'Inspired' UH faculty starts strike vote today

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Staff Writer

University of Hawai'i faculty members will start casting strike authorization ballots this morning, just days after Hawai'i's public school teachers overwhelmingly approved a walkout.

Members of both unions appear headed toward a strike around April 5.

The faculty union's strike vote will run through Wednesday on the university's 10 campuses, and the union board is expected to finalize the vote tally at a meeting scheduled Saturday morning.

"I think teachers have inspired the faculty," said Tom Ramsey, a math professor at UH-Manoa and a member of the union board. "When you're dealing with someone like (Gov. Ben) Cayetano, you have to be united. It shows that we're not the only people Cayetano's having problems with."

The state is embroiled in increasingly contentious contract negotiations with public school teachers, university professors and the Hawai'i Government Employees Association.

Cayetano says the state does not have the money to give the unions what they want and, in a memo last week, has ordered department heads to prepare for cuts ranging from $45 million to $230 million in fiscal 2002 in anticipation of raises.

If all of the public employee unions receive the pay increases they are seeking, Cayetano has threatened to cut the University of Hawai'i budget by $42 million.

The faculty union has requested a 12 percent pay increase over two years, but the state's chief negotiator, Davis Yogi, has said the state objected to a University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly proposal to reduce the teaching workload for community college faculty from five courses to four per semester.