Port Townsend, Maine — Members of the University of Maine System’s faculty and staff are currently working without new contracts.
Many workers have said that they are barely able to make ends meet with the pay they are getting now.
As talks between UMS and different bargaining units and their unions have come to a halt, workers and union reps have said that their worries about wages can no longer be ignored.
There are seven working units at UMS. The system’s labor relations team is in talks with four of those units right now about agreements:
- The Associated Faculties of the University of Maine System, or AFUM
- The Universities of Maine Professional Staff Association, or UMPSA
- Associated Clerical Office Laboratory Technical Staff of the Universities of Maine, or ACSUM
- The University of Maine Graduate Workers Union, or UMGWA, which is newly formed
The bargaining groups whose contracts are currently stuck in negotiations had their contracts end in June.
The head of the UMS Board of Trustees spoke at a board approval hearing at the legislature on Tuesday.
“The high quality of UMS rests on the hard work of dedicated and excellent faculty, staff, and administrators,” Trish Riley said. “Recruiting and retaining personnel is a high priority of the Board, and we know that higher wages would support those efforts.”
But ACSUM President Brian Berger said the board has not come to the table with an offer that is sufficient or feasible for staff members to survive in this economy, even though Riley and other trustees know that higher wages would help keep employees and make them happier overall.
“We feel that it’s important for the taxpayers of Maine and other people to be aware of the situation at the university as a partially publicly funded school,” said Berger.
Berger said that some union members say they work seven days a week and still have to do things like give plasma to make ends meet.
There are many people who work at the USM, including Miles Stevens. She works at the University of Southern Maine as an administrative specialist in the office of registrations and schedule services.
Even though her job is to help kids, the money she makes isn’t enough for her to live on her own.
Stevens said, “I make $16.74 an hour.” “Budgeting has just become what can I afford and what can I afford to put off.”
On Tuesday, during the Board of Trustees approval hearing, UMS staff members spoke to the Maine Legislature about their worries. However, each of them was cut off and told to keep quiet.
“The concerns brought up this week in the Legislature have not been recently brought up with System leadership or the Board, not even at this week’s public meeting of the Board in Farmington,” said Samantha Warren, head of government and community relations for UMS.
Berger said that ACSUM is made up of 480 UMS workers. The union sent out a survey to its members, and 300 workers who are ACSUM members filled it out. They told each other about the hard times they’ve had over the last three years.
“Over 100 people have experienced food insecurity since 2021,” he said. “Almost a quarter of our members have experienced housing insecurity, and four people were homeless within that same time frame.”
Warren said that the amount of money USM gets from the state has dropped by a huge amount.
“As a public university system, our ability to improve wages and working conditions without overburdening Maine students and their families in the form of unreasonable tuition increases depends on our state funding, which has historically not kept pace with inflation or our growing bargained compensation costs,” Warren wrote in a note.
Even so, many workers are still hoping that directors will hear their plea for better pay, even though talks are still going on.