As a state employee and member of MSEA-SEIU, I want to say the recent contract agreement feels bitter and sad. One of our key, unmet bargaining demands was the right to telework – which would save us time and money on our commutes, and would allow the state to accommodate the needs of elderly employees, working single parents and staff with disabilities that make it challenging to travel. And, of course, it would save taxpayers millions annually in building costs.

I’m a middle manager who typically works in Augusta, but recently I received an accommodation for my disability – after a long fight – to spend my mandatory in-person days at an office closer to home. My coworkers in management are not diverse – 100% white, all middle-class workers from two-parent households. Now in a regional office, I find my my new cubicle-mates are low-wage, front-line staff, half are people of color, and two are above retirement age; one told me that her disabled husband had just come out of retirement to work because her income from the state could not support them.

When Janet Mills refuses to pay a living wage and refuses to let us telework, she is penalizing the exact people that her administration claims to champion: the elderly, the disabled, people of color and the poor. Her treatment of her own employees makes a lie of the rhetoric of her administration. Her bargaining team followed her usual modus operandi: moderation in crisis, and action with no substance. And the state workforce knows it better than anyone.

Tim Sturtevant
Biddeford

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