Serving as the 35th commissioner of the FDNY was the honor of a lifetime. We accomplished so much during a very short tenure, setting this great department up for operational success for generations to come.
But one nagging issue that has not been settled: a contract for FDNY’s Bureau of Emergency Medical Services.
Pay for members of the department doesn’t fall within the fire commissioner’s purview, but let me be clear: FDNY EMTs and paramedics deserve a monumental pay raise that reflects the vital importance of their work.
New Yorkers don’t think twice about the men and women who arrive when they dial 911 — they just expect help will come.
Too few are talking about a looming crisis in public safety that the incoming administration must address: pre-hospital emergency care in New York City.
Unless we find pragmatic solutions to improve compensation for members of EMS, the system that saves lives every single day will collapse.
EMS is the future of the FDNY. Every single day, EMTs perform a complex, emotionally demanding, technically sophisticated job under extraordinary pressure.
Improving their pay requires compromise and a willingness to embrace solutions that actually work.
That brings us to the current crossroads.
The City Council recently toyed with the idea of separating EMS from the FDNY, creating a standalone agency.
It was rightly tossed, because while that may sound like a straightforward path to improving EMS, it would have been a detour — one paved with unintended consequences, tens of millions in redundant costs and a diminished ability to provide timely, effective medical care.
It would duplicate every function that keeps the FDNY running, and worse yet would undermine the integrated emergency response system that keeps New Yorkers safe.
And it would not meaningfully address the actual issue at hand: compensation.
Here, we must confront another uncomfortable truth: EMS union leaders have not served their members well by refusing to compromise with City Hall.
Their unwillingness to go to arbitration, and their insistence on achieving full “parity” with firefighters — which has somehow become the immovable center of the EMS union’s negotiation strategy — has halted all progress.
City government operates with finite resources, and the incoming administration will need to work closely with the City Council to deliver for EMS.
Every day spent locked in uncompromising negotiations is a day that EMTs and paramedics earn far less than they deserve.
Meanwhile, the workforce is burning out.
The department loses talented EMTs and paramedics in great numbers not because they don’t love the job, but because what they’re paid does not match the critical nature of their work.
If it stays on this path, FDNY EMS faces a future of worsening staffing shortages and slowing response times — as the system creaks under the weight of problems that could be solved if only union leaders focused on solutions, not symbolic victories.
This is not theoretical. This is our reality.
We have a choice: Leaders can continue down a path of bureaucratic expansion and rigid negotiating positions as the pre-hospital emergency care system crumbles.
Or they can choose a solutions-oriented path that actually helps these frontline heroes.
To the incoming mayoral administration, I say this: Heed the warning.
The system that responds to New Yorkers’ medical emergencies, from car crashes and burns to your loved ones’ heart attacks, is in danger.
Not due to a lack of dedication from its members or vision from the FDNY, but because the people at the negotiating table won’t engage in the practical problem-solving needed to fix it.
To EMTs and paramedics, I say: You deserve better.
Better pay, better equipment, better working conditions and representation that puts your needs first.
And to the unions representing EMS, I say this not as an adversary but as a business-minded CEO who wants the same outcome you do: The path you’re on is not delivering results for your members. Parity cannot be the only horizon.
Compromise is not surrender — it is the mechanism by which progress is achieved.
Our shared goal is simple: provide the highest standard of emergency care to every New Yorker, every single day.
To do that, we must invest in what strengthens EMS: its people.
We must streamline, not duplicate.
We must negotiate, not stalemate.
We must prioritize what works, not what merely sounds good.
New York City’s EMS system can remain the national model for urban pre-hospital care.
But that only happens if leaders choose pragmatism over politics, collaboration over conflict and progress over parity.
Robert Tucker is the former commissioner of the Fire Department of the City of New York.
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