LePages pay raise offer sways biggest state union to accept right to work contract language
Source: Bangor Daily News
Gov. Paul LePage used the lure of higher wage increases for members of Maine’s largest state workers union to win a key concession in his campaign to weaken the clout of organized labor.
In exchange for a 6 percent pay increase over the next two years, negotiators for the Maine State Employees Association have agreed to eliminate the requirement that state employees who choose not to join the union pay a mandatory fee to the union for collective bargaining and other services.
If ratified by a union membership vote, the deal would represent a victory for LePage, an opponent of public-sector unions who once said his inability to eliminate the requirement that employees pay agency fees to labor unions was among his greatest failures as governor. MSEA leaders countered that its members are underpaid and that negotiators were forced to accept the more lucrative offer.
Union and state negotiators agreed to the two-year labor contract last week after what Rod Hiltz, MSEA-SEIU Local 1989 executive director, called “six months of hard bargaining.” Union members subject to the contract — more than 9,500 employees in the executive branch of state government — have until Aug. 30 to ratify or reject the deal. Hiltz said state negotiators offered 1-percent raises over two years if the union opted to keep agency fees but 6-percent raises if the union rejected them.
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Read more: http://bangordailynews.com/2017/08/14/politics/lepages-pay-raise-offer-sways-biggest-state-union-to-accept-right-to-work-contract-language/
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