Low wages are making it hard to recruit and retain state workers

MSEA-SEIU Member Gary R. Brooks, who works as a Building Custodian for the Maine Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management, provided the testimony below Feb. 28 to the Maine Legislature’s Appropriations Committee and the State and Local Government Committee in support of closing the state employee pay gap:

Senator Rotundo, Representative Gattine, members of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs committee, Senator Baldacci, Representative Salisbury, members of the Committee on State and Local Government, my name is Gary R. Brooks from Dedham and I’m writing on my own personal time as a member of my union, MSEA-SEIU Local 1989, and as a private citizen against the Governor’s budget proposals to take money away from our salary plan in LD210. I am asking that you work to add to that budget to help us State Employees who are struggling to make ends meet.

I work as a Building Custodian for the Maine Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management. I’m here today to tell you that State of Maine workers have been underpaid for years and it’s past time our wages are raised so 1) we can catch up with the rising cost of living and 2) so we are paid fairly compared to everyone else doing similar work throughout New England.

I have over 20 years of experience as a custodian. Three other custodians and I clean 20 buildings daily. We cannot live on $19.14 an hour! The four of us are really hurting. We like our jobs and don’t want to go anywhere, but our pay cannot stay flat while everything around us skyrockets out of sight. I should not have to find another job to survive. When I told my State Representative, Micky Carmichael, about our low pay, he asked me: Why is the pay so low and how are you living on half-pay?

Everybody knows we’ve been falling further and further behind, but the State still hasn’t done enough about it. In 2020, the State of Maine released a report showing State workers are on average paid 15 percent less than their public and private sector counterparts throughout New England. If you haven’t read that report, I think you should read it. It’s online at (https://legislature.maine.gov/doc/5615). The most recent report in 2024 said we are underpaid by 14%! This progress is way too slow. The cost of living is going up, NOT going down. While we have had some increases in recent years, they are not keeping up with the cost of necessary expenses.

As a Building Custodian, my paycheck is eaten up the cost of living and circumstances beyond my control. We need higher wages. My power bill as a single person has gone up a lot because the PUC raised my kilowatt rate. With a $930 monthly house payment there’s not much left for everything else, so we custodians at the Guard base, all of us workers, every one of us, need higher wages.

Right now, the Legislature can choose to make us, the workers who keep this state running a priority and not an afterthought.

I’m asking you to fund a state budget that ends the State Employee Pay Gap. You should also know it’s the low wages for State workers that are making it hard for the State to recruit and retain workers. Funding a state budget that ends the State Employee Pay Gap will go a long way toward making sure the services are there that Maine people count on every day.

Thank you.
Gary R. Brooks