Maryland Gov. Wes Moore raises BWI union workers' pay to keep airport competitive

Luke Parker, The Baltimore Sun on Sep 7, 2026

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BALTIMORE — Maryland’s minimum wage for unionized workers at BWI Marshall Airport will be raised from $17 per hour to $18 per hour, Gov. Wes Moore said Monday.

The new rate will affect roughly 120 employees represented by bargaining agreements between their union and the state, according to the governor, who said his administration will seek emergency legislation expanding wages for hundreds of non-unionized staffers, as well.

“That work takes skill. It takes experience, and that type of experience is deeply hard to replace,” he said. “If BWI is going to compete, it has to compete for workers too.”

With a wave of purple-wearing members of the Local 32BJ Service Employees International Union behind them, state, transportation and labor leaders spoke Monday in Annapolis about the need to better support BWI’s airport workers: people like security guards, custodians and groundskeepers.

Together, these workers keep the airport running, supporting tens of thousands of daily passengers, sustaining more than 100,000 regional jobs and generating $11 billion for the state’s economy each year, said Maryland Transportation Secretary Katie Thomson, who will direct the Maryland Aviation Administration to bump the minimum wage.

“Anyone who has flown into or out of BWI knows how important these workers are … Investing [in] our assets, like our people, while setting ourselves up for future growth is a core focus of the Maryland Department of Transportation,” she said. “This is one bright example of that investment.”

Maryland’s minimum wage, for any job, is $15. But in 2021, recognizing the need “to attract or retain experienced and trained employees,” state lawmakers passed a bill strengthening the pay for workers at places of “heightened security interest,” including BWI and Baltimore’s Penn Station.

The Secure Maryland Wage Act chartered a path to substantially raise the pay rates of more than 2,000 contracted workers, who are predominantly Black or immigrants. Annual increases rose their hourly pay from as low as $8.50 to $13.50 in 2022 and ending this year at $17.

Early drafts of the bill included any worker who spends more than half of their time at one of the “heightened security interest locations.” But resistance from some employers, including Southwest Airlines, the Restaurant Association of Maryland and even the state’s Department of Transportation, narrowed the kinds of employees who received the benefit.

Together, the raises were projected to cost the Maryland Department of Labor approximately $1,008,100 between fiscal years 2022 and 2026, according to a fiscal and policy note. At Monday’s announcement, officials did not offer an estimate of how much the additional $1 an hour increase for unionized workers would cost the state.

Now, with the secure wage act set to expire at the end of December, Moore said he’ll be asking the Maryland General Assembly to reform and extend the bill to include the approximately 800 BWI workers who are not directly contracted by the state.

That effort, he said, will be accompanied by a wage study from Salisbury University’s Business, Economic and Community Outreach Network evaluating wages, befits, recruitment and retention at BWI.

“We’re serious about making sure that our families are supported,” Moore said, “and people who choose to serve the public should be treated fairly, and that our economy and our community will not be built on the backs of our workers.”

Kiera Barnes, a 32BJ SEIU member and wheelchair agent at BWI, said Monday that while she is grateful for the raise, the hourly rate is “nowhere near” enough to take care of her four children. She told reporters that she is behind on her rent and utility bills, and is scared of having to rely so heavily on government assistance programs for food and healthcare as those programs face federal funding cuts.

“The nightmare is exactly what could happen unless we do something in Maryland,” Barnes said, telling the governor she trusts him with her life and her kids.

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