‘Our work cannot sustain itself when hiring at $17.69 an hour’

MSEA-SEIU Members Joshua Kuester and Derik Lee, from left, both fish culture supervisors for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, are joined by MSEA-SEIU Lead Member Political and Legislative Coordinator Jonathan Brown outside the Maine Legislature’s Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs hearing room before testifying Feb. 26 in support of addressing understaffing by closing the state employee pay gap.

Senator Rotundo, Representative Gattine, members of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs committee. Senator Baldacci, Representative Roberts, members of the Inland Fisheries & Wildlife Committee. My name is Joshua Kuester. I am currently a Fish Culture Supervisor at the Grand Lake Stream State Fish Hatchery. I am here on my own personal time to speak to the abhorrent personnel services budget proposals outlined in LD210.

I have been a state employee for nearly 12 years. Being a state employee fills me with a great sense of pride; since the first time I put on a button-up state shirt as a seasonal fisheries technician in Jonesboro, to this morning when I buttoned up my state chamois shirt, it makes me proud of what I represent. I’m here to tell you that I love what I do, and that fact in itself has allowed me to put up with a lot. But everyone has their breaking point, and for many of us in the Hatchery division, we are fast reaching it.

I never imagined that I would need to fight and come to the Legislature to request the bare minimum in this line of work. Yet here I am, feeling as though I am begging for scraps, being allowed to wallow in what is described by Commissioner Camuso herself as “well below livable wages”. A problem that has plagued the Hatchery system for decades.

The Fish Culturist position job requires a broad spectrum of both vocational skills and college level biological science knowledge. However, extremely underqualified candidates are consistently making up the entirety of the candidate pool for our many vacant positions. The root of our hiring issue translates directly to our struggle with retaining employees. The hatcheries have a high number of recent hires that quickly leave because scope of the job is greater than what we are being compensated for. This is an unstainable and troubling development.

If the unwillingness from administration to address these issues continues, then we will continue to suffer turnover, hindering the hatcheries’ ability to succeed. If the administration and Legislature solve these pay issues, we know this would benefit the State of Maine in many ways. Help us create a culture that will recruit and retain employees of a higher quality, resulting in a more knowledgeable staff with better morale.

In the past two years we have had 5 of 8 supervisors retire or resign prior to retirement age. Such a loss of job knowledge has a trickle-down effect on the overall functionality of the division and employee morale. When does the Hatchery Division, which according to Director Elizabith Latti contributes $300 million dollars to the State of Maine’s economy, when do we get our recompense? We ask for immediate support from members of these committees. Our work cannot sustain itself when hiring at $17.69 an hour.