## Facts

- The University of Maine System and ACSUM (the employees’ bargaining agent) entered a three-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) effective 1989 through June 30, 1992.
- The CBA set wage scales by wage bands with multiple seniority-based steps and provided for employees to move up a step on each anniversary date, receiving the specified wage increase.
- After the CBA expired, the University continued paying employees at the wage rates in effect on the expiration date but stopped providing the annual step increases.
- ACSUM filed a prohibited practice complaint with the Maine Labor Relations Board (MLRB), alleging the University made an unlawful unilateral change to a mandatory subject of bargaining by discontinuing step increases during successor negotiations.
- The MLRB ruled for ACSUM, applying a “dynamic” status quo theory that treated the step-progression mechanism in the expired CBA as part of the post-expiration status quo.
- On the University’s petition for judicial review, the Superior Court vacated the MLRB’s decision, and ACSUM and the MLRB appealed.

## Issues

1. Under Maine’s Public Employee Labor Relations Law, does the post-expiration duty to maintain the status quo require a public employer to continue paying CBA-provided annual step increases while negotiating a successor agreement?
2. Did the University’s cessation of step increases constitute a prohibited unilateral change and failure to bargain in good faith?

## Decision

- The Law Court affirmed the Superior Court’s judgment vacating the MLRB’s ruling.
- The University was not required, on these facts, to continue paying annual step increases after the CBA expired.
- Stopping step increases did not constitute an unlawful unilateral change or a breach of the duty to bargain in good faith.
- The court rejected the MLRB’s retroactive application of a dynamic status quo approach that would compel wage increases not collectively bargained for or approved.

## Legal Principles

- A public employer’s duty to bargain in good faith includes an obligation to maintain the status quo after a CBA expires while negotiations continue.
- For wages, the status quo may be treated as “static,” requiring continuation of the wage rates actually in effect at contract expiration, rather than “dynamic” continuation of time-based wage progression beyond expiration.
- An administrative interpretation that retroactively changes the status quo rule and compels unbargained-for wage increases conflicts with the statutory scheme that leaves substantive wage outcomes to collective bargaining.

## Conclusion

The court held that maintaining the post-expiration status quo required the University to continue paying the wage rates in effect when the CBA expired, but did not require continuation of contractual step increases; therefore, discontinuing step increases during successor bargaining was not a prohibited practice.


Bd. of Trs. of the Univ. of Me. Sys. v. Assoc. COLT Staff of the Univ. of Me. Sys., 659 A.2d 842 (Me. 1995)