EDITORIAL
Arbitration process needs reform
| • | Arbitrator award may be too costly for state |
In addition to disagreeing with the size of the award made in the latest arbitrated contract settlement with the HGEA, Gov. Linda Lingle opposes the arbitration process itself.
She is once again urging the Legislature to do away with binding arbitration and return to direct collective bargaining with the possibility of a strike.
We agree. Or, as a compromise, lawmakers could set a modest ceiling on arbitrated awards with any other increases or benefits coming from collective bargaining.
While arbitration is attractive in theory (no one wants a strike), it has not tended to work well in practice. Awards have often been larger than what the employer (the taxpayers) truly could afford to pay.
Part of this can be blamed on shortsighted thinking by the state and counties, which would go into arbitration offering zero raises. That left a "something or nothing" choice, and arbitrators almost always went for "something."
Arbitration operates in something of a political vacuum, depending on the information, or lack of it, that is presented.
True collective bargaining would force both sides to contemplate the uncomfortable human and political realities of a failure to reach agreement: a strike that inevitably hurts both sides.
Arbitration can work, but in practice it has not. Change it.
