Officers at AFSCME Local 44 finalized after contentious second election
Clarence Thomas is elected vice president of the local that represents sanitation and other blue-collar city employees
Above: Clarence Thomas (left) and Stancil McNair listen as Reginald Peaks testifies about dangerous conditions faced by sanitation workers at a City Council hearing in April. (CharmTV)
Veteran sanitation worker Clarence Thomas was elected vice president of AFSCME Local 44 in a weekend runoff, completing the roster of officers at the municipal union that underwent an election re-do earlier this month.
After months of internal disputes and legal wrangling following grassroots activist Stancil McNair’s surprise victory as local president, the union has announced the people elected to represent over 3,000 municipal sanitation, public works, transportation, school system, health department and other blue-collar employees.
As previously reported, McNair won a second time as Local 44 president over Trevor Taylor, who protested the first election as unfairly influenced by social media posts from Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming – an accusation that Cumming and the Baltimore City Ethics Board rejected.
While McNair’s margin of victory over Taylor was higher than in the August election, three candidates split the vote for vice president, leading to Saturday’s run-off where Thomas defeated Arthur King, a Taylor ally.
In an interview, Thomas said he had been pushing union leadership for years to do a better job of representing workers and demanding higher pay (until the latest contract, Baltimore sanitation laborers were typically paid about $44,000 a year).
“Our leaders never really focused on the people doing the work. They were collecting the dues money, but they never did the job. As vice president, I’m gonna be in the yard finding out what people need and letting them know what’s going on,” Thomas told The Brew.
He will be sworn into office this week.
Trevor Taylor (center) watches as Mayor Brandon Scott, Labor Commissioner Deborah Moore-Carter and AFSCME Council 3 President Pat Moran sign a new contract covering sanitation workers last month. (Mark Reutter)
Outspoken
McNair was sworn in last August, but was blocked from many of his official duties, which were handled instead by Taylor.
With the elections finally over, the other Local 44 officers are Secretary Treasurer Timmeeka Pettus; Recording Secretary Dara Dorman; executive board members Teresa Blow, Teresa Fleming and Anthony “Doc” Wyche; and trustees Kim Farabee and Shakendra Diggs. Most were members of McNair’s election slate.
McNair and Thomas were among the workers who spoke to IG Cumming about hazardous conditions and demeaning practices at the Bureau of Solid Waste following the death of two sanitation workers, one from heat exhaustion and the other crushed in an alley by a garbage truck.
Both men broke ranks with union leadership and publicly criticized AFSCME Council 3 at a City Council hearing in April, then mobilized a campaign to counter its preferred candidates for office.
Shortly before the December 6 election re-do, Trevor Taylor and Council 3 President Pat Moran shared space in City Hall’s Ceremonial Room with Mayor Brandon Scott.
Scott lauded his administration’s new pay package with Local 44, while denying that he was trying to influence the outcome of the vote. Whatever was the motive for the joint press conference, rank-and-file members chose McNair and now Thomas over the old guard.
“Clarence and I have the same goals,” McNair told The Brew, “and we’ll be working together to get this union to represent the people, not the bosses.”
READ our ongoing series: Unsafe conditions for city workers