The Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS) announced Monday that it has filed a request for mediation to help advance contract negotiations with the labor union that represents Maine’s state employees.
The Maine Service Employee Association Service Employees International Union 1989 (MSEA-SEIU), Maine’s second largest union, has struggled all year to get an agreeable pay proposal from the Mills Administration.
The mediation request, through the Maine Labor Relations Board, comes after three months of tense contract negotiation between the State and MSEA-SEIU.
Gov. Janet Mills and the State Legislature have allocated up to $99 million to negotiate during collective bargaining, the largest amount ever proposed.
“Despite this, the State and the union remains hundreds of millions apart,” the Mills Administration stated in a Monday press release.
The Mills Administration claims that they have “never walked away from the negotiating table” — a claim which the MSEA disputes.
Although Mills, whose re-election campaign was endorsed by MSEA, claimed that her negotiators have never left the table during a Maine Public radio interview last week, the MSEA sent an email to its members claiming that the Mills’ chief negotiator, Breena Bissell, had in fact “abruptly stormed out of negotiations.”
Bissell, who brought in $157,289.32 in 2022 according to state records, rejected a proposal for a $5.00 per hour raise, a 19 percent raise starting in October, and an 11 percent increase beginning in 2024.
“There were a number of state workers who were queued up to voice concerns, who didn’t get the opportunity to do so. These are members who took time, unpaid, to come have their voice be heard by the Administration,” the MSEA said in their email. “The Administration walked out on not just those workers; they walked out on all the state workers who are being represented at these bargaining sessions. This is absolutely unacceptable.”
Mills boasted in Monday’s release of an increase in state employee wages by nearly 14 percent, after a 2020 study found that salaries for Maine state employees were on average 11 to 15 percent below market for similar positions.
This includes a three percent raise in September 2019, four percent in January 2021, two percent in December 2021, and four percent in July 2022 — increases of more than 40 percent of the total increases the entire decade before Gov. Mills took office.
“We deeply value State employees, and we see mediation as a productive next step to secure higher pay for them,” Kirsten Figueroa DAFS Commissioner, said in a statement.
“We are striving to become Maines employer of choice, and we know that involves competitive compensation and an attractive benefit package,” Figueroa said. “That’s why, over the past several years, we have made substantial strides in closing the wage gap and improving benefits.”
“We strongly want to continue to make progress within our budgetary constraints. It is our hope that an impartial perspective can help both sides realize a final agreement that works for all parties involved,” she said.
Mills has previously increased the base pay rate of state employees to $15 per hour, a one-time $2,000 payment to employees in December 2021, and established two-week paid parental leave during the 2019-2021 negotiations — doubled to four weeks in the 2021-2023 negotiations for the birth or adoption of a child.
None of the figures prior to 2020 mean anything. Lepage never kept up with cost of living increases either. It is all just throwing figures around to distract from the fact that while private companies have been forced to increase wages to keep employees by more than 20 percent since covid. The state has done very little 3 and 4 percent. With inflation at 11 and 9 over those same two years and another 6 for this year. cost of living should be bare minimum. simple math says the state employee is 19 percent in the red since covid. Those figures do not even account for future inflation projections. Be honest either fund your government or eliminate programs. Stop creating slave labor conditions while leaders like Jackson crook at every turn.