EMS Week shines visibility on city’s paramedics and their fight for higher pay, safer work conditions
Last week’s EMS Week brought much-needed visibility for New York’s emergency medical services, which are dealing with over-exhaustion of their workforce and a rise in assaults since the pandemic. Over the weekend, a caravan of New York’s paramedics and emergency personnel drove through the Five Boroughs — converging on Queens’ Flushing Meadows Park — calling for higher pay and safer worker conditions.
Roughly 70,000 EMS professionals across New York state respond to more than 3.5 million calls for care per year, including providing emergency medical services to more than 150,000 ill or injured children each year. However, their pay has stagnated — despite reaching an agreement with the city to boost salaries last fall — behind their peers in the NYPD and FDNY.