AUGUSTA — As members of the University of Maine System staff union undergo contract negotiations, several union members were shut down as they intercepted a legislative committee meeting to voice their struggles living on the UMS wages.  

Though the Legislature is not in session, the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs met Tuesday morning to review and approve nominees for the University of Maine System’s board of trustees. 

Eight members of the union used the public comment period during the trustee nominations to speak on the difficulty of surviving on their UMS wages. 

The timing comes as the union has undergone contact negotiations since June and faces only a 3.5% wage increase, equal to 70 cents an hour for the average UMS wage. Many workers said it won’t be enough to get by considering the increased cost of living.  

“To my knowledge, this is the first time we have approached the Legislature with union leaderships, which for me, goes back around eight years,” said Brian Berger, president of the ACSUM union.

Staff members in the union are paid on a pay scale dependent on their type of job and positions included in the ACSUM, which stands for Associated COLT Staff of the Universities of Maine, include clerical, office, laboratory and technical staffs such as administrative clerks, library specialists and data management technicians, to name a few.

Berger said the union has bargained with the university since July and after several back-and-forth negations, the system offered a 3.5% wage increase, which would be equivalent to a 70 cent hourly raise for the average pay of $19.66, or $40,892 per year. The union asked for a $3 per hour wage bump and a 6% wage increase in the second year, using the tactic to ask for more than they expect.

The rate of inflation sky rocketed 7% on average in 2021, when the union’s former contract was finalized, and now sits at 2.5%, according to the consumer price index data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. State employees worked for months to get a wage increase, with the state finally agreeing to 6% for all state workers with 3% in the second year of the contract.

Berger said he plans to speak with the University of Maine System’s bargaining committee on Thursday to negotiate more. They should receive retroactive pay for the time the staff spent working without a contract, but only if they ratify a contract by a specific date, he said.

According to a survey collected by the ACSUM, of the 480 hourly employees in the bargaining unit, 300 respondents reported that 34% have experienced food insecurity since 2021, 24% reported housing insecurity since 2021, 61% have unpaid bills and 72% of members need another income to survive.  

“The 480 members are from Fort Kent to Kittery and everyone in between,” he said. “They are employees from across the state. Employees in Bangor and Portland did specifically say their housing and utilities are higher but it’s not isolated and is across the state. Everyone is feeling the pinch one way or another.”

Sen. Joseph Rafferty, the chair of the committee, shut down the public comments from union members for being off topic as Elise Baldacci received her nomination for the board of trustees and told people to call him on his cell phone to voice the concerns instead of at the meeting. Four other nominations for the board of trustees — Owen McCarthy, Philip Hussey, Simon Ferland and William Kemler — did not have union members making comments during their nomination process, which included an introduction from them about who they are, one from an employee who knows them and a public comment period.

Kim Snider, an employee at the University of Maine at Augusta spoke on how with a bachelor’s degree, she’s the highest-level administrative specialist in her department yet she must work additional hours with her fisherman husband to afford their expenses that now includes cancer treatments for her. 

Rafferty shut her comments down as soon as she shared that she works additional hours. 

“Other than trying to share my story to see if (trustee) nominees have any indication on how they could change the staff morale and derivatives, I don’t have anything else to add,” Snider said. 

Nicole Gorson spoke about how she can’t afford to have children with her husband, another former UMS employee, but Rafferty shut her down when she started to mention her husband. Gorson said that her statement related to Baldacci’s trustee nomination.

“I would like to know how Baldacci plans to address Maine’s aging population when we can’t afford to have kids on the wage we are paid,” asked Gorson.

Currently, the University of Maine System is bargaining with four of the seven bargaining units, which include the Associate Faculty of the University of Maine System Union, University of Maine Professional Staff Association and the newly formed University of Maine Graduate Workers Union, in addition to ACSUM.

Samantha Warren, a UMS spokesperson, said the system values the contributions of the faculty, staff and student workers.

“Ultimately, 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. The System continues to negotiate with ACSUM and its representatives in good faith toward an agreement that is appropriately responsive to the requests of these important employees within the existing resources of our public institutions,” Warren said in a statement.