Solid waste workers comfort each other as they share stories before the Baltimore City Council of working in hazardous conditions for low pay. DPW Director Khalil Zaeid (right) looks on. Photo by Emily Hofstaedter / WYPR.
Solid waste workers comfort each other as they share stories before the Baltimore City Council of working in hazardous conditions for low pay. DPW Director Khalil Zaeid (right) looks on. Photo by Emily Hofstaedter / WYPR.

Sharing harrowing stories of injury, violent threats, and illness, Baltimore City sanitation workers demanded higher pay during a heated city council oversight hearing on Thursday night.

Two sanitation workers died of injuries sustained on the job in 2024: Ronald Silver II and Timothy Cartwell. The council meeting came two weeks after yet another in a series of investigative reports from Inspector General Isabel Cumming into the conditions at the Baltimore City Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Solid Waste. Between 2019 and 2024, six workers died of injuries on the job and there were over 1,600 injuries including heat illness, lacerations, and contusions.

Solid waste laborers in the Baltimore City Department of Public Works get fifteen cents an hour for hazard pay.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.