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The University of Maine turned campus health services over to Eastern Maine Medical Center last semester, a decision that forced employees at Cutler Health Center to request severance packages in order to avoid losing benefits by being employed by EMMC.
About four years ago, the university decided it would be in the best interest of students and UMaine to remove Cutler from the public sector. During the last three years, UMaine reviewed contractors’ proposals and decided on EMMC as the best option for running health services on campus. During that process, officials from the Maine Educators Association were included in the bargaining process on Cutler employees’ behalf.
MEA representative John Bracciodieta said the university’s insistence on privatizing left employees with little choice other than to request a severance package – despite UMaine’s requirement that the chosen contractor keep them employed – because many of the benefits they had under the university would be eliminated under another employer.
“Whoever will be taking over the center, if it was agreed to, would not have the same benefit structure. For instance, the employees accrued time toward their retirement would not carry over. . Whoever took over was going to have a different health insurance, different retirement – they were going to be starting with no seniority. That new employer could have laid them off whenever they wanted,” Bracciodieta said.
The university was willing to bargain, but was adamant that privatization was going to be the final result for Cutler.
“The union here came forward and asserted a broader claim that they actually had a right to bargain with us over the underlying decision to subcontract, and that in order to proceed along the lines that we wanted to go . we would actually have to bargain the union’s consent,” said Steven Weinberger, assistant vice president of the department of human resources.
Cutler’s employees had two choices: work for EMMC and lose their benefits or accept severance packages, keep their benefits and find employment elsewhere.
“We were very clear with respect to our intentions of privatizing student health,” Weinberger said.
Cutler’s staff could have been re-employed at Cutler by EMMC, and a few were. Not all of the 21 unionized staff members left Cutler. Most accepted the severance packages, but two moved on to other employment, one remained temporarily, six retired, seven chose to work for EMMC, two became employed elsewhere in the community, three left to pursue other priorities and one returned to school, according to Robin Toderian, assistant vice president of student auxiliary services.
“The university made it clear that they believed this was in the best interest of the university, and the employees could have said ‘yeah, go ahead and do it, we’ll just become employees of the EMMC,’ but they decided that they’d rather take advantage of their contractual benefits,” Bracciodieta said.
In exchange for the severance packages, employees relinquished their option to have input into how Cutler would be run. This is now under EMMC’s discretion.
“We were willing to consider a variety of different arrangements, but this is what emerged from that process,” Weinberger said.
Bracciodieta said the union and Cutler’s employees were content with the final arrangement.
“I think during the process, some of the employees felt that if they had a severance package, that that would be sufficient financial protection and that they would be able to work out their future employment arrangements without any assistance from us,” Weinberger said.
The services that students have come to expect from Cutler, including the student care package, are still ongoing in addition to extra services such as clinicians available after hours and on weekends. Students with insurance and the Cutler Care Package can also bill their insurance for medical services and let the package make up any difference.
Cutler resumed services on Jan. 12. The official ribbon cutting ceremony is set for Jan. 30 at 3:30 p.m.
