Antoinette Ryan-Johnson was appalled to read the latest report from the Office of the Inspector General describing hazardous conditions for Baltimore solid waste workers.

Not just because of the lack of air conditioning, cold bottled water and even toilet paper.

Other municipal employees routinely endure similar indignities and potential dangers, the City Union of Baltimore (CUB) president said in an interview.

Her most recent example: Baltimore Police Department headquarters downtown.

“I got a call on Sunday that there was an unknown liquid dripping down from the ceiling,” Ryan-Johnson said, “and the stench from the fumes was bad.”

It turned out that a toilet in the bathroom above the BPD dispatchers’ office was broken, sending urine leaking through the floorboards and into the hallway below.

Building maintenance did respond and fixed the problem, Ryan-Johnson said. But it was indicative of the wide range of workplace hazards, faced by thousands of government workers, that she says city leaders fail to take seriously.

“It’s discouraging that a lot of the issues we uncovered two years ago simply haven’t been resolved,” she said, referring to a report produced by CUB and AFT Maryland, “Unsafe and Unprotected,” that examined workplace health and safety hazards.

Released last year, the report documented exposed wiring, absence of sprinklers, trenches with no trench boxes and numerous other conditions that have caused employee injuries and health concerns:

• Water meter readers required to climb into deep confined spaces without respirators or safety harnesses.

• City health clinics befouled with mold and peeling lead paint.

• A highway maintenance yard whose collapsing, asbestos-riddled ceiling was above a pest-infested work space.

Speaking out yesterday to The Brew, Ryan-Johnson called on Mayor Brandon Scott to take action after a series of scathing reports on conditions for the people who pick up municipal trash by Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming that has attracted international attention.

“I’m disturbed that, rather than addressing the issues at DPW facilities, its director is engaging in a back-and-forth about which faucets work correctly and which ones do not,” she said.

“Absolutely disheartened”

Ryan-Johnson said she had her own experience of city inaction after the CUB report was completed in 2022.

Stepped-up inspections and training sought by the union – and promised by the Scott administration – never happened.

“Our report brought about a lot of meetings at first. And we were told things were resolved,” she said. “Now I am absolutely disheartened to see the work conditions that employees are being faced with – still – and I don’t want them to think their union isn’t fighting for them.”

Ryan-Johnson said that an MOU between the city and union specifies that a safety officer “shall conduct a semi-annual inspection of each building within his scope of responsibility and submit a report to the Director of Risk Management, with a copy to CUB.”

“I have not received the report since I’ve been president,” said Ryan-Johnson.

How long have you been president, she was asked. Eight years.

“The windows were covered up with plastic and cardboard, with employees just trying to keep the snow and elements out”  – CUB president Antoinette Ryan-Johnson.

Ryan-Johnson said she’s had difficulty following up on employee complaints in part because even as a union official, “I have to have authorization to go into city worksites.”

She described intervening after complaints about the dilapidated condition of staff trailers at the City Impound lot on Pulaski Highway.

“The windows were covered up with plastic and cardboard, with employees just trying to keep the snow and elements out,” she recalled.

“The last time I was there, I was extremely discouraged by the conditions that the employees were working under, and I addressed that with management,” she said. “But I did not go back. I have to have authorization to go back. So I don’t know if any of those issues were ever resolved.”

Some city employees face hazards in the aging buildings where they work, while others confront dangers out on the street.

“I have had employees have unknown liquids thrown on them. Guns pulled on them. Assaults. DPW people, DOT people, housing inspectors doing something as simple as walking into an alley in order to do their jobs are being threatened and attacked. Walking into drug activity or whatever,” she asserted.

PRIOR BREW COVERAGE:

• Baltimore City government workers are subjected to “egregiously” unsafe conditions, union says (5/1/23)
• In surprise visit, Baltimore inspector general finds sanitation workers exposed to extreme heat, no A/C (7/10/24)
• After Inspector General report slams conditions for sanitation workers, DPW responds (7/19/24)
• DPW knew about poor working conditions at solid waste facility for months, IG says (7/23/24)

As Ryan-Johnson sees it, the Scott administration needs to convene a work group that includes CUB and other municipal unions to identify and eliminate workplace hazards that departmental higher-ups have ignored for years.

“Talk to all of us jointly. Hear what our issues are. Then let’s work on a policy,” she said.

“Explain to all of us what’s going to happen with these aged buildings. What are the plans? What will you do to make sure nobody is seriously hurt? Because somebody is sure going to be.”

Mayor: “Stuff just takes time”

Asked about the Inspector General’s findings during a City Hall press availability yesterday, Scott began by attributing the poor conditions to “decades of disinvestment.”

“You’re talking about facilities that have not been touched since they were built – long before Brandon Scott was taking breath – in most cases, long before my parents even lived in Baltimore City,” he said.

The issues that IG Cumming raised are being addressed through his administration’s long-term plans to upgrade facilities and build new ones, Scott said.

“You can’t go and plug window units up just randomly if the electricity infrastructure  can’t handle that”  – Mayor Brandon Scott.

“We’re talking about $20 million to complete renovations and improvements at these facilities over the next three years,” he said. “Now you have an administration that’s actually going to be building new ones so that they can have the quality facilities that they deserve.”

“You can’t go and plug [a/c] window units up just randomly into a building if the electricity infrastructure in that facility can’t handle that. That’s why you see the quote, unquote stop-gap, temporary measures.”

“We know that some of this stuff just takes time,” he added, also blaming extreme heat. “All air conditioning systems are going to be straining when you’re talking about consecutive days of 105 degree temperatures.”

“How hard is it to fix a sink?”

The IG reports, however, found that minor repairs and changed practices could make an immediate difference in many DPW workplace conditions.

As previously reported, for example, Cumming obtained an engineer’s inspection memo (received by the Bureau of Solid Waste in March) that outlined a number of simple fixes, like replacing a missing faucet handle, that could be completed within hours.

“How hard is it to fix a sink?” Cumming asked in an interview with The Brew.

At times yesterday, Scott directly contradicted Cumming’s findings, asserting, for example, that all city sanitation yards “always have water, Gatorade and ice.”

He further told reporters that “many, if not most” of the problems cited in the IG reports “were addressed” and noted that City Administrative Officer Faith P. Leach visited some DPW yards with Cumming.

That’s not what the IG and her staff reported during multiple visits to the same facilities.

For example, in her third inspection of the Cherry Hill yard, she recounted the following:

When she arrived at 5:50 a.m., many solid waste crews had – once again – been sent out on routes without being offered cold water or Gatorade.

“When management saw it was me, they quickly opened up bags of ice, put in bottles and started handing them out like they’re supposed to,” Cumming said.

“What is going on? I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the management culture.”

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