Direct care workers at Maine’s mental health hospitals - Riverview and Dorothea Dix Pscyhiatric Centers – have been struggling in recent years due to severe understaffing. Workers were frequently being forced to work mandated overtime shifts to cover for staff shortages. The work they do is dangerous and difficult, and being understaffed was unsafe for workers and patients alike. AFSCME 1814 & 1825 and MSEA-SEIU 1989 represent the workers at Riverview and Dorothea Dix. One of the biggest barriers to recruiting and retaining staff was low wages. Mental health worker pay started at less than $12 an hour. Staff turnover was high, which negatively impacted the care they were able to provide their patients. Senator Roger Katz and other legislators heard from workers speaking up on this issue and submitted a bill to increase wages for front line staff including mental health workers and nurses. Increasing wages for mental health workers, nurses, and other direct care staff at Riverview and Dorothea Dix means they’ll be able to better compete for and keep good staff. LD 1645 passed both the House and Senate with strong bipartisan majorities, but was vetoed by Governor LePage. Both chambers overrode the veto and LD 1645 became law, giving these workers well deserved raises. Since implemented, workers at Riverview have seen a decrease in mandated overtime shifts, better staffing levels, and increased morale. Two roll call votes in the House were key in the passage of this important bill. We are scoring both the initial roll call as well as the roll call vote to override the veto.

The State of Maine spends millions of taxpayer dollars every year to buy things that we as a state need—including materials for the construction of roads, buildings, bridges, and public works projects. One key way the state can create jobs and support the U.S. economy would be to legislate that these goods be Made in America whenever possible. LD 1525 would have done just that by creating a state procurement preference for Made in the USA goods and materials. Buy American legislation would help create and keep jobs in the United States and support our struggling manufacturing sector. The bill had reasonable exemptions for availability, quality, and safety needs if the materials necessary were not available made in the USA, and a process for departments to request waivers. LD 1525 passed in the House but was defeated in the Senate and therefore did not become law.

The Maine AFL-CIO opposes efforts that undermine striking workers’ economic security including their potential ability to collect unemployment insurance. Growing out of the Fairpoint strike, this bill was an attempt by the LePage Administration to guarantee that striking workers could never receive unemployment insurance. Going on strike is very difficult; workers only withhold their labor when they’ve exhausted all other viable options. This bill would have tipped the balance of power against workers and in favor of employers. It would have made things even more difficult for striking workers. The right to strike exists in a context of a fundamental power imbalance between the individual worker and a large corporation. Workers have banded together in unions and demanded rights – including the right to strike – as a way to address that power imbalance. We should be strengthening workers’ rights not weakening them. This bill was defeated in the House.

Employer drug testing of workers is inherently intrusive and compromises workers’ privacy and rights. The current law provides a balance that emphasizes due process for workers, employee input and a commitment to employee assistance. This proposal would have removed important worker protections and undermined employee rehabilitation and employer responsibility for treatment. This bill also sought to radically rewrite the law based on employer anecdotes and without solid data. The bill was defeated between the chambers.

The Maine AFL-CIO believes healthcare is a human right. Despite tens of thousands of vulnerable Mainers not having health insurance coverage, Gov. Paul LePage and his allies have repeatedly opposed efforts to expand Medicaid in our state. This unwillingness to better the quality of life in Maine and grow our economy has been a question of life and death for all too many. Sen. Tom Saviello (R-Franklin) attempted to right this failure of leadership by crafting his own version of previous Medicaid expansion bills. Unfortunately, Republicans on the Health & Human Services Committee refused to support the measure and despite passage in both the Senate and House the bill did not receive enough votes to withstand Gov. LePage’s anticipated veto. LD 633 died in possession of the Appropriations Committee when the Legislature adjourned for the remainder of the 127th Legislature. The Maine AFL-CIO will continue to stand up and fight for healthcare as a human right.

Thousands of workers in Maine have been exposed to asbestos. Very often, the consequences of exposure are not known or felt until decades later. When that occurs, the impact on an individual’s life, family and finances can be devastating. Asbestos-related diseases are often deadly. When workers have been exposed to asbestos and later become ill from it, they can seek compensation and coverage of medical bills from the company that exposed them to it. LD 1181 would have given an unfair exemption from liability on asbestos related claims to one big multinational corporation, Crown Cork. While this company is not currently present in Maine, there is a national effort to pass this bill in states across the country. Such an exemption from liability would set a terrible precedent for the future. It could also hurt workers down the road who through no fault of their own were exposed to asbestos and become ill. Fortunately, a majority of Legislators agreed with us that this bill should be defeated.

Raising Maine’s minimum wage was a major focal point of this legislative session. The Maine AFL-CIO has long supported raising wages for working people. We support raising the minimum wage because the cost of groceries, housing and other basics have gone up for years, but wages haven’t come close to keeping up. We can all agree that people working full time should be able to make ends meet. Raising the wage boosts small businesses and strengthens our economy by putting more money in the pockets of Mainers who spend it in their communities. Having grown tired of opposition from corporate lobbyists and many Republican legislators, the Maine AFL-CIO and other allies initiated a citizen initiative to take the question of raising Maine’s minimum wage directly to the voters. We collected more than 90,000 signatures to put a proposal (Question 4) on the November 2016 ballot that will raise Maine’s minimum wage from $7.50 to $9 in 2017 and then one dollar per year until it reaches $12 in 2020. Once it became clear we’d collected the necessary signatures to put this question on the ballot, big business lobbyists tried every trick in the book to derail our initiative. With three different bills, they attempted to attach a weaker “competing measure” question to the citizen initiated referendum. The competing measure was designed to split support for the minimum wage in the hopes that no increase passed. LD 1661 was the minimum wage initiative itself. The Maine AFL-CIO encouraged legislators to vote to send this out to voters as is. LD 1661 was ultimately sent out to voters. LD 674 was a completely unrelated bill that Republicans amended to attach a competing measure to the minimum wage. We opposed their competing measure amendment and this bill was defeated. LD 1695 was a last minute attempt to undercut the ballot initiative. Once it became clear that LD 1695 was designed to undercut the ballot initiative – and would likely be interpreted as a competing measure by the courts – it died in the Senate. We appreciate legislators who honored the will of the voters to ensure that Maine people will have a straight up or down vote on Question 4 and a chance to raise the minimum wage this November.