Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills’ administration and the state employees union reached a tentative contract agreement including a 4.5% raise and a $2,000 lump-sum payment, ending a bitter bargaining fight that stretched more than a year past the contract’s expiration.
The deal, which the state and the union’s bargaining team reached Wednesday, covers thousands of executive branch workers through June 2027. It was outlined in a message from the Maine Service Employees Association to workers obtained by the Bangor Daily News but still requires ratification by union membership.
Sharon Huntley, the spokesperson for the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, confirmed the agreement’s terms in an email. She did not answer a question about the deal’s estimated cost.
The agreement caps months of escalating pressure after talks broke down over wages, moved through mediation and eventually a neutral fact-finding panel, the first time in more than 45 years that bargaining had gone that far, Maine Public reported in June. Bargaining around the next contract, which Mills’ successor will negotiate, will begin in mere months.
The state’s wage offer crept up in stages. Before fact-finding, the administration proposed 2% raises in each of two years plus a $1,250 bonus. Fact-finders recommended 2.5% and 3%, plus $1,250. After that, the state matched the fact-finders’ first-year number at 4.5% but kept the $1,250 bonus. That was until this month, when it raised the bonus to $2,000.
MSEA President Mark Brunton tied that final movement directly to news of the state’s budget surplus, which he put at close to $150 million last year.
“With yet another year of budget surpluses, it’s unacceptable that we can’t reach a fair contract,” Brunton wrote to members Aug. 12, a week before the deal was struck.
After inking the tentative deal, the union’s bargaining team framed the settlement as a hard-won compromise rather than a full victory.
“Members stood together, took action, and refused to accept management’s earlier offers,” the bargaining team wrote to members Thursday. “That collective pressure moved the State beyond what it had agreed to with other unions and beyond what it had called its ‘last, best and final’ offer.”
The union said it also preserved its reclassification rights, an issue it said the state had tried to use as leverage against the wage increases. Instead, that dispute will go to binding arbitration under a process the parties initiated in July.
The tentative agreement includes other non-wage provisions, including a mileage reimbursement increase, a bump to longevity pay, expanded bereavement leave and new protections for employees facing federal immigration enforcement.
The settlement follows a state decision to raise pay for its confidential and appointed employees by 4.5%, plus a $1,250 lump sum, effective Aug. 9. Mills approved that increase under authority granted in 2025 budget laws.
Under the agreement, MSEA will withdraw two prohibited-practice complaints against the state once the deal is ratified and the lump sum is paid to workers.
Huntley, the budget department spokesperson, said the state will provide additional details once the agreement is formally ratified. Union information sessions and a ratification vote are expected in the coming weeks.