Moore’s administration, public employee union agree to contract

Union leaders representing most of Maryland’s public employees have reached an agreement on a new three-year contract with Gov. Wes Moore’s administration, which also announced the hiring of a new top official to lead future bargaining negotiations.

Details of the contract, which must be ratified through a vote of union members, have not been released. The sides said they met a Dec. 31 deadline and described the deal as “tentative” and “preliminary.”

After working on annual employee raises and staffing issues with former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration for eight years, union leader Patrick Moran said “the tone of this year’s negotiations was markedly different,” though he did not explain whether leaders were pleased with the deal.

Moran, Council 3 president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and other union members had often been critical of Hogan, who they said failed to fill necessary vacancies in state government positions and did not provide adequate cost-of-living adjustments for employees during his two terms. After negotiations for the current contract ended a year ago and promised an average wage increase of 2.4%, Moran called the raises “insufficient” and stressed that understaffing remained a critical issue.

Moore, a Democrat, entered office last January with a vow to rebuild the state’s workforce but his administration has fallen short on hiring goals so far.

While the governor previously stated his desire to reduce the number of vacancies by half in his first year, the vacancy rate fell by just 2 percentage points — from 13.1% in January to 11.1% in October — according to a recent report by the legislature’s Spending Affordability Committee. As of October, there were about 1,800 more filled positions than the previous year, with about 5,400 remaining vacancies in the executive branch, not including positions in higher education, the report stated.

The governor, however, has stood by his pledge to support the workforce — adding about $35 million in salary increases while crafting the state budget early last year and standing alongside AFSCME during its nationwide tour in the summer to encourage hiring.

“Rebuilding state government and supporting our state employees is a top priority for the Moore-Miller Administration, and while the final contracts must be ratified by a full member vote by all four unions, these preliminary agreements are another critical step forward in that work,” Moore said in a statement Wednesday.

Moran said in his statement that Moore’s budget secretary, Helene Grady, worked closely with AFSCME “to address a number of key issues affecting our state workforce and state services.”

“We will continue to work with this administration, our elected officials, and our allies to find solutions, including raising additional state revenues, to tackle this staffing crisis and ensure our public services can continue to function,” Moran said.

Moore also said Wednesday that he had hired Dyana Forester to represent him in future labor relations activities as a senior director of labor relations.

Forester was most recently president of the Metropolitan Washington Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and has about two decades of experience organizing workers.

In her new role, she will direct collective bargaining activities and advise the governor on labor relations issues affecting the state workforce. AFSCME is the largest union, representing about 30,000 public employees — including correctional officers, state hospital workers and higher education workers.

In a letter explaining its priorities for the 90-day session beginning Wednesday, the union said it will be lobbying for new laws to change the bargaining process, including moving the deadline from New Year’s Eve to Sept. 30 and requiring a neutral arbitrator to be agreed to by both parties for the negotiations. Another bill would expand collective bargaining rights to more than 4,000 supervisors who work in the executive branch. The letter also stressed the union’s priority to continue filling vacant positions and raising wages.

“We have a huge hole to fill now, with state employee salaries lagging inflation by 14% in this same time period, and thousands of remaining position shortages and vacancies. Despite renewed recruitment efforts under the Moore Administration, sadly, state agencies are still not on track to hit their vacancy reduction targets this year,” the letter signed by Moran read.