State employee Justin Norris chants outside the governor’s mansion, “Hey Janet Mills, we can’t pay our bills” alongside his fellow union members on Sept. 26, 2023. (Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
State of Maine employees will receive a one-time payment of $2,000 after their union took action earlier this year to improve the state’s classification and compensation plans.
After the Maine Service Employees Association SEIU Local 1989 filed a complaint with the Maine Labor Relations Board in February, the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services announced Thursday that it reached an agreement to provide the one-time payments to employees and study the state’s classification system used in determining payscale.
In a letter to executive branch workers Thursday morning, MSEA-SEIU President Mark Brunton said the agreement provides “a reasonable path forward.”
“We think this settlement agreement is a step in the right direction in addressing the need for Maine State Government to solve the staffing crisis in state government that is the direct result of the well-documented state employee pay gap,” Brunton said in a statement to Maine Morning Star. He added that a new compensation and classification system would address both problems.
The department’s commissioner, Kirsten Figueroa said she is proud of the agreement, adding that “this new study, bolstered by another generous lump sum payment, will advance our support of State employees and allow us to continue to focus on parity within our classification system.”
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Full-time employees will receive the $2,000 in a lump sum payment in early October, according to the news release from the department. The amount will be prorated for part-time, seasonal and intermittent employees.
The one-time payment is meant to recognize the time it will take a third-party to complete the in-depth study of the state’s classification system. The state will hire an outside consultant to study whether the current system meets the needs of today’s workforce.
The study is expected to produce a report by the end of 2025. It will review employee attraction and retention and fair job grouping based on skills, knowledge and other factors.
Both parties will also be able to bargain over the report’s findings in May 2026. The department will then submit a report to the Legislature by September 2026 detailing the recommendations and the Mills’ administrations next steps.
“Implementing a new compensation and classification system for state workers would go a long way toward Maine State Government providing the quality services Maine people deserve,” Brunton said. “Our members have been advocating for this for years, and we’ll keep advocating for it until it is implemented.”
State employee compensation saga
After a 2020 market study of state employee wages found state government workers were paid 11% below market compared with other public sector employees and 15% below market compared with the private sector, the state made multiple commitments to conduct a comprehensive review of wage and classification systems.
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill requiring the state to do the study and submit a report by Jan. 31. Although the department submitted a report by that deadline, the union alleged in its February complaint that it was not complete.
The report the department released at the end of January said state worker wages have increased by at least 24% in less than five years, totaling the increases from the previous 16 years combined, and argued it was “time to set aside the phrase ‘pay gap.’”
However, in its complaint, MSEA alleged the study was not completed as required by statute because it didn’t include an updated market pay study. The law passed last year by the Legislature calls for “a recalculation of the market salary report using current salary data” as part of the state’s comprehensive review.
Since the market pay study was not part of the January review, MSEA said earlier this year that there is no evidence for the claim that the state has addressed the pay gap.
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