State official hones skills in the art of negotiation

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief

For a guy at the center of the storm, the state's chief negotiator, Davis Yogi, seems supremely comfortable.

The state's chief labor negotiator, Davis Yogi, has a double workload as director of the state Department of Human Resources Development. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

At an hours-long labor board meeting last week, he passed the time by filling a page with doodles, rendering a cartoonish image of the board members as tiny people peering out at the proceedings from behind a towering desk.

Yogi, 45, is the chief spokesman for the state in the negotiations with the public worker unions. Both the Hawai'i State Teachers Association and the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly have reached an impasse with the state over issues of pay, benefits and workload. If Hawai'i's teachers and university faculty strike simultaneously on Thursday as they plan, it would be the first time that union workers have shut down an entire state's system of public education.

If Yogi is sweating these negotiations, it doesn't show.

Depending on who is talking, Yogi is described as either remarkably self-assured, or cocky and arrogant. Acquaintances agree he is bright, articulate and very ambitious.

Yogi has bargained for labor and management, working 10 years for the Hawai'i Government Employees Association, the largest of the state's public worker unions. He also faced off with the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) as a negotiator for C. Brewer & Co. Ltd.

So far, Yogi and his opponents in negotiations have always managed to avoid strikes. He believes he helped avert three strikes over the years with last-minute proposals that helped to seal the deals.

Early in his career, Yogi said he considered himself a "hired gun," but said he doesn't see his career that way anymore. In his job, he said, "you have a responsibility to settle."

"It's not just my job anymore," Yogi said. "It's my responsibility. Big difference."

If he seems calm, that is deliberate, Yogi said.

"When you get (angry), you take things personally," he said. "This isn't personal."

A Farrington High School graduate, Yogi is the youngest of three brothers. His father was a real estate appraiser, and Yogi grew up in Kalihi Valley playing in a half-acre yard lined with mango trees. The trees were so dense the boys and their friends could scramble from one to the next without touching the ground, Yogi recalled.

Yogi's mother, Alyce Yogi, said Davis always wanted to lead. She also remembers some of Davis' early negotiating efforts.

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Davis K. Yogi September 2000 to present: Director, State Department of Human Resources Development 1999 to present: Chief negotiator, Office of Collective Bargaining, governor's office 1992-1998: Vice president, environmental operations and government affairs, Brewer Environmental Industries 1988-1993: Director, employee relations, safety and governmental affairs, C. Brewer & Co., Ltd. 1978-1988: Field service officer, Hawaii Governmental Employees Association (HGEA) 1977-1978: Legislative researcher, state Senate, labor and human resources Education: University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 1973-1978, bachelor of arts, personnel and industries relations. Farrington High School graduate, 1973. Interests: Okinawan community activities, family, golf, computers, design.

After Yogi finished college, his father used his business and Democratic Party contacts to help Yogi find a job with the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. Yogi met representatives from the HGEA at the Capitol, and took a job with the union in 1978.

He served as an assistant to Chester Kunitake, a former HGEA leader who now serves on the Hawai'i Labor Relations Board. By the time he was in his late 20s, Yogi said, he was bargaining for two HGEA units, and supervised people now in the top ranks of the union leadership.

When he was 30, Yogi said, he had the HGEA job so well in hand he had ample time for golf, and his handicap dropped to 13. Yogi said he began looking for something new to challenge him and took a job negotiating on behalf of management for C. Brewer.

"The skills are the same," Yogi said of his switch from bargaining for labor to bargaining for management. "If you always stay in the union, you'll never understand the management. If you only stay in management, you'll never understand the union."

Yogi, who is married to labor lawyer Debra Kagawa-Yogi and has two young daughters, left C. Brewer to become the chief negotiator in the governor's Office of Collective Bargaining in 1999. Reviews of his role since then have been mixed.

United Public Workers State Director Gary Rodrigues, who in December reached a settlement with the administration on behalf of his members, thinks Yogi steered Gov. Ben Cayetano away from more radical proposals that would have made a settlement harder.

"I can tell that the governor listens to what Davis says," Rodrigues said. "Even if the governor wants to go to the extreme left or right, the governor listens to the counsel of Davis."

Others believe Yogi has urged the governor on, encouraging him to make new demands on the public worker unions.

Yogi said he came to appreciate at C. Brewer a type of settlement that does more than just provide raises for workers. As he put it, he wants contract language that will improve employee performance and efficiency, and maximize the employees' "contribution."

Randy Perreira, deputy executive director of the HGEA, said Yogi is a "good fit" with Cayetano's plans.

"I think the governor is just looking to get tough and try to recapture what he considers to be lost management rights," Perreira said.

James Takushi, a former chief state negotiator, served on a fact-finding panel involved in the teachers negotiations this year, and didn't like the way Yogi handled the proceedings. He said Yogi rarely appeared, "and when he did make comments to us, it was very arrogant."

In one exchange, Yogi was asked by the panel chairman why a state filing was late.

"His reply to us was, 'It took God seven days to create the world,' " Takushi said. "You don't do that to judges on a panel."

The state didn't respond to much of the information provided by the teachers union, and based on the evidence it had, the panel concluded in January the teachers ought to receive a 19 percent raise, Takushi said.

"If the governor is disappointed with the fact-finders, I think he's got to blame his own people," Takushi said.

Joan Husted, executive director of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, said Yogi has a "lone wolf" negotiating style Husted has never seen before. He often bargains alone rather than relying on a team from the state Department of Education.

Rodrigues said he doubts Yogi is personally comfortable with the public relations war between Cayetano and the teachers' union in recent weeks, which has been waged in the news media and in advertising campaigns.

Yogi would rather approach negotiations in a more traditional way, with neither side making public statements until there has been a deal. That's important "because if you get out there and say I wanna promise my members this much and do that, and then you don't deliver, as a union official, it's hard," Rodrigues said.

Perreira, who worked under Yogi at HGEA, said Yogi's calm exterior is covering up a "a lot of strain." Yogi is currently holding down both the chief negotiator's job and the position of director of the Department of Human Resources Development, which is a tremendous workload.

"He's working for a very demanding, and to be tactful, a very hands-on guy (in Cayetano)," Perreira said. "The two together, they've gotta make life hard for him."

But when asked if he had ever seen Yogi angry or flustered or sweating, Rodrigues said, "I've seen him serious. I haven't seen him in that scenario. I don't know if he ever gets in that scenario."