By David Farmer,Staff Writer

PORTLAND – Defying bad weather and negotiations they see as stacked against them, members of several unions from the University of Maine System rallied in Portland on Friday to demand a better deal.

The organizer of the rally was Jim Bradley, the president of the Associated Clerical, Office, Laboratory and Technical Staff of the University of Maine and a staffer at L-A College.

Inciting cheers of “solidarity” and “unfair,” Bradley laid out the unions’ case from the soggy steps of Payson Smith Hall, the gathering point before the march across the street to the Abromson Center, where system Chancellor Joseph Westphal was speaking.

“The university asks us to do more and more with less compensation,” Bradley said. “Many of our members are forced to take second jobs, receive public assistance and financial help from friends and families.”

More than 125 marchers, with representatives from every campus in the university system, including L-A College and the University of Maine at Farmington, traveled to the University of Southern Maine for the protest, many using a full day of vacation to attend.

A work force study conducted three years ago, Bradley said, showed that 38 percent of his unions’ membership received either public assistance or relied upon help from family and friends to make ends meet.

“Since then, we’ve actually lost ground,” Bradley said. “The university’s offer amounts to a pay cut.”

Janine Bonk and Dina Goodwin-Short, who both work in the admissions office at UMF, were among those made the trip down to take part in the protest.

“It’s very important to show our support,” Bonk said. “Many of us don’t make living wages. We have to get help from our families.” Bonk said she struggled to afford a two-bedroom apartment for her and her daughter.

“We’ve kind of expected that we get paid less,” said Sullivan, who works as a computer programmer at the Muskie School of Public Service. “Now with every contract, we’re falling further and further behind. … The university system finds the money when it’s something they want.”

Anne Liss, a student at L-A College and Lewiston resident, didn’t travel to Portland for the protest but joined in when she realized it was happening.

“College is supposed to be a place where people go to improve themselves, to be able to advance and do better,” Liss said. “But it doesn’t live up to that for its employees. It’s contradictory.

“I don’t think they’re asking for anything unreasonable.”Slogging through the waterlogged lawn on the Portland campus, the union members made their way to Westphal’s speech, chanting and waiving signs on the way. Westphal was to lay out his strategic vision for the university, which he has said faces a $15 million budget gap.

Four of six of the bargaining units in the university system are working without a contract. The old contract expired July 1, 2005. Two others, both represented by the Teamsters have signed new deals. The four units still without a contract are the University of Maine System Professional Staff, the Associated Clerical, Office, Laboratory and Technical Staff of the University of Maine, Associated Faculties of the University of Maine System and the Part-time Faculty Association.

Negotiations are currently in the mediation phase with three of four unions and moving in that direction with the fourth. The biggest sticking point, according to negotiators, is the cost of health insurance.

According to several members of the unions’ negotiating teams, the university is hoping to shift rising insurance costs onto workers. Recent contract offers would increase premiums by as much as 35 percent for workers, while the cost increase to the university would be held to less than 1 percent.

To put that in real numbers, Bradley gave an example: For a family receiving comprehensive coverage, the university’s costs would go up $28 a year; the families’ costs would increase more than $500.

“We realize money is tight,” Bradley said. “But at some point, the university has to stop putting employees at the bottom of the priorities.”

In addition, the new insurance would include higher co-pays and a reduced drug plan, said Kerry Sullivan, the president of the University of Maine System Professional Staff Association, or UMPSA.

“(The current package includes) good insurance. One of the reasons it is good insurance is that we are way underpaid,” Sullivan said. “In the 1990s when the money wasn’t available for salaries, the unions negotiated for increased benefits instead. Now they’re trying to take that way from us.”

Tracy Bigney, the chief of staff for the chancellor and chief human resources officer for the university system, said she couldn’t comment on the specifics of the university’s offer, but said there are several elements of disagreement between the two sides, including salaries and health insurance.

“It’s not our interest to keep salaries down, “Bigney said. “Salaries are low compared to the labor market we hire in. It’s not that we don’t want to pay better, but we are limited.”

Roughly half of the university system’s funding comes from tuition and fees, and the other half comes from the Legislature, Bigney said. “If the state is unwilling to increase its appropriation, we’re in a squeeze.”

The unions say that the negotiations that began in February 2005 have been a failure. If no deal is made during mediation, the next stage is to call for fact-finding and arbitration, Sullivan said. But at neither stage can the university be forced to change its financial offer.

The University of Maine System Labor Act makes it illegal for the unions to strike.

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