Hundreds of Maine Workers Rally and Demand Justice on International Workers’ Day
PHOTO: Robin Upton-Sukeforth & MSEA members march in Portland on May Day.
While the Maine Democratic Party hosted its annual convention gala, hundreds of workers gathered, rallied and demanded a fair contract on the steps of City Hall in Portland on International Workers’ Day, May 1. Members of the Maine Service Employees Association (MSEA-SEU) Local 1989 have been working under an expired contract for 10 months. Workers and other labor allies joined and protested for better pay and working conditions on this national day of action.
“On this historic May Day, labor allies and members of MSEA-SEIU Local 1989 have sent a clear message: the crisis within public services and our communities can no longer be ignored,” said Mark Brunton, a social worker and President of MSEA-SEIU Local 1989. “We have been without a contract since July of 2025. These are the workers who help children during family emergencies, snowplow drivers who keep us safe, and those who help us access important and necessary state aid, such as unemployment benefits. We are rallying in solidarity to make clear that the needs of working people must be prioritized over the desires of billionaires.”
U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at the May Day rally in Portland.
MSEA-SEIU Local 1989 has been raising awareness of the ongoing state worker pay gap, the difference in pay for similar work between other public and private sector counterparts, for years. The Governor and state leaders have failed to make meaningful significant progress toward closing that gap. According to studies commissioned and conducted by the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS), less than 1 percent of progress has been made in closing the pay gap over the last seven years since Governor Mills took office.
Mainers are still working to overcome the harmful impacts on public services and education resulting from the LePage-era tax cuts for the wealthy. Meanwhile, the federal government’s tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires are being paid for with cuts to working Mainers’ health care, food assistance, and services. The struggle 140 years ago to establish the eight-hour workday is the same struggle for dignity and fairness of those fighting for a fair and living wage today.
“Coming to a rally and protesting unfair and poor working conditions is an important tradition we must continue as workers in Maine on May Day,” said Kevin Russell, a health and human services worker and Vice President of the union. “We come here and protest peacefully to earn a living wage. We come, and we stand in solidarity with other workers. My colleagues ask me all the time, how can we continue to be exploited by our employers and the billionaire class and not take a stand? Organizing and taking action together is the only path for us to fight for the communities and workplaces we all deserve.”
Maine Med nurse Kelli Brennan, a member of the Maine Nurses Association, gave a blistering speech about "protecting our society from falling off an authoritarian cliff into the abyss of feudalism, oligarchy, abject servitude and the post-democratic dystopian hellscape that Donald Trump and his band of nitwit Nazi dweebs want to impose on all of us."
"The one thing that a bully never counts on is resistance. Authoritarians falsely believe their power is infinite. Fascists operate on the premise that they can turn one group of regular people against another group of regular people and that those groups will never unite for their common good and their own interests," said Brennan. "So it is their own arrogance of their despotism that is their weakness. It is their own malignant egos that have given us the opportunity to take them out. With every outrage against the vulnerable, with every stupid war they start for no good reason whatsoever, and for every liberty, freedom or comfort they try to strip away from the American people, our opportunities grow and the day of their demise draws even closer."
Kelli Brennan (MSNA) speaks at the May Day rally in Portland.
May Day commemorates the national labor movement’s fight for better pay and working conditions, including an eight-hour day. The day traces its roots to the Haymarket Affair, a violent confrontation on May 4, 1886, in Chicago, where a labor protest rally for an eight-hour workday turned into a riot after an unknown person threw a bomb at police.
MSEA-SEIU President Mark Brunton concluded his remarks, stating, “The members of my union will no longer accept the status quo from our elected officials. On this May Day, it is time to settle a fair contract, and we are demanding that all decision-makers take action now. Our rally demonstrated that workers are united and paying attention. We will not forget who has our backs come election season.”
The rally on the steps of the Portland City Hall included numerous unions present including Maine State Nurses Association, UMaine Graduate Workers Union, UAW Local 7650, UMPSA, AFUM, ACSUM (clerical, office, lab, tech at UMaine), APWU, MEA. Troy Jackson and Shenna Bellows, MSEA-SEIU Local 1989’s endorsed candidates for Governor, Graham Platner, candidate for the United States Senate, CD 2 Candidates Matt Dunlap and Joe Baldacci, Nirav Shah, candidate for Governor, Senate President Mattie Daughtry and many other elected officials joined service workers in solidarity.