The September 11th attack
Work-sharing faces opposition
| • | Tourism crisis jolts unions |
By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer
A key issue facing unions in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is work-sharing, a circumstance in which companies ask all employees to give up some work time so that fewer employees will be laid off.
Aloha Airlines, for example, has asked most of its workers to take off two days a month without pay so that the 250 employees furloughed in September can be brought back to work. The airline's unions are considering the proposal, and a decision is expected later this month.
Labor experts say work-sharing is being used as an alternative to layoffs in part because of the swift impact of the attacks on Hawai'i's tourism industry.
"We're seeing more of work-sharing than you would in other situations," said Richard Rand, a Honolulu employment lawyer whose clients include several tourism industry companies.
"If you had something not caused by a rather unique event, you would probably see more layoffs. But I think there has been a greater spirit of cooperation by some of the unions to try to address it in a manner to keep people working."
The cooperative spirit not withstanding, some union leaders say there are limits to what unions will agree to, even in these uncertain times.
And since the state's current economic crisis means unions no longer have the same bargaining power to ask for monetary gains for members, they are likely to demonstrate their strength in the areas of work hours and seniority protections.
In most cases, work-sharing will benefit those junior union members who would lose their jobs and their medical benefits during a layoff. But union members with seniority may take a dim view of prolonged work-sharing, labor analysts say. Theoretically, seniority would protect them in the event of a layoff. Under work-sharing, however, they stand to have their hours cut by the same amount as junior employees.
"It's out of the norm for the senior employees to have to give up their work opportunities to their juniors," said Eric Gill, financial secretary-treasurer of Local 5 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union.
"Under normal circumstances, the senior employees maximize their work opportunities within what's available on the schedule," he said. "And the company would like to take those hours and spread them around and basically make it so junior employees get a bigger share of that.
"There's obviously arguments on both sides of this question, but senior employees who've been through previous layoffs and downturns...(think) why go through that? They did that when they were junior. On the other hand, there is genuine concern on the part of all that their co-workers not lose their medical. So these are difficult discussions that take place. We're not going to be looking at this on an across-the-board basis."
