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Public works employees, labor leaders press Bangor City Council over vacation, comp time and staffing
Summary
Public works employees, union leaders and residents urged the Bangor City Council to address staffing shortages, a new week of vacation for nonunion staff and proposed changes to comp time that union members say would reduce benefits and harm recruitment and safety.
Dozens of public works employees, union representatives and residents told the Bangor City Council on Jan. 27 that recent personnel decisions are hurting recruitment, retention and public safety.
Speakers said the city gave a week of vacation to nonunion employees while telling unionized public works staff they must negotiate for the same week and possibly surrender comp time. They urged the council to intervene and to preserve comp time — a benefit speakers said helps with recruitment, retains experienced operators and offsets tax burdens on overtime pay.
The concerns began with Scott Hardy, a Bangor resident, who said the city is "burying our waste" and pressed the council to prioritize vulnerable residents, then moved to labor issues. Adam Good, legislative and political director for the Maine AFL-CIO, described the city's approach as "a classic divide and conquer tactic, designed to limit the power of workers who take collective action to form a union and to negotiate and enforce collective bargaining agreements." Good said public works employees routinely work long, irregular hours and that the city has lost five employees in the last two months.
Chris Nyle, chair of Local 926 for public works, told the council that a rewrite of the employee handbook had given nonunion employees an extra week of vacation but left union members to seek the same benefit through bargaining. "They just broke the book and gave it to their nonunion people, and they're telling us, union people, we have to go to the negotiation table and negotiate it into our contract instead of being given something that we were told was citywide policy," Nyle said.
Brian Markey, who plows snow for the state, said comp time is "extremely important" both as a recruitment tool and to reduce tax burdens on high overtime hours. "If you take that benefit away, the grass is very green on the other side," he said, warning that workers will leave.
Other commenters tied the staffing concerns to service impacts: Steve Santiago, who works in food and medicine and lives in Hammond, and members of ATU 714 and other unions lamented reductions in bus service (including no Saturday service since October) and urged the council to restore or negotiate services that residents rely on. Joe Rich and others described long shifts — one commenter said a driver worked 29 hours straight — and said the city depends on those workers.
Councilor Leonard thanked speakers and asked how many workers had appeared before the council this year; he said multiple department directors had told him employees feel stifled when trying to raise issues. Councilor Chumka said it would be "inappropriate to comment on the specifics" of a bargaining or contract matter in public but requested an executive-session update before the next council meeting to brief councilors on the issues raised.
Speakers urged transparency and faster engagement from the council and city management. Daniel Carson, a member of the Eastern Maine Labor Council, called the withholding of benefits "a divide and conquer tactic." Jack McKay, president of the Eastern Maine Labor Council, said the turnout of workers at the meeting showed the issue's seriousness.
A number of residents also raised related concerns about city budget priorities, public engagement and services. Adrian Jarvis questioned broader budget allocations including sheriff staffing and jail costs; Winterwell, a Bangor resident who uses city transit and sidewalks, said, "I depend on you guys to, you know, plow my sidewalks and drive my buses, and I think you deserve everything." Hillary Simmons and others urged the council to preserve public comment options and transparency in decision-making.
Councilors acknowledged receipt of the comments and asked staff to provide more information. Chumka's request for an executive-session briefing was the only formal next step noted on the record during the meeting; no labor contract changes were voted at the meeting.
The public comment period lasted roughly an hour and featured more than a dozen speakers representing unions, residents and city employees. Several councilors said they would seek additional information from staff; Chumka said the council would be updated in executive session before the next meeting.
