UH faculty set strike authorization vote

Associated Press

With wages remaining the stumbling block, the union representing University of Hawai'i faculty decided yesterday to hold a strike authorization vote at all campuses next month.

The board of directors of the UH Professional Assembly was set to issue a 10-day strike notice tomorrow with state Labor Relations Board.

Last April, the union and state negotiators reached agreement on a two-year contract that settled everything but wage increases. The union had agreed to hold off any threat of a strike until after the beginning of this year as talks continued on wages.

UHPA is seeking a 6 percent pay increase, retroactive to July 1, 2003, and an 8 percent increase this July 1.

The state has offered no wage increase in the first year and a 2 percent raise in the second.

"We have pretty much come to the conclusion that zero and 2 will not make it," Lynn Yankowski, a professor at Maui Community College, said yesterday.

The faculty staged a 13-day strike in 2001.