Exciting news! On Wednesday, July 30, the AFSCME Maryland bargaining team for Unit S (state supervisors) signed a Tentative Interim Agreement (TIA) with the State of Maryland.
You can read the full Tentative Interim Agreement on our website here.
This historic milestone means that for the first time, state supervisors across Maryland now have immediate access to the rights and protections outlined in the TIA, even as we continue to negotiate the remaining provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will be subject to a vote.
We could not have done this without the power of thousands of state supervisors joining together through our union, AFSCME. Our collective power and unified voice allowed us to reach this important milestone.
This agreement goes immediately into effect. It provides a standard set of workplace rights and protections for ALL employees in Unit S who are represented by AFSCME. Some of these rights include the ability to have a union steward present in meetings, to grieve violations of our union contract, to hold labor-management committee meetings with state agencies, to have certain health and safety protections, and so much more. In addition, your July raises (which should have already been processed) have been codified and protected.
This agreement also means that management and agency leaders cannot make any new changes to your wages, hours, or working conditions without negotiating with our union.
There is still work to do to finalize a full union contract for supervisors that includes additional rights and improvements to working conditions. However, this Tentative Interim Agreement serves an important purpose in the meantime to ensure state supervisors are able to receive the protections of a union contract without any further delay.
A huge thank you to the AFSCME members who served on our AFSCME Maryland bargaining team for Unit S. Your hard work and dedication at every single bargaining session — along with the powerful stories you shared during our negotiations about the important work you do — were pivotal in winning this interim agreement.
Our next bargaining session will be on Tuesday, August 5, where we will continue to negotiate any non-economic issues that are not covered in this interim agreement. And in the fall, we will begin negotiating the economic items in our union contract alongside other AFSCME-represented state employees in Units A, B, C, D, F, and H. Please stay tuned for further updates.