Updated at 11:32 a.m., Thursday, April 5, 2001

UH faculty walks out after state's final offer

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

After months of tortured negotiations and nearly two years without a contract, more than 3,100 professors in the University of Hawai'i system are on strike today, shutting down the state's only public system of higher education.

Faculty union members demanding better wages and working conditions are on the picket lines for only the second time in the history of the statewide system, which includes 10 campuses.

The walkout leaves about 43,000 students stranded without classes and coincides with a strike by Hawai'i's 13,000 public school teachers, marking the first time in U.S. history that labor unions have shut down an entire state system of public education.

Mediated talks between Gov. Ben Cayetano's office and the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly broke off abruptly after little more than an hour yesterday morning and never resumed, but the two sides did remain in phone contact and made final offers last night.

The final stumbling block turned out to be pay increases, although it was the one issue on which the state and faculty appeared to be near agreement. The governor yesterday increased his offer from 10 percent to 11 percent.

When UH President Kenneth Mortimer, Board of Regents Chairwoman Lily Yao and board member Ah Quon McElrath visited the governor in the afternoon in an attempt to avert the strike, Caye tano told them they would have to use the UH general fund budget to account for 2 percent of the faculty pay increases. The university agreed over union objections.

Cayetano said yesterday that the offer would expire when the UHPA strike began. "If we go on strike tomorrow, everything's off the table," he said. "We start from ground zero."

However, UHPA officials said Cayetano's package called for most of the raises to come toward the end of a two-year contract and actually totaled only 9.23 percent.

Union's proposal

UHPA has asked for 12 percent across the board, plus 1 percent in merit pay. It also wants raises for lecturers, the lowest paid of all university faculty members, which the state's package did not include.

The contract would not have been retroactive to 1999, meaning that faculty members would not be compensated for the two years they have gone without a contract.

"We are going to strike. There's no question about it," J.N. Musto, UHPA executive director, said last night. "We are at impasse on the money. We will be at impasse on the money. We are done. We are so close to a settlement that it is a damn shame that it isn't going to settle."

The faculty strike represents the the latest blow for the struggling university system, which was hit hard by the state's financial crisis of the mid-1990s. Prominent faculty members have been recruited by other universities, the 10-campus system faces a maintenance backlog of nearly $170 million and the flagship Manoa campus received a bruising accreditation report in 1999. Members of the accreditation committee are scheduled to visit the campus next winter to make sure the school has improved on issues ranging from communication to finances.

Alex Malahoff, president of the faculty union, said blame for the strike lies with the governor and the university administration.

"It's not only for the money. It's deeper. It's for the hurt," Malahoff said. "The whole thing is pathetic. It's a complete lack of leadership from the Board of Regents and the president."

Union officials said an agreement by Mortimer to kick in 2 percent for raises would only further damage the university by eroding its budget base and putting pressure on the university to pass on the costs to students in the form of tuition increases.

Mood on campus

Students and professors left campus yesterday unsure of when they would return, but fully expecting a strike today.

"There's definitely a feeling that there's no school Thursday," said Grace Pangilinan, 18, a freshman at Manoa. "Most of my professors said if it's a long strike, just keep up with the reading and the homework."

Ron Matayoshi, assistant specialist in the College of Social Work, said campus morale already has suffered because of the lengthy and contentious negotiations.

Faculty strikes are unusual in this country and may not have happened on any statewide level since UH faculty members struck in 1983, said Gary Rhoades, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona.

"I don't know that there's any precedent the state can draw on to understand what is going to happen," Rhoades said. "It also suggests something about who they are negotiating with. It's not just a problem with K-12 or a problem with the higher education system. It may say more about their common adversary than it says about them."

The broader issues of workload, benefits, working conditions and intellectual property has been seen as major philosophical differences between UHPA and the state.

The state wanted to eliminate all fringe benefits such as retirement credit and health care in the summer, and reduce the intellectual property rights of faculty members, while UHPA wanted community college faculty to receive a teaching credit for community service and research. That would have reduced their workload from 15 credit hours a semester to 12 hours a semester.

Holding firm

While all of these side issues reportedly were taken off the table yesterday, the governor and the union each held firm to what they wanted to see in the percentage increases for wages.

Union leaders noted that the governor's offer to UHPA was far less than the state's 14 percent offer to the public school teachers or the 11 percent across-the-board increase given to the United Public Workers. Davis Yogi, the governor's chief negotiator, said the state will not settle with the university unless merit raises make up a significant portion of the pay raises.

The university plans to keep dorms, cafeterias, libraries and other buildings open during the strike, but the potential disruption to coursework and research projects remains unclear.

UH faculty members earn from $30,000 to $147,000, although most fall toward the bottom end of that scale. And most Hawai'i faculty members earn, in general, less than their colleagues nationwide.

Advertiser staff writers Curtis Lum and Lynda Arakawa contributed to this report.