Posted on: Friday, February 7, 2003

Negotiating plan deserves another look

Given the strength of union opposition to the idea, it is understandable why the House Labor Committee this week quickly sidelined a proposal to let the four counties negotiate collective bargaining contracts individually.

The idea, pushed strongly by Gov. Linda Lingle, is a "big pain, small gain" proposition for lawmakers who rely on union support at election time.

Still, the idea deserves more discussion than it received. A companion bill in the Senate should be given a full and fair hearing before the idea is shelved for the year.

Today, all public worker contracts are negotiated statewide, with the state and four counties on one side of the table and the unions on the other. This is true even for units where most of the workers are employed by the counties, such as police.

The unions say this system helps guarantee equal pay for equal work and avoids competition for workers among and between the counties.

That is a good argument as far as it goes. But is all government work equal? Is the job of policeman in Hana the same as the job of an officer in urban Honolulu? Is the job burden of a baseyard man-ager for the Transportation Department the same in Honolulu as it might be in, say, Hanalei?

And it is certainly true that the resources available to the counties vary. They don't always have an equal ability to pay. And their work requirements differ as well: One county may be after computer operators while another wants police. They would benefit by being able to pay more to attract the people they need.

The same bill would have given autonomous negotiating authority to the University of Hawai'i and the semi-private Hawai'i Health Systems Corp.

There seems to be many potential advantages to this proposal. Give it more attention before deciding it won't work.

And if this moves forward, it is critical that the counties also be allowed to decide whether they want to go with a system of mediation/arbitration or whether they wish to go back to the system of settle or strike.