On Wednesday, August 27th, the AFSCME Maryland Unit S Bargaining Team met with the State to continue to demand and negotiate an agreement that gives us the rights we deserve and the pathways and protections we need to resolve problems and tackle issues we face in our workplaces as supervisors.
We made significant progress and reached agreement on additional language that expands on our Tentative Interim Agreement. By the end of these negotiations, we will have a full Memorandum of Understanding/union contract that all Unit S supervisors will be able to vote on to ratify.
We still have not reached agreement on several proposals covering health and safety concerns, including the need for the State to make sure that those who need body armor have it available before being placed in harm’s way. We are also still working to make sure the State commits to taking interim protective measures to remediate hazards in our workplaces that cannot be resolved immediately. We have all seen work orders take months to get to, such as desks sitting on milk crates, with accidents just waiting to happen.
We continue to reject the State’s desire to include confusing language in our agreement about our role as supervisors with union representation. The State’s proposed language is insulting because it implies that we cannot be trusted to uphold our professional responsibilities while standing in solidarity with our coworkers. Our union activity is not a conflict of interest, and we will not let the State divide us.
We will continue to stick together, keep the pressure on, and defeat the State proposals that we don’t want in our final union contract. We have our next bargaining session this Thursday, September 4 and hope to wrap-up these non-economic items.