Security officers who guard Baltimore's public housing complexes and other city buildings walked off the job again Thursday, rallying outside City Hall at 12:30 p.m. to protest what they describe as dangerous heat exposure and unpaid wages at the hands of their employer, Metropolitan Protective Services. It is the second strike this year for the roughly 120 officers the company employs across its city contracts, and it comes just months after an earlier walkout in April led to allegations of retaliatory firings.
According to CBS News Baltimore, strike organizers allege that Metropolitan Protective Services failed to provide legally required heat-related breaks or sufficient water to employees, and that the company did not properly train workers on heat exposure risks. Maryland's Occupational Safety and Health division received a union complaint against the company on July 27, with organizers alleging MPS failed to communicate with employees when the heat index rose above 90 degrees. A separate complaint filed with the same agency, reported by Baltimore Fishbowl, alleges the company failed to provide a pregnant security officer with required heat breaks or sufficient drinking water while the heat index reached 104 degrees.
Maryland's heat stress standards, formally known as COMAR 09.12.32, took effect in September 2024 and require employers to implement written heat illness prevention plans, monitor conditions, and provide shade, water and mandatory rest breaks once the workplace heat index hits 80 degrees, according to the Maryland Department of Labor. Maryland was among the first East Coast states to adopt such broad protections for both indoor and outdoor workers, and the rules form the legal backbone of the current complaints against the company.
Wage Theft Allegations Add $9,000 to the Dispute
Alongside the heat complaints, a union representative filed a wage theft complaint on August 3 with the Maryland Department of Labor's Employment Standards Service. The complaint details more than 250 hours of unpaid or improperly calculated overtime, totaling nearly $9,000 in missing wages across six employees, per the same CBS News Baltimore report.
Metropolitan Protective Services is contracted by the City of Baltimore and, according to strike organizers, receives more than $20 million in city funding to provide security across the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and other municipal buildings. The company employs roughly 70 security guards overseeing 10 public housing properties, including Westport Homes and Gilmor Homes, according to the Maryland Daily Record.
Retaliation Claims Trace Back to the April Walkout
The current strike follows an earlier one on April 9, after which six security officers say they were fired, sent home or removed from the schedule. Those workers went on to file unfair labor practice claims, and the Daily Record's reporting details additional retaliation allegations: officers say MPS stopped physical paycheck deliveries to Baltimore after the April strike, forcing local guards to travel more than 30 miles to the company's Hyattsville office to get paid, while also enforcing new rules against taking breaks in personal vehicles.
Metropolitan Protective Services CEO Derrick Parks has disputed the retaliation narrative, stating that the six employees were taken off schedules for failing to maintain required Maryland State Police guard licenses rather than for participating in union organizing. Parks also met with a local council member to discuss the union's claims, according to CBS News Baltimore. The Daily Record additionally reports that the company previously faced legal enforcement in Washington, D.C., where a final binding judgment ordered it to pay D.C. workers more than $50,000 for failing to pay out accrued vacation leave.
Union Steps in for Non-Union Workers
Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the striking officers, even though the workers are not formal union members, the Daily Record reported. Federal labor law protects non-union employees engaging in collective walkouts over working conditions under protected concerted activity provisions, which is the legal mechanism allowing 32BJ to represent the Baltimore guards despite their non-member status.
32BJ SEIU describes itself as the largest service workers union in the country, with 190,000 members across 12 states. In Baltimore alone, the union counts 1,700 members who speak 28 different languages and come from 64 different countries, according to CBS News Baltimore's reporting.
A Broader Industry Pay-Risk Gap
The union has pointed to a University of California, Berkeley research study finding that private security guards are among the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. labor market, while suffering on-the-job fatal injury rates twice as high as the national workplace average, according to SEIU 32BJ. That research frames the Baltimore dispute within a national pattern of organizing activity among security guards, an industry with high turnover and comparatively low wages relative to its physical risks.
Baltimore has taken some steps to address pay for contracted security guards citywide. In March, Mayor Brandon Scott signed legislation raising contracted security guard pay from $18.50 per hour to a minimum of $24.37 per hour starting in 2027, with most of the funding increase directed toward health and welfare benefits, per the Daily Record. That raise, however, does not resolve the immediate heat safety and wage complaints now before state regulators.
CBS News Baltimore reported that it contacted Metropolitan Protective Services for comment on the latest strike.
