Many students will spend a great amount of time this year working with library staff to study and research assignments. Often, more time will be spent working in the libraries than sitting in on the weekly lectures.
“We’re the folks that make things tick,” said Loraine Ann Lowell, circulation assistant for the Glickman Family Library in Portland.
But pay for the Associated COLT Staff of the University of Maine – which includes clerical, office, lab and technical workers – is 10 percent lower than the local average, and it just isn’t competitive. As a result, said Lowell, who represents the ACSUM union, people are leaving and the staff is spending more time training new employees and less time working with the students they are hired to help.
“I think this will eventually impact the quality of service given to the students,” she said.
About 27 percent of the staff at the University of Southern Maine libraries have been employed for less than a year.
“You could say that USM is on-the-job training for support staff in Southern Maine,” Lowell said. And the only thing that will stop this trend is to raise wages.
The ACSUM union, along with five other unions at USM, is in the process of negotiating contracts with the USM administration.
“They are all seeking improvements in salaries, benefits and working conditions,” said Ross Ferrell, UniServ director for the Maine Education Association, “as they do most of the time.”
The two-year contracts for five of the unions, including ACSUM, the University of Maine Professional Staff Association, the Associated Faculties of the University of Maine, the service and maintenance departments and the university police, expired June 30. Contracts for the Part-Time Faculty Association expired Friday.
“All of us are working without a contract,” said Donald Anspach, AFUM co-president and associate professor of sociology.
They’re not going completely without rights, since unions are subject to agreements made under their most recent contract.
“They’re essentially working under the existing agreement,” said Jerry Blazek, director of Labor Relations for USM.
“But it’s not as good a ground to be on as the contract in effect,” Ferrell maintained.
Why the delay
“It’s not unusual for [negotiations] to run long,” said Ferrell, who represents about half of the unions at USM.
One of the largest reasons for the delay stems from additional funds that became available to UMS halfway through the State legislature’s session. This past year the legislature increased its portion of the University’s budget by over 4 percent, but USM didn’t offer an increase in salaries.
“We were offered less than that,” Anspach said.
“There seems to be an apparent lack of good faith within the University,” said Thomas Power, associate professor of Theatre. “The promises of the past are haunting negotiations.”
About four years ago the University made a vow to raise full-time staff salaries up five positions – an increase of $3 million system wide – by 2002, Power said. With 2002 just months away, however, not a single raise has been made, and Power worries that it may be too late.
“This is a bad year for them to do that,” he said, because the economy is not as strong as it was in the past. “It’s going to hurt.”
Also, Power said, moral has been low among faculty.
But Blazek said that almost any outcome could develop during the day-to-day bargaining.
“We are in the process of negotiations, and negotiations is a give and take affair,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what is going to happen here ultimately.”
Another major contention is health insurance, said Carl Guignard, business agent for Local 340 of the Teamsters Union, which represents the maintenance and police departments at USM.
“That is the most difficult issue to overcome,” he said.
Although Guignard admits that the University had little control over the raise in health insurance costs – which have attributed to large increases in property tax rates throughout the state – he worries about the looming 50 percent cost increase projected for the second year of the upcoming contracts. An estimate that could cost an additional $300 a year for a $600 insurance plan.
“It’s a substantial increase,” he said.
The recent resignation of USM Chancellor Terry MacTaggart has also slowed down the bargaining process, Guignard said. Interim Chancellor Donald McDowell spent the better part of July learning about the union demands.
“He had to come up to speed,” Guignard said, “and we understand that.”
One last factor contributing to the late settlements was the late start, Blazek said. Some of the unions didn’t even come to the tables until July.
Projections for a settlement
Last year ACSUM took about a year to settle its contract. And the professional staff – or salaried employees – didn’t settle until April, two months before it expired.
“It’s exhausting,” Lowell said.
“Those things distract us from what should be our major goal,” Power said, “and that is teaching.”
No one would make a guess on when the contracts will be settled, but Ferrell said that the democratic process of negotiations is one in which a settlement won’t be reached until the parties can meet halfway.
“People will want a contract that is acceptable,” he said.
“There are a lot of issues to resolve, actually,” Anspach said. Currently, there are about 60 issues – from salaries to parking fees – being negotiated between AFUM and the University alone. “I don’t see any way that we can get settled before March.”
News Editor Glen Bolduc can be contacted at: [email protected]