Maryland state employees, facing the same affordability challenges as workers nationwide, are calling on Gov. Wes Moore (D) to raise wages and address critical understaffing that they say has made state hospitals and prisons less safe.
The demand was made public Tuesday morning at AFSCME Maryland headquarters in Baltimore, where union president Patrick Moran said that wages for the thousands of state employees he represents have fallen 10 percent behind inflation in the past decade — and that members are “struggling” to reach a contract agreement with the state because of their concerns over cost-of-living adjustments.
“Our folks, under the Moore administration, are falling behind,” Moran said.
Although state employee wage increases have outpaced inflation during Moore’s three years in office, administration officials said, workers said they still aren’t caught up.
The current contract for state workers expires at the end of the year. It’s not clear what will happen if the state and the union do not reach an agreement by then, or whether the state is likely to increase wages. By law, state employees in Maryland cannot go on strike, and the bargaining parties are barred from discussing specific proposals made during negotiations.
Also Tuesday, AFSCME Maryland said it filed several Unfair Labor Practice complaints with the Public Employee Relations Board, alleging the state was violating terms related to workers’ military leave and pay for overtime or nonstandard shifts.
“We have consistently tried to work with them,” Moran said of state officials.
The pressure from state employees comes amid state budget and revenue challenges in Maryland, heightened by federal spending cuts by the Trump administration and concerns about inflation.
“From day one, Governor Moore has consistently stood up for Maryland’s workers, making clear that supporting labor and protecting our workforce are central to this administration’s work,” said spokesperson Rhyan Lake. “This administration has continued to take steps to both support our public servants and responsibly manage a historic budget crisis as Maryland continues to face unprecedented attacks from the federal administration.”
During his campaign for governor, Moore vowed to rebuild state government, a promise that union leaders said was encouraging after eight years of cost-cutting and staff reductions under former governor Larry Hogan (R). But workers said they’ve been disappointed by what they characterized as a lack of follow-through.
Despite what the union called the state’s understandable financial woes, it said on Tuesday said the Moore administration could be doing more to curtail state spending while still supporting state workers.
Members critiqued state spending on private contractors, contending that the state overspent by $7.6 billion on contractual services between 2020 and 2025 — a period of time that straddled the Hogan and Moore administrations. The governor’s office did not comment on that assessment.
Maryland spent another $404 million on overtime in 2024, the union said, nearly half of which was from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which oversees the state prison system.
That hefty overtime spending, the union said, is the product of a crippled and regularly understaffed state workforce, a staffing crisis many years in the making that has grown worse amid recent buyouts and job slot eliminations.
Understaffing, they said, has created dangerous environments in state facilities, where reported assaults on staff are up and employee turnover is high.
“We are on the brink and desperately need support from our Governor and the State,” said Jenny Reese, a nurse at Springfield Hospital Center, a regional psychiatric hospital operated by the state in Carroll County. She noted that the state has been fined more than $1 .5 million by judges for failing to provide enough bed space to keep up with demand and comply with state law.
Corrections employees who work in the state’s prisons said skeleton staffing means incarcerated people aren’t consistently getting access to recreation time or educational programming.
“We cannot guarantee the safety of the people in our custody and our staff if we do not have the resources and staffing to safely monitor our facilities,” said Oluwadamilola Olaniyan, who has worked as a corrections officer for nearly 15 years. “We can’t appropriately staff our facilities when we’re not paying people competitively.”
When the legislative session starts, in January in Annapolis, the union said it plans to lobby lawmakers to strategically invest budget dollars into aging and failing state facilities.
“We’re at a critical time in our state,” Moran said. “When we have an administration in DC that has made it their mission to go after the public services millions rely on, we need a state government and state leadership that are standing up to those threats and charting a different course.”
The post Contract deadline looms for Md. state workers asking for higher wages appeared first on Washington Post.
