Scott’s pledge to raise solid waste worker wages so far amounts to a small summer stipend
Residential pick-up crews will temporarily get $50 more a week in return for starting their shifts at 5 a.m. As for permanent wage increases – nothing.
Above: Mayor Brandon Scott at his State of the City address. (CharmTV)
Following two on-the-job deaths and three inspector general reports excoriating workplace conditions encountered by sanitation workers, Mayor Brandon Scott made a straightforward promise in his 2005 State of the City address:
“To our DPW workers: You have the most important jobs in Baltimore. . . We will raise DPW wages in their next contract.”
Months later, no new contract has been signed, and the city’s fiscal 2026 budget includes no specific allocation for a wage hike.
Instead, a $50-a-week temporary stipend has been added to the wages of some – but not all – solid waste employees between June 1 and September 30, 2025.
Currently, sanitation employees get some of the lowest wages in city government – as little as $42,000 a year, or slightly more than the average wage of a fast-food worker.
The summer stipend will increase pay by 1.6% to 2% depending on whether an employee is classified as a “worker” or a “driver.”
Tomorrow Mayor Scott and the Board of Estimates are set to approve $190,000 for the stipends, which would amount to 0.04% of the city’s $4.6 billion annual budget.
Text of the the mayor’s April 21, 2025 State of the City speech. BELOW: Average base pay at the Bureau of Solid Waste as of February 2025. (Office of the Inspector General)
New Start Time
The small increase will go to those assigned to DPW’s Routine Services Division, which handles curbside trash and recycling collection, according to city officials. Excluded are crews that pick up commercial trash and trash at parks and other public locations.
The curbside crews have been directed to start their rounds at 5 a.m. rather than at 6 a.m. between June and September. The earlier time was described in a DPW press release as having been made “in coordination with the city’s sanitation workers’ union” and is part of DPW’s “Heat Illness Prevention Plan.”
It is designed “to reduce employee exposure to the higher temperatures prevalent during the summer months,” according to the June 26 agreement signed by AFSCME Local 44 President Dorothy Bryant and Labor Commissioner Deborah Moore-Carter.
There are several caveats to the added pay. “If an employee has an unscheduled call-out [absence from a shift], the employee will forfeit his or her stipend for that week,” the agreement says. The stipend also does not cover workers on light duty or approved leave.
Mounting Frustration
The agreement comes as the Scott administration and Local 44 continue to negotiate over broader salary, safety and workplace issues. The talks are part of larger talks between the city and other AFSCME locals that represent nurses, human services and school employees.
Linda He, communications director for AFSCME Maryland Council 3, said there is no timetable for the negotiations to end, but “there are proposals going back and forth regarding wages.”
“We will keep going until there is an agreement. And once there’s an agreement, it has to be voted on by membership,” she said.
Last April, a group of DPW workers vented their frustration at the slowness of the talks.
Like others who spoke at the City Council hearing, Victor Lee Butts Jr. denounced Local 44’s leadership for failing to get them more money over the decades.
“I got 36 years with the city, and all I’m making is $20 an hour? 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,” he said.
THE BREW’S CONTINUING COVERAGE:
• Unsafe conditions for city workers
• Reporter barred from meeting of union representing Baltimore sanitation workers (4/21/25)
A Brew reporter, invited by workers to attend a Local 44 meeting at AFSCME’s Bush Street headquarters, was ordered by President Bryant to leave.
“I didn’t know we had a media person here. In fact, we do not want one,” the phlebotomist, who recently retired from the health department, said.
“Why not?” an audience member called out.
“This is a membership meeting. You have to leave.”
Shortly thereafter, Stancil McNair emerged from AFSCME headquarters, saying workers were treated the same way as the reporter.
“That’s just like what they do to us! Cutting people off. Not letting ’em talk or be heard,” he told a group of union members gathered in the parking lot.
“I told them we’re tired of that and left.”
Kenard Wallace and Stancil McNair speak outside AFSCME headquarters in April. BELOW: Local 44 President Dorothy Bryant was the invited speaker at DPW’s Annual Employee Recognition Ceremony in May. To her left are City Administrator Faith Leach, Comptroller Bill Henry and DPW employee Donald Comegys. (Fern Shen, Facebook)
