A union representing 33 Maryland behavior technicians started a strike on July 20 over wage rates for full-time employees with a 40-hour week. Neither side has announced a resolution as of July 23.
Key Takeaways
- Verbal Beginnings RBTs struck July 20 over wages for full-time employees. Some of the 33 behavior technicians at the Rockville center walked out 440 days after the NLRB certified their union. Teamsters Local 639 says the company is trying to limit pay for full-time employees by not offering sufficient guaranteed wage increases and/or guaranteed hours to all current employees.
- No ABA bargaining unit has publicly reported a first contract, at Verbal Beginnings or anywhere else in the industry. Acuity’s review of public organizing records finds the pattern consistent across every certified ABA unit to date.
- Maryland insurance providers and governmental programs pay mid-pack for technician time within the Mid-Atlantic. The most recently published Carelon fee schedule sets Maryland’s 97153 RBT-tier rate at $19.17 per 15-minute unit, above Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and West Virginia but below the District of Columbia at $27.50. That does not support the claim, made publicly by the campaign’s lead organizer, that Maryland leads the country on technician reimbursement.
What the Wage-and-Hours Standoff May Actually Be About
Wage increases and guaranteed hours both draw from the same fixed pool of reimbursement revenue. In a fee-for-service model like ABA, raising the per-unit rate technicians are paid and preserving a guaranteed weekly hours floor pull against each other unless reimbursement itself rises. Neither side has publicly detailed how they would reconcile that tension, which may explain why both wages and hours remain open items rather than one having been resolved first.
Verbal Beginnings is one of two Maryland ABA providers that currently schedule a 40-hour week for technicians, regardless of client sessions, based on a review of job postings for ABA providers in the region on Indeed. Local 639 has not addressed in its public statements how a higher per-unit wage could be funded without a change elsewhere in the cost structure, staffing ratios, billable-hour requirements, or reimbursement rates themselves.
Inside the Strike: What Teamsters Local 639 Is Bargaining For
The unit was certified May 9, 2025. NLRB records for Case 05-RC-363261 show Local 639 filed its petition April 2, 2025, and that the May 1 election produced 33 votes for the union and one against, with two challenged ballots out of 38 eligible voters. The unit covers full-time and regular part-time center technicians at the Rockville location across junior, lead, and senior classifications. Board-certified behavior analysts are expressly excluded.
Local 639 President William Davis said the technicians serve children in one of the country’s most expensive counties and “deserve a contract that recognizes their dedication, skill, and sacrifice.” Collin Johnson, an RBT and Local 639 member, framed the walkout around client care, saying the workers want fair compensation and respect so they can serve their community.
The legal posture will shape what happens next. Under the National Labor Relations Act framework governing strikes, workers striking for economic concessions such as higher wages or more hours keep their employee status but may be permanently replaced in certain circumstances. Workers striking to protest an employer’s unfair labor practice can be neither discharged nor permanently replaced. Acuity found no unfair labor practice charge against Verbal Beginnings in a review of the Board’s public case records on July 23, which leaves the union’s “refusal to bargain” language a characterization rather than an actual legal claim or adjudicated finding.
The Rockville unit represents a small share of the company’s workforce. Verbal Beginnings operates seven centers; the Rockville location is the only one that has organized, and the 33-person bargaining unit represents a fraction of the company’s roughly 900 employees company-wide, according to Verbal Beginnings.
Why No ABA Union Has Reported a First Contract
A public list of organized agencies names five organizations who have staff that have taken steps to unionize, each with an NLRB case number: Verbal Beginnings (May 2025), Compass Behavioral Group in Virginia (June 2025), FirstSteps for Kids in California (December 2025), and Aspire Learning Center in Massachusetts and Golden Steps ABA in Towson, Maryland (both March 2026). None has signed a bargaining agreement, per the group.
Providers and organizers explain the lack of contracts differently. Operators argue that direct-care wage increases are constrained by payer reimbursement, since ABA revenue is set almost entirely by commercial and Medicaid rates, and that a provider cannot bargain over money it does not control. Organizers point instead to employer resistance at the table. The fragmented state-by-state Medicaid rate environment gives the provider argument real weight: rates run from roughly $12.50 to more than $40 per 15-minute unit nationally, and several states have cut them outright in the past year.
Maryland Medicaid ABA Rates and the Reimbursement Argument
Maryland is not one of those states, but neither is it the outlier the campaign has described. Writing publicly about the strike, Raymond said Maryland is one of the highest-paying states, if not the highest, for 97153. The FY 2026 ABA fee schedule published by Carelon Behavioral Health of Maryland, effective July 1, 2025 and still the most recent posted as of July 23, sets 97153 at $19.17 per 15-minute unit when delivered by a Registered Behavior Technician or Behavior Technician. MediRate data reported by Acuity places that above Virginia ($15.00), Delaware ($15.68), Pennsylvania ($12.73), New Jersey ($15.00), and West Virginia ($9.90), and below the District of Columbia ($27.50). On the analyst code 97155, Maryland’s $38.34 ranks second in the Mid-Atlantic behind Virginia.
Maryland’s fiscal year turned over July 1, 2026, and Carelon has not yet posted an FY 2027 ABA schedule, so the July 2025 rates remain the published figures. The shape of that schedule is itself part of the dispute: Maryland pays comparatively well for supervision and upper-middle for the direct-service hours technicians actually deliver.
RBT Turnover, Pay Instability, and the ABA Workforce Picture
The Rockville dispute sits inside a workforce problem the industry has documented for years. Median annual RBT turnover runs near 65 percent and approaches or passes 100 percent at the largest providers. Acuity has reported that the shortage is better understood as a retention problem than a recruitment problem. Sources close to the matter say a majority of the technicians who voted to unionize in May 2025 are no longer employed at Verbal Beginnings. Acuity has not independently verified that figure, and it is difficult to read against industry-wide turnover: attrition at that rate is close to the norm even absent any organizing activity, so turnover within the unit would not, on its own, indicate the union caused it.
The median RBT hourly wage sits near $20, per PayScale’s 2026 data, a figure that assumes every scheduled hour is paid. Many providers send technicians home unpaid when a client cancels, and 34 percent of former RBTs in a Behavior Analyst Certification Board exit survey summarized in December 2025 cited unpredictable pay as a reason they left.
The Industry Backdrop
Labor costs across ABA have risen while reimbursement has largely not. Unlike businesses that can raise prices to offset wage growth and inflation, ABA providers operate under a reimbursement ceiling set by insurers and Medicaid — a structural constraint that shapes both sides of disputes like this one. Founders who built these businesses took on direct financial risk, while technicians work at wages that do not automatically rise in response to cost of living increases in expensive markets like Montgomery County. Absent a change in reimbursement, industry observers expect the pattern to continue: elevated turnover, more organizing activity, and continued consolidation as smaller operators sell.
Researchers writing in JAMA Pediatrics identified 574 autism service delivery sites acquired by private equity firms across 42 states between 2015 and 2024, a scale at which workforce practices become hard to reverse.
Verbal Beginnings was co-founded in 2011 by Nick Chappell and Diana Wolf, both BCBA’s, and operates centers across Maryland and Virginia. Verbal Beginnings is one of the few privately owned ABA organizations in the United States of their size. Verbal Beginnings is one of the only organizations that holds dual BHCOE and ACQ accreditation. Accreditation of that kind evaluates clinical quality.
This is a developing story and will be updated. If you have been impacted by the strike, please reach out to ethan@acuity.news.
