long campaign for higher wages and pay parity – unfolding as his administration filed a lawsuit to stop $10,000 payments to public-school paraprofessionals in court – is forcing that tension into the open. For many EMS workers their job is a passionate calling.
Natasha Villaruel, a paramedic, has about 20 seconds to make a life-saving decision. When the 36-year-old paramedic receives a 911 call for someone in respiratory distress, the routine begins almost automatically, with precision. You try to get there as fast as you can,” said Villaruel over the phone.
By the time she and her fellow paramedic reach the doorway, she is already reading the patient’s vitals. Yet the workers entrusted with those decisions are among the lowest-paid first responders in the city. An FDNY EMT starts at $39,386 a year, barely above New York City’s minimum wage.
After five years, an EMT can earn roughly $59,534, but a firefighter with similar years of experience makes as much as $105,146 – nearly double what EMS and EMTs make. Many EMS workers are struggling to make ends meet. Villaruel said her own household is sustainable largely because her husband is a firefighter.
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