NEW YORK CITY, May 17 — Recently members and friends of our PLP club distributed 100 CHALLENGES over a three-hour period at a city hospital here at the Emergency Department entrance’s ambulance bay, and in the patient waiting area. We sold several copies to hospital workers changing shifts and taking breaks. Some of our best discussions occurred with the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Paramedics bringing patients into the hospital.

The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) staff here has been engaged in bitter struggles against both the hospital administration and the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) which runs the EMS. A few EMS workers had copies of leaflets they had written collectively following the suspensions of several of their coworkers on flimsy or fabricated grounds.

We learned a bit about the history of the EMS system, its working conditions, and, like the rest of the working class, the all-out racist attacks on the standards of living of both EMS workers and the patients they care for.

In New York, the fire suppression and EMS 9-1-1 systems are run by FDNY; FDNY’s EMS branch accounts for about 70% of the 9-1-1 ambulances in the city, with “voluntary” private hospitals comprising the remainder. They respond to an average of 3,300 calls per day throughout the five boroughs. St. Vincent’s hospital in Manhattan’s West Village, a Level One Trauma Center, recently shut down, costing the jobs of five 24-hour 9-1-1 ambulance units, employing 60 full- and part-time EMTs and Paramedics, along with the jobs of the rest of the hospital staff.

According to the EMS crews, since 9/11 the FDNY brass has turned FDNY into a “paramilitary” organization with a strict chain of command, and has set their sights on pushing the higher-paid hospital-based crews out of the system. The reason? EMS is an important source of profits.

Every ambulance ride, whether treatments are administered or not, is billed to either private insurance or Medicaid. They can easily net over $1,000 per patient if oxygen and basic diagnostics like vital signs are taken. For a hospital, Labor and Delivery and EMS are two of the most lucrative sources of revenue. EMTs and Paramedics see none of this.

Starting pay for municipal EMTs working for FDNY is around $33,000 a year; hospital-based EMTs make slightly more, with Paramedics in both systems making even slightly more than that. Most EMS workers, especially those with families, moonlight at other hospitals part-time, easily working 60-80 hours per week.

One of the EMTs told us that, to afford his mortgage, car payments, and provide for his children, he works overnight tours only to jump into his car, drive to another borough and work a morning-to-afternoon shift, sleeping “for a few hours” in the evening before getting into his car and working overnight again, Monday through Friday.

This worker’s routine was not unusual, as we discovered. Another EMS worker gave us one of their leaflets which attacked the racist FDNY brass and hospital administration and called on EMS workers to unite with all hospital workers and patients to demand better working conditions and healthcare.

Unfortunately, many EMS workers have been burnt out by this racist capitalist system’s years of attacks. Many who worked during the 1980s and 1990s saw their communities become literal war zones as the ruling class flooded the streets and homes of black workers with crack cocaine. The EMS workers we spoke with and who took CHALLENGE were mostly black, Caribbean, and Latino.

Some of the younger workers have avoided burnout, and are involved in local community organizations providing GED and health classes as well as classes for young mothers ages 12 to 22, along with basic literacy. Others have planned solidarity dinners with staff from St. Vincent’s hospital; we plan to assist these workers every step of the way with more CHALLENGE sales, helping distribute their literature, and linking their struggles with those of their international working-class brothers and sisters.

While we were warned that some of their
coworkers were openly racist and “basically Nazis,” and may obstruct our efforts to organize there, we reassured them that they are not struggling alone. Our PLP club will continue to make new contacts. We will use CHALLENGE to sharpen the struggle against the racist FDNY brass and swindling hospital bosses alike.

We have been discussing how the U.S. bosses’ war needs will dictate more racist hospital cutbacks and closures, among escalating attacks on the working class in every other country. We have pledged to step up our organizing efforts.

If there are any other comrades and friends who are EMS workers — or know any — in any country, we encourage them to write for CHALLENGE and share their struggles and experiences.