Since the middle of last month, nearly 40 ferry trips to and from the island town of Vinalhaven have been canceled or otherwise disrupted, leaving residents stranded on the mainland, lobstermen unable to deliver their product and school sports teams facing complications when traveling for games.
The Maine State Ferry Service blamed the disruptions on staff shortages, but without a consistent way to get to and from the island, daily life and business can’t go on normally, Vinalhaven Town Manager Marjorie Stratton said. Businesses are unable to reliably bring in more resources. People who have gone grocery shopping on the mainland have found themselves stuck when the last ferry to Vinalhaven is canceled, she said.
“That is our highway, so to speak,” Stratton said. “Think of if your highway was blocked to where you needed to be, or if your road was only open for a certain number of hours a day. It’s a different thought process.”
The town has reached out to the Maine Department of Transportation, its local legislators and even Gov. Janet Mills’ administration for help, Stratton said, but the ferry service remains reliably unreliable for the island’s roughly 1,200 residents.
William Geary, the director of the ferry service, wrote in a Facebook post on May 30 that in addition to the ferries being short-staffed, six able-bodied seamen were out for vacation or medical leave. The ferry service sent out some job offers for more workers, but they were declined.
“We are exhausting every effort to crew these ferries and again thank those who continue to step up and take extra shifts to keep them running,” Geary said in the post.
A former captain of the Vinalhaven ferry, Peter Drury, blamed the staff shortages on low wages.
Drury captained the Vinalhaven ferry for 26 years, and said pay was consistently below industry standard. He didn’t mind, since he was able to go back to his home every night on the island, but he noted that’s probably not enough to encourage new ferry workers to join.
“I think that the wages at the ferry service have gotten even further away from industry expectations,” Drury said. “There were times when we were a little short-handed, but nothing like we’re seeing now.”
Drury is a member of the Maine Service Employees Association Local 1989, a union representing more than 13,000 active and retired state government workers. The union filed a complaint against the Mills administration in February accusing the administration of not bargaining in good faith.
A 2020 study by the state and union found that on average, state workers are paid 11 percent to 15 percent “below market” for similar positions in the public and private sectors across New England. The Mills administration contended that it has raised state government employees’ wages by nearly 24 percent over the past five years.
Drury said another aspect of the problem is that the ferry service is only hiring full-time employees. In the past, it had a collection of on-call part-time employees that could take over if any other ferry workers had to call out or were on vacation. Now, when full-time employees call out, others have to take their shifts, Drury said.
The spokesperson for the Maine Department of Transportation did not answer questions about the ferry disruptions and referred the Bangor Daily News to Geary’s Facebook post from last month.
