If you are not currently an AFSCME member, you can become one here. As an AFSCME member, you get to help us decide future bargaining priorities and vote on future agreements.
On Wednesday, February 1, we had a full bargaining session with the University System of Maryland (USM) at the AFSCME Maryland offices in Baltimore. This was the first in-person bargaining session we have had in over 3 years.
We had union members from every campus represented: BSU, CSU, FSU, UB, UMB, UMBC, UMCP, UMES, USG, and UMGC — all the way from Frostburg to Princess Anne.
On our end, we provided proposals regarding the following:
- Improving the employee assistance program (EAP)
- Ensuring members are paid correctly for their time and work
- Increasing annual, sick, and parental leave
- Making sure people receive leave for jury duty, administrative hearings, and arbitrations.
- Ensuring USM employees receive the same leave that state employees do on Election Day
- Increasing leave for COVID-19 and other communicable diseases that management tells you not to come to work for
- Increasing holiday pay and the number of holidays
- Allowing employees to donate their leave to each other
- Protecting personnel files and allowing for expunging of documents
- Expanding our union’s rights to be, at a minimum, comparable to USM’s other shared governance bodies (e.g. faculty senate)
- Increasing and strengthening our labor management committees (LMC) for both the USM and campuses
- Allotting additional trainings and classes for continuing education for members, including technology classes, computer courses, and ESOL classes
- Extending public transit benefits to all USM employees across the state
The USM management team did not present any new proposals at this session. They did comment that our proposals appeared costly and that they could not pay for them all.
We were able to make tentative agreements and some progress around the following:
- Non-discrimination provisions
- Employee rights provisions
- The ability to post and set up bulletin boards
- Retirement
- Carrying over and transferring annual leave between USM and State jobs
- Holiday termination pay
Our next bargaining session will be in-person on Wednesday, March 1 at Bowie State University.
We will also have a Lobby Night for members who work on our university and college campuses on Monday, February 20. We will be meeting at 5:30 PM in Annapolis. You can RSVP here, and we will send you more information about our meeting location, parking, and more.
Lastly, stay tuned for more details on our Higher Education Membership Blitz Week! It will take place from Monday, February 27 through Friday, March 3. Our higher education locals from across the state will be participating in a variety of membership activities to grow our union and strengthen our membership! Let us know if you’d like to get involved.
If you have any questions or concerns or you’re looking to join and get more involved with AFSCME, please email highered@afscmemd.org.