Exposed wiring. Loose and broken catwalks. Trenches without trench boxes. Workers handling high-voltage electricity in cherry pickers with no insulation.

A year ago at a memorial for municipal employees who have died on the job, Baltimore union leaders released a report documenting appalling work conditions that contributed to past fatalities and injuries.

Now, amid a prolonged heat wave, the same leaders say the emergency report this week by Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming about the lack of ice, bottled water and air conditioning for sanitation workers is the latest example of City Hall’s failure to take employee safety seriously.

“We do expect and demand more from Baltimore City,” Antoinette Ryan-Johnson, president of the City Union of Baltimore (CUB), told The Brew.

Ryan-Johnson called the inspector general’s report “deeply troubling” and said it “demonstrates the city has not been the partner we need in keeping our members safe.”

Cumming, still irate about conditions she discovered at a Department of Public Works (DPW) sanitation yard, was more blunt.

After reviewing CUB’s 2023 report, Cumming said she believes the conditions she recently encountered at the Cherry Hill Solid Waste Yard are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Nothing has changed since that report. Nobody cares. No one in government pays attention to unions or anything that might blow their cover,” Cumming fumed.

She questioned the city’s spending and policy priorities when, as she sees it, municipal buildings and facilities are not being upgraded and made safe for the people who work there.

Among the findings in the CUB report:

• Asbestos tiles were collapsing into a pest-infested Department of Transportation work area.

• Water meter readers were required to climb into holes as much as 80 feet deep without ventilators, respirators or fall-protection harnesses.

• Air circulated in health clinics was befouled with mold, lead paint and asbestos.

• Employees worked in trenches without legally mandated “trench boxes” needed to prevent collapses, like the one that killed 20-year-old Kyle Hancock, who had been repairing a city sewer line in 2018.

Cumming said she is determined to investigate it all.

“I’m not done,” she said yesterday.

“My job is to verify”

Since releasing her report, Cumming said her office has been hearing from city workers.

“They’re all telling us the same kind of things – no protection from the heat,” Cumming said, recounting how one worker described a municipal warehouse where “it’s so hot they don’t turn the lights on.”

If Cumming is cynical about city government’s resolve to fix workplace problems, it comes with experience.

One of her more explosive past reports disclosed that a rat, found dead in a city-run health clinic, was undisturbed and mummified in a followup visit 18 months later.

On Wednesday, she swooped in unannounced at 6 a.m. at DPW’s solid waste yard on Reedbird Avenue and found an indoor temperature reading of 85° before 7 a.m. –  conditions worse than on her previous visit in June.

DPW officials had assured her that the problems there were being corrected.

“My job is to verify,” Cumming declared.

“A woman who worked there, I felt so bad for her,” Cumming said. “I could see she was really sweating. She and the others go outside because it’s actually less hot outside the building.”

Passed out from the Heat

So far, no city official has reached out to her about her findings, which were sent to Mayor Brandon Scott, Chief Administrative Officer Faith Leach, DPW Director Khalil Zaied, City Council President Nick Mosby, Comptroller Bill Henry and all members of the City Council.

A DPW truck driver at the Cherry Hill yard, who asked not to be named by The Brew for fear of repercussions, said that conditions have been “terrible” for the last five weeks as temperatures soared and the city declared a Code Red heat alert.

“It’s like being in a frying pan, like you’re in a skillet and somebody poured accelerant on,” the employee said.

“It’s like you’re in a skillet and somebody poured accelerant”  – DPW worker.

The yard’s ice machine (“broken since last year”) has not been fixed, the plumbing is faulty, there is no air conditioning in the locker room (“just a fan that blows hot air”), and employees have to bring their own ice and coolers, the DPW worker said.

“The higher-ups don’t give a damn. They’re just sitting there in their air-conditioned offices thinking about where they’re going to get lunch,” he continued, saying that some co-workers have passed out from the heat, while others have simply “walked off the job.”

Well before Cumming’s report, CUB was “attempting to provide stopgap solutions to ensure city workers have accommodations that allow them to do their jobs in crippling heat,” Ryan-Johnson told The Brew.

“We have gone so far as to purchase bottles of water and bags of ice and deliver them to city offices,” she said, sending photos of union officials and staff delivering bags of ice and bottles of water last weekend to call center workers at the Baltimore Police Department.

No Comment from Mayor

Mayor Scott’s office has not responded to a request for comment about the IG report or to prior union complaints about worker safety.

Councilman Zeke Cohen, who is set to become City Council President later this year, called conditions at DPW solid waste yards “dangerous and unacceptable.”

“Unfortunately, this is not a new issue,” Cohen told The Brew yesterday. “I asked DPW about working conditions during our budget hearings. Their responses were inadequate.”

A DPW spokeswoman said the agency “takes full responsibility for the health and safety” of staff and has taken steps to protect them.

Among those steps were providing lightweight, breathable clothing, educating employees and supervisors about the risks of heat-related illnesses, and ensuring that “all work sites are equipped with ample supplies of water, shaded rest areas and cooling stations.”

The emailed statement did not directly address why conditions at the Cherry Hill yard had deteriorated between Cumming’s June 20 visit and her unannounced inspection on Wednesday.

Acknowledging issues with the facility’s ice machine, “we worked with approved vendors to replace vital parts and purchased an additional ice machine,” the statement provided by DPW spokesperson Jennifer Combs said.

When Cumming arrived on Wednesday, there was no working ice machine and parts for the machine were sitting in a box on the floor.

“Today one is fully operational, and another ice machine is expected this week,” Combs said.

“We plan to address and complete repairs to ensure a better working environment for our employees”  – DPW spokeswoman.

Supervisors have made multiple trips to deliver water to the yard and “additionally, we secured 20 cases of bottled water and 5,000 bottles of Gatorade,” she said. “We await back-ordered parts for the onsite air conditioner. Portable air conditioners are installed and are working properly.”

Pointing to long-term maintenance issues, Combs said that the yard requires major upgrades that are currently in the design phase.

“We plan to address and complete repairs to the air conditioning system, floors, lockers and other necessary updates to ensure a better working environment for our employees,” she promised.

Missing in Action: MOSH

Last year’s CUB report covered a wide variety of jobs across city agencies between 2012 and 2022, but found that the largest number of poor practices were concentrated in two departments, Public Works and Transportation.

Reviewing documents on file with the state, the union found that Maryland issued 336 violations during 95 inspections at city worksites over the 10-year period, almost all of which were initiated through employee complaints or after a fatality or catastrophic event.

The report found multiple occasions where the city “failed to follow fundamental Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) principles.”

“It is apparent that Baltimore has zero regard for worker safety until they are forced to after a fatality or catastrophe,” the authors wrote.

The 2019 death of DPW worker Trina Cunningham, who fell through a faulty metal catwalk into wastewater at the Patapsco sewage treatment plant, triggered multiple MOSH violations and others at subsequent inspections at the city’s other sewage plant at Back River.

Most of the 95 state inspections of city government worksites over 10 years were conducted not as routine proactive visits but after complaints, injuries or fatalities  – CUB report.

Also pointing a finger at the State of Maryland for failing to conduct routine inspections of city workplaces, the report said such tragedies could be prevented with stronger enforcement by MOSH.

“There are many more accidents and injuries that are either left unreported or did not result in an inspection,” the CUB report said.

In 2018, the authors pointed out, after an employee lost part of two fingers when an unsecured hatch fell and struck their hand, “MOSH issued zero violations as a result of this injury.”

Asked yesterday about what Cumming found at the Reedbird Avenue DPW yard, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Labor said the agency “was concerned to learn of the conditions reported by the Baltimore IG,” but added that it had received no complaints about the worksite and that it appears issues there “have now been addressed.”

“We will reach out to the union representing workers at this site,” said Elissa Silverman, adding that anyone with concerns about workplace safety can report them by phone at 410-527-4499 or by filing a complaint with MOSH.

Asked about the union’s allegations of lax state enforcement of workplace safety issues, and provided a link to CUB’s 2023 report, Silverman had no additional comment on behalf of the Labor Department.

• To reach a reporter: fern.shen@baltimorebrew.com