Gov. Paul LePage’s political appointee Joyce Oreskovich splashes a fresh coat of paint on a broken-down Edsel and then tries to call it a new Cadillac in her Sept. 22 BDN OpEd. There really is no other way to defend LePage’s record of rewarding the few at the expense of everyone else.
Last week, LePage was caught doling out multiple weeks of bonus vacation time to his political appointees under the guise of a recruitment and retention initiative. We, the Maine State Employees Association, filed a public records request to find out who received the bonus vacation time and its cost to Maine taxpayers. While Oreskovich could have included this data in her column, she chose to keep Maine taxpayers in the dark. She also tried to rewrite the history of labor relations between LePage and rank-and-file state workers.
Here are the facts:
In early 2011, members of my union sat down at the bargaining table with the LePage administration to negotiate successor employment contracts. The LePage administration brought along a high-priced New York City lawyer whose corporate law firm is notorious for trying to take away rights from workers.
During negotiations, the administration could have submitted proposals addressing any public employee recruitment and retention problems the state of Maine has been experiencing in all departments. None was submitted. Oreskovich knows this as the human resources director who oversees the collective bargaining process.
LePage also embarked on a simultaneous legislative course to pass and fund new tax breaks mostly benefiting Maine’s wealthiest residents by cutting the pensions of Maine’s retired public workers. In 2011, he signed into law legislation guaranteeing that generations of retired public workers in Maine won’t be able to keep up with the rising cost of living in retirement. He also tried to force state workers to pay an additional 2 percent toward their pensions over and above what they already pay. Plus, he underfunded the State Employee Health Plan, making it more expensive for state workers to provide health care for themselves and their families.
As contract negotiations continued into 2013, state workers had gone four years without a raise. Their last raise was in January 2009 — and the ensuing Great Recession led to legislative cuts that erased it.
Yet as Maine and the nation dug out of the Great Recession, the LePage administration still failed to offer any incentives to address recruitment and retention issues. Ultimately the parties agreed to raises of 1 percent in September 2013 and another 1 percent in July 2014. Throughout the negotiations, not once did the LePage administration initiate a single bargaining proposal addressing recruitment and retention issues. Nor did LePage submit budgets restoring any of the prior cuts to state employees. In fact, he vetoed a budget that funded contractual merit increases for workers eligible to receive them. Merit increases are a key tool in recruiting and retaining qualified workers.
LePage was the only New England governor to lay off federally funded state workers during the 2013 federal government shutdown. He laid off over 50 Maine Department of Health and Human Services workers and others even though the federal government provided written assurances it would reimburse the state of Maine if they worked during the shutdown. His actions caused further delays in the processing of disability claims filed by Maine people, and all of the workers he laid off ultimately got paid for staying home.
Despite LePage’s repeated attacks on rank-and-file workers and his special treatment for his political appointees, I know that our members who work for the state of Maine go to work every day putting Maine people first. We cannot continue with the divisive attacks we’ve seen in Maine in the last four years. Pitting Maine people against each other and rewarding the few at the expense of everyone else isn’t the Maine way.
We must work together for the good of all Maine people. And we need to make an informed choice in November.
Ginette Rivard is president of the Maine State Employees Association, Local 1989 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents over 12,000 Maine workers, including state workers in all three branches of government.