ISLAND VOICES
Workers' comp: a business-labor bridge
By Christine Camp Friedman and Harold Dias Jr.
There has been much written about workers' compensation reform in recent years: Businesses want significant reform; labor groups fight to preserve the rights, protections and entitlements that are the backbone of Hawai'i's Democratic history.
This legislative session, the Lingle administration, in response to pro-business reform to the workers' comp system in the past, has decided to amend the current rules to accommodate legislation it had proposed in the past. Unfortunately, the administration's action has polarized the issue even further, with some in the Legislature concluding that amending the rules is an attempt to usurp their authority. Reactive bills were proposed to preserve the current system.
But what is lost in this debate is the need for change on both sides:
• From the perspective of business, the need to reform the system is real — the cost increases faced by Hawai'i's businesses are staggering. This is not an overstatement. Spiraling workers' compensation costs are getting worse, despite the fact that the number of workplace injuries is being reduced each year through a concerted effort to maintain a safe work environment by businesses and labor unions.
• From the perspective of labor, the tragedy and devastation of legitimately injured workers often being denied prompt coverage, payment and the necessary medical treatment so they can return to work and some normalcy in their lives are just as real.
As you can see, the lack of meaningful collaborative reform is hurting both sides.
If we are to move forward, we must all understand that any attempt at meaningful reform must include all the major stakeholders in dialogue and decision-making. Without engaging those who will be most affected by any proposed changes to the system — specifically workers — we will continue to polarize the issues.
This year, the Chamber of Commerce of Hawai'i approached AFL-CIO Hawaii to help find common ground toward a workable solution. The AFL-CIO willingly responded, and a "partnership" was born.
We all understood that the traditional adversarial labor-business relationship must change if we are to truly achieve meaningful reform for both sides. We agreed to attempt to move in a new direction and to explore and experiment with new and improved ways of thinking and working together. This new cooperative partnership emphasizes trust, common ground, sharing of information, joint problem-solving, risk-taking and innovation.
To go from our traditional adversarial relationship to one of genuine cooperation requires breaking with the past, forgetting those previous battles, changing habits and learning new and more demanding ways of relating to each other and working together. No doubt this will be very difficult.
Everyone knows that the first thing we need to establish is trust between the parties in order for this effort to have any chance. But trust does not come easily. It must be earned over time and can be easily lost. The partnership also needs to be based on integrity and mutual respect if it is going to succeed.
John Calhoun Wells, former director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, authored a great blueprint for business and labor to use in forming this partnership. It is called "Conflictive Partnership: A Strategy for Real World Labor-Management Cooperation." This is a practical, real-world model of cooperation, built upon a foundation of both institutional differences and institutional shared interest. It embraces both inevitability of conflict and the value of partnership. Both can exist compatibly and represent a realistic way of moving from antagonism to cooperation.
Although it's too early to tell whether our partnership will work, or produce substantive results, we do know that it's ultimate success will require commitment and involvement from all the stakeholders of our respective organizations, and will depend on the partnership becoming a part of how we conduct our business on a day-to-day basis.
And while the results of the many hours of hard work by the Chamber and the labor groups did not result in successful legislation this session, what we achieved was far more significant: We built a bridge, a path toward a common path of trust and mutual respect — a path that we believe will allow us to be more effective in our legislative efforts in the future, and move us toward constructive reform in the years to come.
Christine Camp Friedman is chairwoman of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawai'i; Harold Dias Jr. is president of the state AFL-CIO.
