SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Maine — A local chapter of the Teamsters union is putting pressure on town officials as part of ongoing negotiations over a labor contract with the town’s public works department employees, which the union represents.
The union was expected to hold a rally Tuesday evening on Main Street, in advance of the local selectmen’s meeting.
According to Joe Piccone, representative for the Teamsters Local 340, the town’s public works employees have been without a contract for almost two years. The town’s negotiators had reached a tentative agreement with the public works employees almost two years ago, he said, but selectmen rejected it.
“It’s past time for the town to do the right thing and get back to the bargaining table with us,” Piccone said Tuesday in a prepared statement, before the rally. “While [Mount Desert Island] and Acadia National Park has become America’s number one tourist destination, the public workers that make that happen are told to accept a reduction in health benefits. It’s a race to the bottom type of thing.”
Piccone said the unionized workers are satisfied with the current health coverage and that “no satisfactory reason” has been given for why it should be reduced. The lack of a contract has taken a toll on the morale of the town’s public works employees, he added.
“The town has been giving its employees the run around for far too long,” Piccone said in the statement. “We want a contract.”
Donald Lagrange, town manager for Southwest Harbor, declined Tuesday to comment on the union negotiations.
“The lawyers are still handling that,” he said.
On MDI, the Teamsters union also represents employees in the Mount Desert public works and wastewater departments and in the Bar Harbor highway and sewer departments. The union accuses the town of Mount Desert of negotiating in bad faith and has filed a prohibitive practice complaint with the Maine Labor Relations Board against that town, where public works employees have been working without a contract for more than a year.
