Mental Health Crisis Workers Back Bill to Strengthen Retirement Security for Psychiatric Hospital Workers

PHOTO: Riverview worker Sally Nichols (AFSCME 1825) testifies for LD 579 on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, workers from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta testified in support of a bill that would add mental health workers at state psychiatric facilities to the same retirement plan with firefighters, law enforcement and corrections officers. LD 579, sponsored by Sen. Mike Tipping, would add certain mental health workers employed on Oct. 5, 2025 or after to be added to the 1998 Special Plan for Maine Public Employees Retirement System, which allows workers to retire after 55 years of age with 25 years of creditable service. A similar bill passed the Legislature last session, but was not funded.

Workers at Riverview  work with some of the most acutely mentally ill patients in the state, including those whom courts have deemed at imminent risk of harm to themselves or others, are unable to care from themselves, are incompetent to stand trial, and not criminally responsible by reason of mental illness. Unlike corrections workers, these mental health workers do not use handcuffs, tasers or pepper spray to handle patients in crisis because it is a health care setting. For years, both workers and patients at these facilities have been put in danger by unsafe staffing. Low staffing has routinely led to violent assaults on workers that required emergency medical care.

Riverview worker Sally Nichols, President of AFSCME Local Local 1825, testified to the Labor Committee that her coworkers feel they haven't been listened to after repeatedly coming to the Legislature to plead for bills to incentivize better staff recruitment at state psychiatric centers. She recounted all of the injuries she and her coworkers have experienced at the hands of patients over the years.

"Our injuries are very serious injuries. A lot of workers have never returned. We still have some out [from injuries] who are trying to return," she said.

There were 70 reported staff injuries at Riverview last year, compared to 11 at Dorothea Dix, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Service. A survey of psychiatric center workers conducted by the Legislature's nonpartisan Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA) found that less than half of Riverview staff and 60 percent of Dorothea Dix staff said they usually or always feel safe at work. In response to the report, Rep. Bill Bridgeo (D-Augusta) last month called on the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee to investigative claims of unsafe conditions at Riverview.

However, Nichols told the committee she and some of her coworkers didn't answer the survey because they were afraid of retaliation. She said most staff don't feel safe to testify before the Legislature either. Labor Committee member Rep. Marshall Archer (D-Saco) expressed anger at hearing that workers fear retaliation.

"I feel my blood boiling right now and I am holding it in as much as possible from the professional perspective. That cannot happen," he said. "The message needs to be heard that employees in all professions that the law states that you cannot be retaliated against for reporting safety concerns, whether it is perceived or actually happening."