On September 12th, community members, EMS workers, healthcare workers, former Falck employees, National Nurses United, and activist organizations came together in Aurora to bring attention to the wages and working conditions facing Falck employees. What brought people into the streets was simple: the people providing emergency medical care deserve to be paid fairly for the work they do.
In Aurora, EMTs are receiving wages at the city’s minimum wage, while paramedics are making $30 an hour. These are professionals entrusted with some of the most consequential moments of a person’s life. They respond to cardiac arrests, traumatic injuries, overdoses, medical emergencies, psychiatric crises, and countless other situations where patients and families are often experiencing the worst day of their lives. The expectation placed on EMS workers is enormous, yet the compensation and working conditions too often fail to reflect that responsibility.
For years, EMS has been told that this work is a calling, that the reward is helping people, and that we should be grateful for the opportunity to serve our communities. There is truth in the fact that many of us chose this profession because we care deeply about helping people. That dedication, however, should never become an excuse to underpay the people doing the work or expect them to sacrifice their financial security simply because they care about their patients.
Remember When We Were Heroes?
The 25th Anniversary of September 11th was the day before the demonstration. Every year, we hear the words “never forget” as we remember the first responders who ran toward the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the surrounding streets while others were running away. They entered buildings that were burning and collapsing, knowing there was a possibility they might not make it back out. Many never did.
We call those people heroes, and they deserve to be remembered that way. But it is important to remember something else about them: they were workers. They were people with families, bills, mortgages, rent, healthcare needs, and futures they were trying to build. Their willingness to risk their lives did not make those things disappear.
Twenty-five years later, we continue to use the word hero when we talk about first responders. We did the same thing during COVID. EMS workers, nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, hospital staff, and countless other healthcare workers were praised for continuing to show up while much of the country was told to stay home. We were thanked for walking into hospitals, ambulances, nursing homes, and homes where a deadly virus was spreading. We were told that we were heroes because we were doing what needed to be done when the stakes were at their highest.
Being called a hero does not pay rent. It does not provide healthcare, build a retirement account, cover childcare, or make an unsafe workplace safer. It does not address chronic understaffing, excessive workloads, burnout, inadequate training, or the financial stress that forces experienced EMS workers to leave the profession they spent years building a career in.
The signs eventually came down. The applause stopped. The word “hero” became less common, but the problems did not disappear with it. The same workers who were celebrated during a crisis still had to show up for work afterward, often facing the same low wages, staffing shortages, difficult working conditions, and lack of meaningful worker protections that existed before the crisis.
You Cannot Build EMS on Sacrifice
The contradiction is difficult to ignore. EMS is considered essential when someone calls 911, indispensable during a disaster, and heroic when a crisis makes headlines. Yet when EMS workers ask for better wages, adequate staffing, safer working conditions, benefits, retirement, or a meaningful voice in their workplace, those demands can suddenly be treated as unreasonable.
You cannot build a sustainable emergency medical system on the assumption that people will continue sacrificing their financial security because they care about their patients. Passion is not a substitute for a living wage, and dedication should not be something employers can use to justify asking workers to accept less.
This is also a patient care issue. When experienced EMS workers cannot afford to stay in the profession, they leave. When staffing is inadequate, workloads increase. When turnover is constant, experience disappears. When training is rushed or insufficient, workers can be placed in situations they are not adequately prepared to handle. These problems do not exist in isolation from patient care; they directly affect the system communities depend on when they call for help.
That is why the fight for EMS workers is also a fight for the public. A community deserves an emergency medical system staffed by experienced professionals who are compensated well enough to make EMS a sustainable career rather than something people eventually have to leave behind.
This Is Bigger Than Falck
What happened in Aurora on the 12th was about Falck, but the underlying problem is much larger than one company. EMS workers across the country are dealing with questions about wages, staffing, workload, training, workplace safety, benefits, unionization, and whether this profession can actually provide a sustainable career.
Organizations such as the Emergency Medical Services Public Advocacy Council, or EMSPAC, are working to bring those issues into the national conversation. EMSPAC’s EMS Bill of Rights calls for stronger protections and standards for EMS workers, including fair wages, benefits, retirement, paid leave, workplace safety, educational opportunities, and other basic protections that workers in other parts of healthcare have fought for and won.
EMSPAC has proposed minimum compensation standards for EMTs and Paramedics. These proposed wages represent a broader recognition that EMS requires education, training, clinical judgment, physical work, emotional resilience, and an enormous amount of responsibility that are not required in similarly paid fields.
The question should not be whether EMS workers deserve more because they are heroes. The question should be why a profession that is so essential to healthcare and public safety has allowed its workforce to become so undervalued in the first place.
It Was About Solidarity
That is what made the demonstration significant. This was not simply a group of employees standing outside of their workplace asking for more money. Community members stood alongside EMS workers. Former Falck employees came forward to share their experiences. Healthcare workers joined the demonstration. EMS workers from outside of Falck showed up because they understand that the conditions imposed on one workforce can eventually become the standard for everyone.
National Nurses United, the largest healthcare union in the country, also stood alongside EMS workers. That solidarity matters because EMS cannot be separated from the larger healthcare system when we are part of it, even when the industry and policymakers treat us as though we are somehow outside of it.
The people providing emergency medical care deserve the same basic consideration given to workers throughout healthcare. We deserve the ability to make a living, to have safe working conditions, to organize, to speak about problems without fear, and to have a meaningful voice in the conditions under which we provide care.
We Are More Than the Uniform
There is a tendency to romanticize sacrifice in EMS and emergency services. We are told that the job is different because we care more, because we are willing to run toward the problem, because we chose a profession where other people’s emergencies become our responsibility. But none of that means we stop being human when we put on a uniform.
The people working in EMS have families, responsibilities, bills, health problems, financial goals, and lives outside of the ambulance. We experience exhaustion and trauma. We need time away from work. We need to be able to plan for retirement. We need to be able to afford housing and food. We need to know that speaking up about an unsafe condition will not put our livelihood at risk.
Wanting those things does not make someone less dedicated to their patients and wanting fair pay does not make someone less compassionate. The same way a union does not make someone less professional. It boils down to wanting to be treated fairly so we can continue to do what we all find rewarding enough to get into this field to start.
In fact, demanding better conditions is part of protecting the future of EMS. The people we respond to deserve an emergency medical system that can retain experienced workers, attract qualified professionals, and provide the level of care communities have been taught to expect.
We can be proud of the work we do while still demanding better from the institutions that employ us. We can care deeply about our patients while recognizing that our labor has value. We can honor the first responders who came before us while refusing to accept the idea that sacrifice should be the foundation of our profession.
For decades, society has called us heroes when it needs us most. After September 11th we were called heroes, during COVID we were called heroes, and almost every time there is a disaster, a mass casualty incident, or a crisis, the same word comes back.
Maybe it is time for that word to mean something more.
If we truly believe the people doing this work are essential, then that belief needs to show up in more than applause and public praise. It needs to show up in our paychecks, our staffing levels, our benefits, our working conditions, and our rights as workers.
We do not need another thank you. We need a sustainable profession that allows the people who provide this care to afford a life while doing it.
The fight is bigger than Falck, and it is bigger than one demonstration. It is a fight over what EMS is going to look like for the people who work in it and for the communities that depend on it.
We have spent years being told that we are heroes. Now it is time to treat us like workers.