A tight job market is making it harder for the Maine Department of Transportation to attract and retain snowplow operators in the midst of the state’s harsh winter season.
The agency is stepping up efforts to recruit new workers, but state union leaders say Maine will have to increase wages and benefits if it really wants to keep long-term employees.
The serious shortage of snowplow truck drivers at the Maine Department of Transportation has prompted the state to intensify employee recruitment efforts by taking out ads.
“There’s a team of dedicated men and women who make Maine run, boosting Maine’s economy, speeding Maine products to market and supporting safe travel throughout the state — that’s the Maine Department of Transportation, and we are looking to hire new team members,” one ad says.
“The number that we’re short on plow drivers right now is anywhere from 50 to 75 drivers,” says Ted Talbot, spokesman for the MDOT.
Talbot says the state currently has about 700 plow truck drivers deployed throughout the state for snow removal operations. But he says more are needed to meet the department’s goal of employing two drivers for every plow truck, in order to provide relief for long hours behind the wheel.
Talbot says that the tight job market in Maine, particularly in the southern part of the state, isn’t helping the department’s recruitment effort. Complicating the problem, he says, is the fact that once the new trainees earn their commercial drivers licenses from the state, they are literally down the road in search of a better-paying job.
“When we train these people and they find a better opportunity elsewhere, they go for that, even after we have just recently trained them, and that’s a piece of what some of the shortage is right now,” he says. “Turnover can be a factor where once they’re qualified and certified — they do sometimes look for employment elsewhere for more of a salary.”
In attempting to compete with the private sector, the state offers above entry-level starting wages for the new plow operators. Talbot says all of the positions are full-time slots with benefits that pay no less than $13.50 per hour.
But Ramona Welton, president of the Maine State Employees Association, says the problems the state is experiencing with retaining snowplow operators and other state workers is clear evidence that Maine is not doing enough to ensure employee loyalty, and hasn’t been for the past 8 years.
“If they were underpaid in 2009, and the administration has not done anything to close the gap on the underpayment of state employees,” she says. “They’ve eroded our benefits through shutdown days, freezes on merit pay. The benefit package is going down, the work is going up and nothing is being done to retain those viable, needy positions to provide the services for the citizens of the state of Maine.”
Welton said that compared to other states in New England, Maine DOT truck drivers are paid 20 percent less than their regional counterparts.