Baltimore City municipal employees have ratified a contract that promises significant pay increases, improved health and safety protections, and expanded workplace rights for nearly 2,200 workers represented by AFSCME.

The agreement, overwhelmingly approved by Locals 44, 558 and 2202 last week and formally announced today, includes the first comprehensive overhaul of the pay scale and raises the minimum salary to at least $20 an hour.

The biggest financial improvements come for members of Local 44, which represents Baltimore sanitation, public works, water and wastewater, and general services employees.

They will see an average wage increase of nearly 19% over three years, plus the first increase in hazard pay (from 15 cents an hour to 75 cents an hour) in 37 years.

Local 558 members, representing public school and health department nurses, will get nearly 14% in wage increases, while Local 2202 members, who work for the Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success, will receive 12% over the contract’s duration.

The contract introduces a 25-step salary scale to address wage compression that has long limited pay increases for veteran employees, along with cost of living adjustments of 2.5% for next year and 2.75% for fiscal 2028.

Year of Turmoil

The contract comes after a year of turmoil at the Baltimore Department of Public Works, where two solid waste workers died from on-the-job injuries, one from heat stroke and another crushed by a garbage truck in a narrow alley.

A series of reports by Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming focused public attention on poor working conditions at city sanitation yards, supplemented by media accounts, a state investigation and testimony by angry workers at a City Council hearing.

Not only Mayor Brandon Scott but top leadership at AFSCME came under criticism for their inaction, putting pressure on both parties to raise historically low wages and to address callous management practices, such as requiring sanitation workers to ask permission to use toilet paper kept locked in a storeroom.

The new contract gives union representatives more access to city yards and sets up a health and safety committee to better deal with heat exhaustion and other workplace hazards.

Presidency in Limbo

Still up in the air is who will become president of Local 44.

Sanitation worker Stancil McNair and his allies won the election in August, staging a grassroots campaign that upended Local 44 Vice President Trevor Taylor and his slate.

The local ordered a new election, but an AFSCME judicial panel cancelled the election following an appeal by McNair.

Now the election is apparently back on. The judicial panel, composed of union executives, ruled that there was “employer interference” through a social media post from Inspector General Cumming that appeared to favor McNair’s candidacy.

Although sworn in as Local 44 president, McNair has been unable to exercise the powers of his office. Trevor Taylor remains at his union post, supported by AFSCME Maryland Council 3 President Patrick Moran.

McNair and his allies are appealing the latest decision, and a date when members might have to cast their ballots again has not yet been announced.