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NYC Preparing to Lay Off 'Hundreds' of EMTs Amid COVID Budget Crisis
WNBC-TV
Wed August 19, 2020
Area: New York
The FDNY EMS union said that City Hall is looking to eliminate 400 emergency medical response jobs, just months after first responders were dealing with call volumes as high as 6,500 a day during the peak of the pandemic.
The head of New York City's EMS union says the city is preparing to eliminate hundreds of emergency medical responder positions as the city's budget crisis gathers steam due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.
In a statement to NBC News, Oren Barzilay, president of FDNY EMS local 257 said, "even with the threat of a second wave of COVID-19 looming and two recent outbreaks in Brooklyn, Bill de Blasio and his team at City Hall wants to balance the city's budget on our backs, eliminating some 400 emergency medical responder positions and placing every New Yorker's life at risk."
Barzilay says in his statement, "yesterday, we were praised as heroes, essential workers saving lives. Today, the city government treats us like zeros. New Yorkers who lived through this deadly pandemic know otherwise."
A spokesperson for the FDNY referred questions to City Hall, where a spokesperson stressed that the city "does not want these layoffs to happen, but this is the hole we are in without a stimulus or borrowing authority."
"Our EMTs and firefighters save lives every day and we are working with their unions to find personnel savings to avoid layoffs, but unfortunately all agencies will face layoffs," Press Secretary Bill Neidhardt said. "Without a stimulus or borrowing authority, EMTs and firefighters will have to find personnel savings."
The city said that no layoff notices have been sent as of Wednesday night, and that no final solution had yet been reached as discussions continue between unions and city officials - who said no department is exempt from layoffs.
Mayor de Blasio has said the city may need to cut as many as 22,000 employees as it grapples with declining contributions from the state and a tax base decimated by people leaving the city, a shuttered Broadway, and a nearly non-existent tourism industry.
"We did our job, even as an unprepared city government failed to provide these brave medical first responders and fire inspectors with adequate safety equipment," Barzilay said, ripping City Hall for not providing mental health counseling for those he said have suffered from PTSD as a result of the pandemic. "A person having a heart attack or a stroke or the bleeding victim of a stabbing or gunshot wound cannot afford an extra five to seven minutes of delay that will likely occur if the mayor's master layoff plan is carried out."
The city's EMTs and paramedics responded to record call volume in March and early April, peaking at some 6,500 calls a day.
The EMTs and Paramedics were not immune to COVID-19, at the peak nearly one in four were out sick as the virus ravaged New York City believed to have killed over 23,000 of the city's residents so far. Barzilay said that nine union members had died from COVID as a result of working during the pandemic.
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