After the death of two Baltimore sanitation workers on the job last year, much has been written about solid waste crews’ battles with punishing heat and cold, aging trucks and dilapidated facilities, a toxic work environment and callous city government.

But some workers are critical of a supposed friend – their own union.

AFSCME Local 44, which represents solid waste workers and truck drivers, has essentially been absent as hazardous conditions have proliferated and pay has stagnated at little more than the level of a fast-food worker.

That’s what numerous workers told Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, according to one of her investigative reports, and that’s what several of them testified to heatedly at a March 20 City Council hearing.

“The union? They need to shut it down today!” exclaimed Richard Daniels, 67, who said Local 44, to which he pays monthly dues, provided him with little help after he suffered an on-the-job spinal injury 15 years ago, followed by triple bypass surgery.

Like other sanitation employees who spoke, Victor Lee Butts Jr. denounced the union for failing to get them more money over decades.

“I got 36 years with the city, and all I’m making is $20 an hour?” Butts declared.
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• FOR THE BREW’S CONTINUING COVERAGE: Unsafe conditions for city workers
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“People ask when I’m gonna retire, and I say, ‘How can I retire off of $1,800 a month? Before taxes. My rent is over $1,000 and then there’s gas and electric.’ I’m going to have to work till I drop dead.”

As for Local 44’s leaders, “they only come out when it’s time to vote,” Butts said.

Pointing the finger at city government, AFSCME officials pushed back – an effort that reportedly almost turned physical outside the Council chambers.

Stepping up to the microphone, Antoinette Waters said she’d just seen a union official, who had testified earlier, confront one of the sanitation workers who had also testified.

“I just saw the rep threaten an employee to meet him outside. That’s crazy to me,” said Waters, a Department of Public Works employee based at the Northwest Transfer Station.

“The police had to escort them out. . . push him out,” Waters told the City Hall audience.

She and her co-workers need different union representation, she declared. “If he can’t handle himself in a professional setting, how does he handle himself in the workplace when it comes to us?”

“Are we just stuck with them, and that’s what we have to deal with?” Waters asked the sitting council members.

Desire to Decertify

No one on the council answered, but others are raising the same question about Local 44.

“They really just do nothing for us – for 20 years they have done nothing,” asserted Stancil McNair, a DPW employee for the last decade.

At the hearing, McNair praised Inspector General Cumming and Public Works Director Khalil Zaied, while having quite different words for Local 44.

“I want to thank Ms. Isabel and Mr. Khalil and his team,” McNair said, lauding Zaied for coming out to the Cherry Hill yard and engaging with workers. “But one that I’m not going to thank is the union.”

McNair told The Brew that he and some co-workers have been trying to get enough employees to support a request to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold an election to decertify the union. (Local 44, actually, is not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, which only applies to the private sector.)

He said he’s now hopeful that more workers will overcome their fears of retaliation and join him in publicly speaking out, including at the next union meeting on April 19 at AFSCME Maryland Council 3’s Bush Street headquarters.

“God willing, a lot of people will show up,” he said. “We need to put pressure on them.”

Union Responds

That pressure campaign comes as negotiations between Local 44 and the city continue with no announcements so far about a promised pay raise for solid waste workers.

Baltimore’s $4.6 billion budget for fiscal 2026 includes $5 million more for the solid waste division (including two new positions to “ensure employee safety”), but no information about a salary hike.

Citing a $85 million budget deficit, the Scott administration announced on April 8 a freeze on spending by the police, fire and other departments, while just a week earlier, Mayor Brandon Scott and the Board of Estimates approved lucrative employment contract extensions for City Administrator Faith Leach, Police Commissioner Richard Worley and other high-ranking staff.

Such spending priorities haven’t sit well with those interviewed by IG Cumming, who say they struggle to make ends meet and that some solid waste workers have been homeless.

Asked the status of bargaining talks with  the Scott administration, a spokeswoman for AFSCME Maryland Council 3 said negotiations are underway.

“Our bargaining with the City of Baltimore continues with more negotiation sessions at the end of the month and next month scheduled,” the union said in a statement to The Brew. “We are awaiting responses from the city to our proposals and have additional proposals we will be sharing at our next session.”

The union disputed criticism of its representation, saying AFSCME Local 44 has fought for workers’ rights for decades.

“The city bears the responsibility of providing safe working conditions for all workers, and we continue to put pressure on the city to start listening to its workers and address these issues,” the statement continued.

It also disputed the allegation that Anthony Wyche, a Local 44 executive board member, threatened a worker at the Council hearing.

“Our union’s understanding is that Mr. Wyche was leaving the hearing room when someone yelled something in his direction,” the statement said. “He asked that person to clarify what they had just said and asked them to talk outside the chamber.”

Charm TV video of March 20 City Council committee hearing. Worker testimony begins at 2:26:15.

Dorsey Defends Union

At the hearing, it was clear that the union had at least one steadfast ally in the room – Councilman Ryan Dorsey.

Dorsey grilled Cumming about her recent reports on conditions at the city’s solid waste facilities, saying, “There was considerable effort to kind of rake the union over the coals and some of it seems really questionable.”

“I see a lot of kind of disparaging comments about the union representation,” he continued. “In putting together this report, did you find that the union had actually asked for these things to be bargained?”

“I was trying to find out what was true, what was not true, and the union stopped me from trying to do that”  – IG Isabel Mercedes Cumming.

Cumming said her report was based on interviews with about 130 employees.

“If you felt a disparaging feel about the union,” she offered, “it’s because that is the disparaging feel we were given by the employees about the union.”

Cumming said she heard many questions from employees about how their dues money was being spent, but was stonewalled by the union when she tried to get answers by subpoenaing financial records, an experience detailed in her report.

“We received not one, but two letters from their attorney, telling me that the Office of the Inspector General does not have jurisdiction over the union,” Cumming said. “I was trying to find out what was true, what was not true, and the union stopped me from trying to do that.”

But Dorsey continued to press her.

“In fact, Local 44 has been asking since last summer to bargain on matters such as the longevity scale for pay increases and the starting pay at $15.50 an hour,” the councilman said, listing in detail union actions that should have been noted her report.

“A study to address the scale change and the pay compensation . . .  the hazard differential. . . heat stress standards, request for workplace violence standards, requests for collaborative trainings,” Dorsey said. “All of these things are things that have been sought by the union to be bargained and that haven’t been bargained.”

“I don’t appreciate being called out like that”  – Councilman Ryan Dorsey, after workers said he was seen texting messages with a union official at a Council hearing.

The hearing took another confrontational turn when, according to McNair, one of the union officials was spotted in the audience texting Dorsey as he questioned Cumming.

“The union is texting him points of what to say to Ms. Isabel. We watching this! And y’all want us to trust y’all?” an angry McNair told the committee, pointing at the councilman.

“I don’t appreciate being called out like that,” Dorsey replied. (The councilman has not yet replied to a request by The Brew for a response.)

“This is our lives y’all are playing with,” McNair shot back. “You want to play that type of game, you got to listen to this.”

Highlighting the conflict, Cumming has since circulated video of Dorsey’s exchange with McNair on social media, along other workers’ anguished personal stories and pleas for salary increases and more.

“Reginald Peaks spoke his raw truth about the pay and conditions at the hearing,” Cumming wrote, introducing one of the videos. “These are OUR workers & I will be sharing a different plea for the next few days.”