Bargaining Update: March 11, 2025 Session

On Tuesday, March 11, the AFSCME Maryland bargaining team (Locals 44, 558, and 2202) met with the City of Baltimore to continue negotiations over our agreements.

The majority of the bargaining session was spent with the City’s budget director, who outlined the next fiscal year’s budget (which starts on July 1st).

The City presented a relatively thorough picture of the budget and broke down which agencies are overperforming financially and which ones are running deficits.  Our team asked a series of questions about costs, revenue, and other pressures on the budget (federal action, state action, etc.).  The City claimed that their planned budget surplus had been “wiped out” by overtime expenditures (mostly from the fire department) and other cost overruns, especially from expensive service contracts.  We also received information that the City’s fund balance was still over $800 million. 

The City’s preliminary budget is supposed to be introduced in the first week of April.  We expect to exchange proposals regarding economic items, such as wages, after this.

Our team also received data from the City that we had requested regarding our bargaining unit, including vacancy numbers and additional financial information.  Our team reviewed some of this data and worked on our health and safety language proposals.

AFSCME asked that the City provide responses to our previous proposals. We also asked if the City had proposals of its own.  The City had no new proposals or counter proposals of its own at this time.