Orono Workers Vote Unanimously to Ratify New Contract with Pay Raises & Other Benefits

A year after Orono town employees won their union election with AFSCME Council 93, the workers unanimously ratified a new contract that includes pay increases and a new five-step pay scale. The workers also won a new fifteen-minute break during the day. Prior to the new contract town employees worked ten-hour days without a guaranteed break other than the legally mandated half-hour lunch break. Whether they got a break was dependent on what worksite they were on and who was their supervisor. AFSCME Council 93 labor representative John Nuttall said the hardest fight in bargaining was getting the break in the contract.  

"We had a lot of back and forth on it. We actually had to reject the contract and come back to them and say ‘this is make or break on this fifteen-minute break,'" said Nuttall. "There was a quite a bit of drama surrounding that. They really didn’t want to give that up."

The town also tried to take away a workers' health benefit that covered visits to the university gym, but the workers defeated that proposal and kept all of their prior benefits.