Orono City Councilor, Residents Protest Town Manager's Anti-Union Efforts

Orono residents are calling on the Orono Town Council to halt the town's efforts to undermine the effort of town staff to organize a union. Orono town staff at the library and municipal office have filed to form a union with AFSCME Council 93, but Town Manager Sophie Wilson is fighting the effort by seeking to exclude workers from the bargaining unit. Supporters of the workers pointed out the town’s efforts to exclude part-time workers and others is putting the fate of the union in jeopardy.

Councilor Sonja Birthisel told WABI on Tuesday that the town manager filed the challenge without the Council’s knowledge or consent.

“I was expecting that council would be kept abreast of the situation,” said Birthisel, who also serves on the Food and Medicine board. “I believe that it is the role of council to set policy, for example, and this, to me, seems like a matter of policy rather than day to day operations.”

Reading from a prepared statement purported to represent the “majority of council” at the meeting, Councilor Meghan Gardner, who is up for reelection next Tuesday, defended the town manager’s actions and insisted that Wilson’s behavior is “standard practice” and had she not challenged the union petition “she would not be doing her job.”

Gardner also claimed that the Council is legally prohibited from simply recognizing the union. This is incorrect. When resident Sarah Marx, who is running against Gardner as a write-in candidate, pressed Gardner to show what law prohibits the council to get involved, the town’s anti-union attorney Matthew Tarasevich of Bernstein Shur was forced to acknowledge that there is nothing in labor law that prevents council from doing that (See video).

Resident Mark Haggerty pointed out that workers don’t usually take the risk form a union unless they have a good reason to do so.

“I would ask town council to think about what’s happening with your employees,” said Haggerty. “What’s happening with the management of your employees if they feel threatened enough to overcome the threats to their job security by trying to unionize?”

Haggerty added that the town should make its objections to the union made public.

“This is one of the concerns because in the literature this is classic union busting,” he said. “This is how we keep unions from being formed. I don’t want to be in a town that’s anti-union.”

If you live in Orono, please tell the Orono Town Council to stop challenging the rights of town employees to join a union!