On Thursday, February 22, the AFSCME Maryland Bargaining Team met with the University System of Maryland at UMBC for another bargaining session.
During this session, we reached agreement on the following topics:
- Leave
- Administrative leave
- Leave cash-out
- Leave of absences without pay
- Leave for those serving as election judges
- Heat safety protections
- Promotion and demotion language
- Scheduled overtime
- Employee privacy and use of video surveillance
Here are just a few of the priorities that remain outstanding:
- Adding an additional day for personal leave
- Establishing a health and safety committee
- Providing health and safety equipment, including safety shoes and cold weather and rain gear
- Language to establish procedures for any proposed layoffs
- Emergency closures and essential employee status
- Transit benefits
- Retention pay increases
- And more.
Our next bargaining session will be Monday, March 4 at the AFSCME Maryland offices in Baltimore.
And if you haven’t seen our video summarizing what it’s been like to bargain with the USM, you can watch our short video here (featuring some of our amazing AFSCME bargaining team members)!
Help us get the Arbitration Reform for State Employees Act passed this year!
With this bill, when workers and management come to an impasse in negotiations, a third party neutral arbitrator would help make a determination over sticking points. And in our case, the USM wouldn’t be able to drag out negotiations to no end.
Bottom line: this piece of legislation would make contract negotiations fair and efficient.
You can sign up for an upcoming Action Night on our website here.