NYC EMS worker blasts de Blasio: Ticker-tape parade was nice, but we need a raise

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EMS worker blasts de Blasio for parade instead of raise: 'We need more money'

New York City paramedic Liana Espinal argues the best way to honor COVID frontline workers would be to pay them more money to take care of their families.

A 13-year veteran of New York City's emergency medical services called for a pay raise Thursday, a day after the group boycotted Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ticker-tape parade for the "Hometown Heroes" of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Giving us a parade just shines a light on how much we need to raise," paramedic Liana Espinal told "Fox & Friends." "We need more money. The thank you and the praise and the parade is nice, but it just doesn't put food on the table and it doesn't allow us to take care of our families."

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Entry-level salary for New York City ambulance workers is just $16.95 an hour, less than $2 more than the legal minimum of $15 an hour.

"Show us in the pay, not with the parade,' Espinal repeated after co-host Brian Kilmeade. "Allow us to be able to take care of our families without having to work 80 hours a week… You can't take care of your family and not be there for them because you have to be at work so much."

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EMS workers last year responded to the highest number of medical emergency calls in the city since the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. During the pandemic’s peak in March of 2020, nearly a quarter of the workforce was on medical leave. 

"We saw more deaths than we'd ever seen before," Espinal said. "It was very mentally and emotionally and physically stressful for us."

Local 2507, the union that advocates for EMS workers, called spending millions of dollars on a parade while treating emergency workers like "indentured servants" the "height of hypocrisy." 

"When it comes to the leadership of this city, the treatment of this workforce is an absolute disgrace," union President Oren Barzilay told The New York Post last month. 

The EMS workers' labor contract expired three years ago and the union's negotiations with the city are ongoing, the Post reported.

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"New York City gathered in celebration of all the essential workers who got our community through its darkest moments. It was the kickoff the Summer of NYC deserves, and it was the least we could do for our hometown heroes. This parade is about them," de Blasio's deputy press secretary Mitch Schwartz said in a statement.