AFT Maryland has focused their 2026 Legislative Priorities for this year's Maryland Legislative Session. We work with public employees from a number of sectors including K-12 education, higher education, healthcare, and state and municipal civil service to meet with elected officials to advocate for policy to improve their work experiences.

Click through for more information about policies and bills of interest to our members in the 2026 Maryland Legislative Session.

Make your voice heard in Annapolis!

Join with other union members for an AFL-CIO Union Rally on Lawyers Mall in front of the State House. 

Wear your union gear and join us! Monday, March 9, 2026, starting at 6:00 p.m.

AFT Maryland will be providing bus transportation for our members. 

Click through for event info and to RSVP. 

When the president of Colorado WINS learned that the president of the United States might be targeting Denver next in his anti-immigration campaign of terror, she knew how she’d begin to mobilize. One simple thing Diane Byrne does is deck out her activists in matching T-shirts. Wearing union colors promotes team spirit and builds confidence, she says. The AFT Public Employees program and policy council, meeting in New York City Feb. 5-6, abounded with tips to help locals mobilize. PPC chair Gary Feist, president of North Dakota Public Employees, recommended finding members who can tell a personal story to draw media attention. With more media on the issue, he said, legislators will become more motivated to fix the problem.

Federal immigration actions are rapidly expanding, with deadly consequences. The killings of poet Renee Nicole Good and nurse Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis have brought intense focus on the use of excessive force. An AFT webinar, co-hosted by AFT President Randi Weingarten and AFT Massachusetts President Jessica Tang on Jan. 28, featured experts on immigration and the law. It highlighted AFT resources and showcased how our locals are showing up to minimize fear and trauma.

On her very first day of student teaching at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y., Martha Strever pushed, pulled and pounded on the school’s door, which was locked. No one came. Where was everybody? It was, after all, the first day of school.

It turned out everybody was exactly where they were supposed to be: inside, having entered through the school’s front entrance. Strever had been knocking on a side door. Flustered but undeterred, she not only found her way inside, she also found her life’s calling.

Paraprofessionals and school-related personnel are often overlooked because of their support roles. They are the last ones hired and often the first ones fired when budgets get tight. This certainly seems true right now as the Trump administration withholds nearly $7 billion in education funds, effective July 1, which has hamstrung summer school programs, hindered English language support, halted professional development this summer, and left before- and after-school programs in limbo for the coming school year.