If NYC*EMS Was Around Today?

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If NYC*EMS was around today, instead of having been merged with FDNY in 1996, do you think things would be different?

For example, do you think pay would be better, and it would be comprable to a third service municipal agency such as Boston EMS?

[ny10570 745]

Not even close. Before the merger, take over, or what ever people call it NYC EMS was an after thought to HHC. Thats one thing people forget, NYC EMS was never independent. Were it spun off into a true third service I think things would have been even worse. From Koch through Giuliani EMS was never looked upon as an essential emergency service. Koch felt listing FD, PD, and Sanitation were the three big services a city must provide. He saw EMS a function of the hospitals since you could always take yourself there rather than have them come to you (This is the same mayor that while in office had to be picked up and treated by NYC EMS). Giuliani tried to dump EMS onto the voluntary hospitals by handing out nearly 50% of ambulance slots city wide. The Fire Dept saw EMS as a way to keep their run numbers up, increase their budget, and increase their influence within the city. As a result EMS has been slowly expanding out from its few hospitals to smaller and more spread out battalions, the fleet is newer than it ever was under HHC, we're now running more units than ever before, we have a quartermaster to provided all of our uniforms and PPE free of charge, and dozens of other small little perks that just aren't feasible with a 3,000 member service. Now there are many who disagree that things are better under Fire. To those I ask what has gotten worse since fire took over.

The money is independent of what patches we wear or who's budget heading we're under. We still have to convince the office of labor relations and the mayors office how much money we're worth. The first step was becoming an independent bargaining unit apart from DC37. Next came being designated an uniformed service. Now that we have those two we'll see what our union do to get us some money. But even then it takes time. All these changes could have happened wether we were under HHC, PD, Fire or on our own.