The Board of Estimates yesterday approved the hiring of 45 Bureau of Solid Waste workers to beef up trash and recycling collections citywide.

The full-time positions will essentially create 15 new crews, each one headed by a driver and two laborers.

The Department of Public Works currently has about 350 blue-collar employees who handle curbside garbage pickups, residential recycling and other duties.

Their working conditions came under harsh criticism last year in reports from Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, following the deaths of two workers in 2024, one from heat exhaustion and the other run over by a garbage truck in an alley.

Cumming faulted poor training, lack of adequate safety protocols, especially during summer heatwaves, dilapidated equipment and tyrannical bosses, one of whom kept toilet paper in the men’s locker room under lock and seal. (The first of these reports actually preceded the August 2 on-the-job death of solid waste worker Ronald Silver II from heat exhaustion.)

New Union Leadership

Many sanitation workers asserted they were not well represented by their union, Local 44 of AFSCME, with several denouncing the union at a City Council hearing last spring.

For the first time in history, a grassroots candidate won not once, but twice, in a membership election, which the union ordered re-done as a result of the alleged interference of Cumming, who encouraged workers to vote in social media posts, in internal union affairs.

Stancil McNair, the new president of Local 44, said he welcomes the prospect of more sanitation workers, saying they will provide a much-needed “bench” to improve route and service reliability.

DPW is also seeking four supervisors to inspect and improve the truck fleet and sanitation yards and plan other capital improvements. McNair said these positions should be open to current employees to create a pathway for workers to advance.

The Scott administration recently struck a new contract with Local 44 and other AFSCME-represented locals that included the first large-scale salary increases in decades.

Solid waste laborers traditionally are among the lowest paid in city government, with yearly starting salaries as low as $41,000 and pay for drivers in the mid-$50,000s.

McNair said he and the other newly elected board members of Local 44 have not yet received a copy of the new contract.

• Special Brew Series: Unsafe conditions for city workers.