State employees circle the State House on Labor Day with signs demanding the state close the pay gap between the private sector and Maine’s state employees. | Courtesy of MSEA-SEIU
Posted in the Maine Beacon on September 5, 2023
Workers in the executive branch of Maine state government circled the Blaine House and state capitol in their cars on Labor Day, honking horns calling on Gov. Janet Mills and state officials to close the pay gap between Maine’s state employees and other workers.
On average, the state’s executive branch employees are paid 15% less than other public workers or their peers in the private sector, according to data from 2020. Workers said at a barbecue in Augusta’s Mill Park on Sunday that this is creating devastating results for the state, including unsustainable workloads.
Cynthia Sargent, who works as a child protective services caseworker for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said the department is experiencing a real and serious staffing problem as a direct result of impossible caseloads and staff leaving for better-paying jobs with more manageable workloads. There is a solution to this problem and it starts with closing the pay gap, she said.
“Closing the pay gap would go a long way toward helping Maine DHHS hire critical support staff. These positions are critical to ensuring that parents separated from their children can visit one another,” Sargent said.
Kevin Russell, another Maine DHHS employee, shared his concerns with the crowd, which included Senate President Troy Jackson, a Democrat representing Aroostook County, and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
“In my job, I determine the eligibility of Maine citizens for public assistance programs like SNAP and MaineCare,” he said. “Eligibility for these programs is income-based. I’m here to let you know that many of my coworkers in Maine State Government are paid so low that they actually qualify for SNAP, MaineCare and the State’s general childcare subsidy program. They’re turning to these public assistance programs because their full-time pay as state workers isn’t enough to support themselves and their families.
“Just think about that for a minute,” Russell continued. “The State’s pay scale is so low that some workers who have dedicated their careers to public service in our great state have to rely on public assistance to get by. That’s just plain inexcusable, right?”
The gap between the private sector and Maine’s state employees has been widening for years. It was drastically increased in 2011 when former Gov. Paul LePage helped pay for tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy by freezing executive branch wages.
The workers, who are members of the Maine Service Employees Association, SEIU Local 1989, made some progress in closing the gap in the last contract agreement reached in 2021, but workers say Mills has severely limited what the state can offer by refusing to reverse LePage’s tax cuts.
Negotiations between the Mills administration and the union got off to a rocky start earlier this year when the Mills administration refused to meet with the union’s bargaining team. The union expanded the size of its team and pushed for workers to be able to listen in on negotiations via Zoom in an effort to build rank-and-file participation. But the administration would not come to the table because of the changes, prompting the union to file a complaint in March with the Maine Labor Relations Board against the Democratic governor for bargaining in “bad faith.”
Talks have only recently begun and the workers are now entering their third month of working without a new contract — the current one having expired in June.
MSEA-SEIU president Dean Staffieri, who is also a state employee, said the pay gap has severely limited recruitment and retention of state workers and increased workloads, which is pushing many state workers to the breaking point.
“It’s only a matter of time with those kinds of grueling work schedules that someone’s going to make a mistake and someone’s going to get hurt. We’re here today because the time for preventive action is now,” he said, adding that two state studies, one in 2020 and another in 2009, show “the state’s been underpaying us for decades compared to what folks doing comparable work in Maine and throughout New England are paid in both the public and private sector.”
Staffieri shared the stories of MaineDOT plow drivers, who have plowed for over 34 straight hours, and a state ferry captain who logged over 74 hours of overtime in a single pay period, as well as 911 dispatchers working 16-hour shifts with only eight hours off before working another 16 straight hours due to understaffing.
“It’s not that the state doesn’t have the money to pay us,” Staffieri said. “The state has a record budget surplus — and the Rainy Day Fund is maxed out. No, all that’s missing to solve this problem is for the state’s negotiating team to provide us with a wage proposal that closes the pay gap.”
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.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE 