MSEA-SEIU members ask legislators to fund legislation moving remaining Riverview, Dorothea Dix workers into 1998 Special Plan

MSEA-SEIU Director of Politics and Legislation Beth White implores legislators to address the “inequity in retirements among workers at Riverview Psychiatric Center and Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, where some workers can retire at age 55 under the Special Plan, but others must work until either age 62 or 65. All workers at these facilities deserve to be in the special plan, not just mental health workers.”

On their own time, MSEA-SEIU members today asked the Maine Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee and the Health and Human Services Committee to include in the proposed Supplemental Budget the funding necessary to move the remaining workers at Maine’s two state psychiatric hospitals into the 1998 Special Retirement Plan.

The 1998 Special Plan allows workers to retire at age 55 with 25 years of service in recognition of the fact that workers eligible for the plan have high risk, stressful and often traumatic jobs.

Last year, the Legislature included funding to move Mental Health Workers 1-4s at Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta and Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor into the special retirement plan, which we strongly supported. However, there are many other workers in positions at the state psychiatric hospitals who work with patients alongside the Mental Health Workers. Positions such as nurses, psychiatrists, acuity specialists and intensive case managers weren’t included in the 1998 Special Plan. LD 579, An Act to Include Certain Mental Health Workers Under the 1998 Special Plan for Retirement, sponsored by Senator Mike Tipping, would fix that.

“The system is strained and the work is dangerous,” MSEA-SEIU Member James Bailey, a social worker at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, wrote in his testimony urging legislators to fund LD 579 as part of the proposed Supplemental Budget known as LD 2210. “Some staff have worked there so long that they are permanently in a state of alertness and can be startled by loud noises or sudden movement. In my time at the hospital, I have seen a nurse get a traumatic brain injury and end her career, and an acuity specialist break his shoulder and effectively end his career. There are a handful of staff that can never work directly with the patients on the units again because of injuries that they suffered.”

MSEA-SEIU Member Amy Chery, a registered nurse and nurse manager at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, said she has dedicated more than 20 years to caring for individuals with chronic and severe mental illness. “I began at the bedside and worked my way into leadership, but I have never stepped away from direct patient care. I continue to respond to emergencies, assist with restraints, intervene in violent incidents, and stand beside my staff when situations escalate,” Amy Chery told legislators over Zoom. “DDPC is increasingly receiving patients directly from jail settings. In correctional facilities, officers can carry weapons, rely on locked cells, and use custody-based safeguards to maintain control. When those same patients arrive at DDPC, those protections are not available. Nurses and mental health workers are expected to manager the same level of aggression and volatility without weapons, without the security infrastructure of a jail, and without the protections correctional staff have. When violence occurs, it is our bodies that absorb it.”

MSEA-SEIU Member and Hospital Nurse II Alisha Clavette, who works at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, also asked legislators to fund LD 579 as part of the proposed Supplemental Budget.

“The state has recently enacted the 25/55 benefit for our mental health workers; they are half of the team,” Alisha wrote in her testimony. “They, however, depend on the critical thinking skills, rapid assessments and response, and sound clinical judgment skills of us registered nurses.”

MSEA-SEIU Member Scott Lockhart works as  Nurse Supervisor at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center. “Like many of my peers, I have been hit, kicked, bitten, grabbed, and strangled in the line of duty—while maintaining commitment to a safe, therapeutic environment for patients and staff alike,” Scott Lockhart wrote in his testimony in support of funding LD 579 as part of the proposed Supplemental Budget. “Our patient population increasingly includes NCR (Not Criminally Responsible), IST (Incompetent to Stand Trial), and jail hold individual groups with profiles like those managed in correctional environments.

“Yet while corrections officers and law enforcement personnel — who face comparable occupational hazards — qualify for 25-year retirement, mental health professionals performing parallel functions must continue for ten or more additional years to receive equitable benefits,” Scott Lockhart wrote. “Staff in their sixties continue to respond to violent incidents under intense conditions, often without protective gear or physical back-up. To ask them to do so for decades beyond their capacity is neither reasonable nor sustainable.”

MSEA-SEIU Member Vicki Graves Boudreau has worked as a nurse for nearly 30 years at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center. “Caregiver burnout, PTSD, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization are as real for us as they are for firefighters, state troopers, corrections officers, and veterans. Early retirement would not only recognize the toll this work takes — it would strengthen recruitment and retention by attracting young, healthy, compassionate nurses to care for Maine’s most vulnerable citizens,” Vicki Graves Boudreau wrote in her testimony. “Please use this budget surplus to ensure that I — and all workers who provide direct care in these facilities — are included in the 1998 Special Plan for Retirement, so we have the same retirement security as the colleagues we work beside every day.”

In her testimony, MSEA-SEIU Director of Politics and Legislation Beth White implored legislators to address the “inequity in retirements among workers at RPC and DDPC, where some workers can retire at age 55 under the Special Plan, but others must work until either age 62 or 65. All workers at these facilities deserve to be in the special plan, not just mental health workers. Please include funding to move the remaining classifications into the 1998 plan in the final supplemental budget proposal.”

Beth White also testified in support of a proposal included in the proposed Supplemental Budget to allocate almost $4 million in funding for the establishment of a youth psychiatric residential treatment facility. “Our members have been raising concerns about the wait times between when some children are discharged from acute care, such as a hospital emergency department, to when a bed is available in a psychiatric treatment residential facility (PRTF). There simply are not enough PRFT beds to meet current needs, which is why we strongly support this proposed funding.”