SOUTH PORTLAND — On the first day of the fall semester, faculty who teach lab, shop and clinical classes at Southern Maine Community College picketed on campus to raise awareness for what they called a pay discrepancy.

The faculty, who are members of the Community College Faculty Association, say they are paid at only 0.8 hours of every hour they teach. Classroom instructors, however, are paid hour-for-hour. The faculty said they’re the only group in the Maine Community College System who are paid at this rate, but SMCC officials said only Northern Maine Community College pays their lab and classroom instructors equally.

Liz Chenard, a nursing instructor at SMCC, said the pay discrepancy sends the message that the college does not value lab and shop professors as much as other professors.

“By counting those hours as less, we’re really undermining the importance of that hands-on education and the art that each of these professions involves,” Chenard said. “Those hours aren’t less important, the teaching isn’t less valuable, and the faculty doing that work shouldn’t be valued less either.” 

Democratic senate candidate Troy Jackson also made a surprise appearance at the picketing event and made a speech, saying those who work with their hands deserve equal pay.

“I don’t know about you, but where I come from, an hour’s an hour, regardless of what you do for work,” Jackson said. “I grew up around people who work with their hands — loggers, truck drivers, mechanics, tradespeople — nobody ever told us that our work is worth 80 percent just because you get your hands dirty doing it.”

Julie Mueller, a political science professor at SMCC, said the union has been negotiating this for some time. However, in a statement, SMCC President Kristen Miller said the college has proposed changes to address the discrepancy for the previous two years.

"Southern Maine Community College respects our faculty's right to raise workplace concerns, and we remain committed to good-faith negotiations on our local faculty workload agreement, which is separate from systemwide contract pay bargaining,” Miller’s statement read. “Over the past two years, the College has presented proposals to the faculty union addressing the .8 lab/clinical multiplier, including a move to a 1:1 ratio."