Nearly one-fifth of garbage workers in Baltimore’s Department of Public Works don’t have city health insurance, a fact some of them didn’t realize until the inspector general started looking into the question last month.
That finding, detailed in a report released Tuesday by the Office of the Inspector General, comes eight weeks after a trash collector for the Department of Public Works overheated on the job, collapsed and died. It also follows a series of inspector general reports that have turned new scrutiny on the conditions in the agency’s solid waste division, highlighting declining facilities and, at times, dangerous work environments.
According to the inspector general’s findings, a total of 136 employees in the solid waste division don’t receive health insurance from the city. The inspector general’s office interviewed 46 of those people and found that nearly half of them didn’t even realize they were uninsured. And though around half of the people interviewed reported receiving noncity health insurance, none of them has taken advantage of a biweekly, $2,500 stipend offered to employees without outside coverage.
Though the city has advertised that it will hold an informational fair for employees when this year’s enrollment opens up later this month, Inspector General Isabel Cumming points out that workers in the solid waste division won’t be able to attend because of their hours.
The Department of Public Works acts as a “second chance” employer to many, providing work for individuals with criminal convictions who — in some cases — haven’t held a job in their life, Cumming noted.
City leaders argued in a response that the issue points to “individual lapses in employee accountability,” Cumming said in an interview that her findings really underscore “the huge lapse of manager responsibility.”
“If you’re going to hire second chance employees, you have to give them the tools they need to succeed,” she said.
Numerous workers interviewed by Cumming’s office said they received brief information or no information at all about health benefits during their orientation for the job, while some expressed problems operating the city’s back-end software.
This system, which employees use to enroll in their health coverage, has caused headaches across City Hall since its adoption began more than three years ago.
Still, Cumming commended quick action by Public Works Director Khalil Zaied to have letters hand-delivered to the 136 employees highlighted in her report to alert them of their situation.
In a response to the findings, Zaied and Director of Human Resources Quinton Herbert pointed to numerous steps the city takes to help its employees get enrolled in benefits. On top of an extensive orientation process, the city has targeted Department of Public Works employees with a digital skills training program that has so far attracted dozens of the agency’s workers.
Still, city leaders argued that many of the uninsured just haven’t taken all of the steps required to get signed up.
Of the 276 employees the inspector general found without city health insurance, Zaied and Herbert said most were hired after the city’s transition to its new HR software, meaning they have received training on the new online system and have had an opportunity to enroll. Only 11 of those employees had never logged into the system at all, the agency heads said.
Stuart Katzenberg, director of collective bargaining and growth for the union AFSCME 3, called the findings “incredibly concerning” and said the responsibility to enroll employees on health plans is “the sole responsibility of the department of human resources.”
“The findings of the OIG report suggest the department of human resources is either not doing enough or not doing its job properly,” said Katzenberg.
While the city has taken steps to help employees get coverage, Zaied and Herbert acknowledged that those might not have been enough for some people and committed to redoubling efforts to communicate enrollment steps to employees and train supervisors on how to help.
The public works department is also in the process of installing kiosks at each of its sanitation yards where employees could enroll in benefits and plans to begin reporting how many employees are enrolled in health care.
The city plans to hold an informational meeting for solid waste employees when open enrollment kicks off later this month.
