AUGUSTA, Maine — Members of Maine’s major state employee union ratified a new two-year contract on Wednesday, finalizing a deal with the administration of Gov. Janet Mills that includes a 4 percent across-the-board pay increase by late 2020 and a compensation study.
The Maine State Employees Association, which represents more than 9,000 state workers, won those and other concessions from the Democratic governor in the deal, which union officials wrapped up with the administration in June after members protested outside the Blaine House.
The union announced it won a 3 percent across-the-board pay raise in the deal, which took effect Thursday. That will rise to 4 percent by the end of 2020. It also won a compensation study of the state workforce that union members said they wanted to address retention issues. Mills’ budget department said it is expected to cost $43 million over two years.
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Maine’s state workforce shrank by 1,600 employees under former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had fraught relations with the liberal union whose president, Ramona Welton, said Thursday that this year’s negotiations “didn’t have the tension” that they did under LePage.
“For the membership as a whole, not everybody got everything they wanted, but everybody got something,” she said.
In a statement, Mills said she was glad the sides “were able to reach a fair and equitable contract agreement” and her goal is to ensure that “Maine people know that public service is an honorable pursuit and that our employees are treated well and valued.”
The deal also provides greater wage parity between caseworkers in Maine’s child and adult welfare systems and guarantees 14 days of paid parental leave for any parent after the birth or adoption of a child. The previous policy guaranteed at least 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
The union said it also includes “no takebacks,” meaning employees’ rights from previous contracts were preserved. That came after LePage won a major concession in 2017, when union members traded raises for the elimination of so-called agency fees that required represented workers to pay fees to the union even if they weren’t members.
Those fees were later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the union lost roughly 2,000 feepayers by March 2018. But Welton said more members were involved in this year’s negotiations than in the past and that “culture is changing” in government and the union is “part of that.”