The latest report from Baltimore City Inspector General Isabel Cumming is a months-long investigation into working conditions for solid waste workers at the Baltimore Public Works Department. The report released Wednesday details a culture where employees felt they were pushed into working while injured.
During the time of the investigation, two sanitation workers died from illness or injury on the job. While the report does not detail their causes of death, it provides insight into the conditions they experienced before they died. WYPR’s Emily Hofstaedter spoke with Matt Bush about some of the report’s findings.
Matt: These findings build upon a culture we already knew about. Previous investigations by the Inspector General detailed lack of air conditioning at some facilities and an outside investigation showed that workers had no heat illness training. What’s new here?
Emily: A few things. For context, everyone that we are talking about here is part of the city’s trash and recycling operations — either as a worker on the truck, a driver, or supervisor and in all, that makes up over 700 city workers exposed to the conditions we are talking about. My main takeaway is that in this branch of DPW there’s a really endemic culture of disregard for worker safety. Inspector General Isabel Cumming found that in 2024, nearly 300 injuries were submitted for worker’s compensation. Those included heat illness, lacerations, motor vehicle incidents, and slip and falls among many, many others.
But the real kicker is how those injured workers were treated.
Matt: How so?
Emily: Often workers felt like they would be disciplined for reporting an injury or they would be told to work through it. In one instance, Cumming spoke to a worker who was injured by the trash truck and the supervisor told the worker to finish the route anyway — upon route completion, rather than going to the health clinic, the supervisor made them go back to the accident scene and show them how the injury happened. As far as retaliation, workers said that they would be disciplined with suspension if they didn’t report the injury right away. But sometimes, injuries like a sprain or even heat illness aren’t obvious until a few hours later or the next day. This discouraged some workers from reporting at all and potentially working while injured.
Matt: This report gives us a little more insight into a November incident where Timothy Cartwell died. Can you say more about that?
Emily: Cartwell died from his injuries after he was struck by the truck he’d been working on in a West Baltimore alleyway. We learned in this report that that driver had less than seven months on the job. While there’s lots still under investigation there, workers told Cumming that they take one class on driving the trucks but don’t get any hands-on experience driving through the city’s tight alleyways until they’re working their first days on the job. There’s also a safety practice called spotting, that’s when someone stands behind the truck to provide assistance to the driver, and despite that training being available through OSHA, the city wasn’t taking advantage.
Matt: Was Cumming able to figure out why this culture has persisted for so long? 130 people were interviewed and injury reports were pulled going back to 2019.
Emily: That’s really complicated. It’s definitely in part due to training of supervisors, of which the inspector general found almost none. They aren’t trained on how to deal with conflict, injury prevention, and there aren’t even any standard operating procedures for reporting an injury.
Matt: Is anything being done to fix this?
Emily: Yes, for one condition at two of the most troubled sanitation yards have vastly improved, that’s detailed at great length in this report by the Inspector General. In their response, the city says they’ve introduced new training on workplace safety and leadership. But everyone admits, there’s still a lot more to be done.
Matt: We know you’ll be on top of it. Thanks for the update.
Read the entirety of the report and the city’s response here.
