The city’s ambulance corps is so busy that an overtime cap applying to all other agencies has been lifted and medics are routinely putting in 60 and 70-hour weeks, union officials said.
Normally, city workers can’t make more than 40 percent of their salary in overtime. However, with just 4,133 emergency medical technicians and paramedics to handle nearly 1.9 million calls last year, the FDNY’s bureau of Emergency Medical Services routinely dangles overtime to keep ambulances running.
“Other jobs . . . there would be fights in the hallways for getting two hours extra of overtime in a day,” said Vincent Variale, president of Local 2621 of District Council 37, which represents EMS officers.
“At EMS, it’s the complete opposite. You get overtime and everyone is running in the other direction,” he said.