A recent rally in support of Chipotle workers in Augusta | Maine Service Employees Association, SEIU Local 1989 via Facebook
Originally published in the Maine Beacon on July 20, 2023
Topping the list of policies passed this session that will benefit working Mainers are a paid family and medical leave program, increased funding for child care and a tentative last-minute deal creating good-paying jobs in Maine’s budding offshore wind industry.
But labor leaders and economists say other much-needed policies were also left on the table this year, including measures to finally raise the state minimum wage to $15 and repair the hole in the state pension system created over a decade ago.
“I think paid family leave is definitely one of the biggest wins for workers and it will make a huge difference for many people,” said James Myall, a policy analyst for the Maine Center for Economic Policy.
Policies that will lift up working families
Gov. Janet Mills approved a statewide paid family and medical leave program when she signed a two-year budget earlier this month. The budget included start-up funding for the program which will allow most workers to take up to 12 weeks of medical leave and family leave in a year while receiving a wage supplement to keep them financially afloat.
The new paid leave law combined with the $60 million set aside in the budget for improving access to child care for low-income families and improving wages for child care providers will be transformative for many working families with young children, said Jeff McCabe of the Maine Service Employees Association.
“It’s going to be life changing for many folks,” he said.
The significant funding comes after early childhood educators testified before lawmakers earlier this year, sounding the alarm that low pay is driving people out of a field that the economy depends on to allow parents to work.
Another farmworkers veto
Another priority this session was a bill to classify farmworkers as employees under some of the state’s wage and worker protection laws. But Mills on Wednesday vetoed the legislation that would have made farmworkers eligible to earn the state minimum wage. It is the second time the governor has vetoed protections for farmworkers. In 2022, she vetoed another bill that would have expanded collective bargaining rights to agricultural workers.
“This veto carries on the historical stain and stench of exploitation and racial exclusion,” the Maine AFL-CIO tweeted after the veto.
The stain is that farmworkers and domestic workers — predominantly people of color — were deliberately cut out of the labor laws passed in the 1930s as part of the New Deal.
A Green New Deal
While Mills thwarted the attempt to rectify the racial exclusions of the New Deal, workers in Maine did move closer to accomplishing some of the goals of the proposed Green New Deal, a massive mobilization plan that would put millions of Americans to work in good-paying, union jobs in the green energy sector.
Last week, days before the session officially concludes, Mills and labor unions struck a tentative deal to add strong labor and equity standards to a sweeping bill that will shape the buildout of Maine’s budding offshore wind industry. The deal came after Mills vetoed a similar wind energy bill in June that included provisions to create good-paying construction jobs in the industry.
“The resulting compromise is great news for working people in Maine, and for our collective fight against the climate crisis,” said Mike Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on climate, energy and labor policy.
“It’s a good compromise and it would not have happened were it not for the dogged efforts by Maine’s labor and environmental movements, along with the Governor and legislative champions to negotiate in earnest,” he added. “The national movement to deploy massive amounts of gigawatts of offshore wind power is stronger because of the work of all the folks involved.”
Worker rights tabled or left unfunded
While the higher labor standards were cause to celebrate, worker rights advocates also feel there were many missed opportunities this year.
Several policies were tabled until next year, including a bill backed by the state’s largest nurses’ union that would address unsafe staffing levels at Maine hospitals, as well as a bill that would make thousands of more workers eligible for overtime pay when they work over 40 hours.
Since the 1970s, the number of salaried workers who automatically qualify for overtime pay has steadily fallen, plummeting from 66% of workers then to just 13% in Maine currently.
Multiple attempts to expand overtime protections have failed in recent years. Myall believes this is because state lawmakers anticipate that the Biden administration will change the overtime rules at the federal level, but he warns that the same was expected under former President Barack Obama, whose proposed changes were halted by the Trump administration.
“It means another year where these priorities will be put off and delayed,” Myall said. “I do think we need to see the state take action on this, regardless of what might happen at the federal level.”
On top of the priority bills that didn’t get a vote this year, there were also many workforce policies that did pass, but didn’t get funded by the legislature’s budget-making committee and therefore won’t go into effect.
Many of them were given relatively small fiscal-impact assessments for the administrative costs their implementation would require. Still, they were not selected by lawmakers for funding off of the legislature’s special appropriations table.
Among those left unfunded is a bill that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour next year, a bill requiring a worker be paid if they report for a shift that is canceled, a bill preventing workers from having to pay for some job training, a bill protecting workers from employer surveillance, a bill allowing employees to request flexible work schedules, and a bill requiring employers to disclose pay ranges and maintain records of employees’ pay history.
All the bills will need to be funded in next year’s supplemental budget or they will die.
“I think, on one level, it was heartening to see the legislature very supportive of these additional rights and protections for workers. It’s more momentum than was seen in previous years,” Myall said. “But, obviously, we’re still falling short in terms of getting some of these things prioritized enough that they are being funded.”
One-time boost for retirees
Several bills that proposed long-term fixes to Maine’s retirement system for state workers and teachers were also not funded off the special appropriations table. However, the budget did include $19.8 million for a one-time 3% cost-of-living adjustment for state retirees.
In 2011, former Gov. Paul LePage and the Republican majority made significant cuts to the public employee pensions to pay for income-tax breaks mostly benefiting the wealthy and corporations. Today, the cuts are still pushing more retirees closer to poverty as Maine’s retirement system is failing to keep up with the cost of inflation.
While the one-time COLA adjustment was welcome, it still doesn’t completely repair the damage that was done, McCabe said.
McCabe and Myall both said that Mills and Democrats’ refusal to reverse LePage’s legacy by taxing the wealthy will continue to lead to a situation where many bills that pass the legislature will not get funded, as they are forced to compete with other priorities.
“We are still continuing to try to claw our way back from the pension cuts of 2011,” McCabe said. “We haven’t seen an overall repeal [of the LePage cuts]. There have only been some small steps.”
Dan Neumann studied journalism at Colorado State University before beginning his career as a community newspaper reporter in Denver. He reported on the Global North’s interventions in Africa, including documentaries on climate change, international asylum policy and U.S. militarization on the continent before returning to his home state of Illinois to teach community journalism on Chicago’s West Side. He now lives in Portland. Dan can be reached at dan@mainebeacon.com.
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