Mayor Adams has yet to make good on an election year promise to boost wages for FDNY emergency medical services workers, with new information emerging about his embattled confidante Ingrid Lewis-Martin pushing hard against that vow while still at City Hall, the Daily News has learned.
On the 2021 campaign trail, Adams pledged he would as mayor see to it the FDNY’s emergency medical technicians and paramedics get paid as much as firefighters, who start with salaries around $54,000.
“For years our EMTs, paramedics & fire inspectors have been shamefully denied pay parity — that comes to an end when I become Mayor,” Adams, an ex-NYPD captain, tweeted on June 4, 2021, echoing calls from union leaders who say their members’ starting salaries of just about $36,000 have driven them into poverty and caused a staffing crisis that’s impacting emergency services response times.
But with only a few months to go in his first term and slim chances at reelection, Adams’ administration has not put EMS workers’ wages on par with firefighters amid a bitter labor negotiation with their unions, whose members are going on more than three years without a contract. A new recording obtained by The News sheds light on one potential reason for the logjam.
The recording is of a November 2023 meeting that played out amid the tense negotiations between a group of advocates for FDNY EMS workers and Lewis-Martin, who at the time was Adams’ chief adviser at City Hall.
Lewis-Martin, who resigned in late 2024 shortly before being indicted on a bevy of corruption charges, told the advocates she didn’t believe the FDNY’s emergency service workers deserve to be paid as much as firefighters because they don’t work “on the same level.”
“You think they should get paid similar like as a police officer or a fireman?” Lewis-Martin can be heard asking in the recording, which was provided to The News by one of the advocates in attendance on condition of anonymity.
After an advocate replied, “yes,” Lewis-Martin shot back: “No.”
“I wouldn’t agree with that, because they do work, EMS workers definitely do work, but not on the same level as a police officer or fireman does. No, that definitely doesn’t make sense to me,” she said despite Adams’ 2021 vow to give the FDNY’s emergency services workers parity with their firefighter colleagues.
One of the advocates tried to convince Lewis-Martin otherwise by noting FDNY emergency services workers — whose unions have for years said their salaries are incompatible with living in one of the most expensive cities in the country — are technically “more educated” than firefighters in that they have to go through nearly a year of training.
But Lewis-Martin rejected that argument, contending firefighters do far more significant work.
“They have to know how to put that hose and turn that freaking release up – you don’t know that,” Lewis-Martin told the advocates. “That’s not the same education.”
Oren Barzilay, a FDNY EMS worker who serves as the president of one of the department’s emergency response unions, said he had a similar conversation with Lewis-Martin during negotiations with the administration in July 2024, just weeks before the corruption investigation into the chief adviser landed in the public spotlight.
“She said that we don’t deserve it and that our jobs are not as dangerous as the [firefighters],” said Barzilay, who shared a copy of an invite to the July 15, 2024 Zoom meeting in which Lewis-Martin allegedly shot down his push for better pay.
“I was taken aback by it because we had never heard the mayor say anything like that and our jobs are just as dangerous – we walk on the same calls as police officers, the same calls as firefighters,” Barzilay added, noting his members have been in shootouts and fires and also face the risk of contracting diseases when they respond to certain calls.
Lewis-Martin, who was indicted on an additional set of corruption charges last month alleging she used her City Hall powers to do government favors in exchange for bribes, declined to comment this month.
A source close to Lewis-Martin said she wasn’t aware of Adams’ campaign pledge when she spoke to the advocates and Barzilay. The source also said Lewis-Martin had no official role in the contract negotiations with the EMS unions and didn’t talk to Adams or other administration officials about the matter.
Kayla Mamelak, Adams’ spokeswoman, also said Lewis-Martin didn’t attend any official contract negotiations with the EMS unions.
As to the current status of the talks, which appear to be at a standstill, Mamelak said Adams “has a proven track record of reaching fair labor agreements with our represented employees.”
The negotiations have dragged on as Barzilay and other union heads continue to demand Adams make good on his campaign vow.
So far, the administration isn’t budging.
Meantime, Adams is facing tough odds in November’s mayoral election and is reportedly considering dropping out of the race in order to take a job in President Trump’s administration, which dismissed the mayor’s corruption indictment earlier this year. Adams has said he is staying in the race.
Barzilay said every month more of his members are leaving the department in order to take higher-paying jobs elsewhere. Some of his members, he said, are living in homeless shelters because they can’t afford rent.
Staffing levels in the department are as a result so low 143 of the FDNY’s 669 ambulances are out of service because there aren’t enough workers to drive them, department officials said last year. Against that backdrop, response times to emergencies have climbed significantly, with New Yorkers waiting several minutes longer than they used to for ambulances to show up during emergencies, city data shows.
“Mr. Mayor, you promised us pay and benefit parity,” Anthony Almojera, an FDNY EMS lieutenant and vice president of another EMS union, wrote in a recent op-ed published in The News. “It’s time to keep that promise — not for us alone, but for the millions of New Yorkers who count on EMS when their lives are on the line.”
