AUGUSTA ? State workers must pay a union fee regardless of whether they join the union or risk being fired, according to a state official.

A memo handing down the pay-or-be-fired ultimatum came from Kenneth Walo, director of the state’s Bureau of Employee Relations. It was e-mailed to state employees.

The Maine State Employees Association negotiated a contract earlier this year requiring the payments from nonunion members to the union. But the memo has a national right-to-work organization up in arms and some nonunion workers crying foul.

“No one should be compelled to pay union dues in order to work,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The payments are to be equal to weekly dues paid by union members, less an amount that’s supposed to be equal to what the union spends for political purposes.

That works out to $3.35 per week starting this July and $6.71 per week starting next July, Walo said. After that it goes to 73.9 percent of the MSEA dues. Right now that’s $9.10 per week.

Walo also said, however, that it will be Gov. John Baldacci who signs the contract with the Maine State Employees Association requiring the payments.

New hires for the past two years have been required to make the payments to the union if they chose not to join, he said. The requirement was extended to longer-serving workers during the recent contract talks, Walo said.

But nonunion workers didn’t know about the change until after the fact because the contract was negotiated behind closed doors.

“That’s where a lot of the animosity comes from. It was suddenly sprung on us,” said Brian Hodges, who works for the Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

Dana Graham, the MSEA president, defends the fee as simply requiring nonunion employees to “pay their fair share” of costs to conduct negotiations and represent union members’ interests.

Once the fee is being collected, nonunion members will be given access to union labor lawyers and other representation.

“We’ve been supplementing these nonmembers for the past 25 years,” Graham said. “It’s about time that they pay their fair share.”