Any other time, the pace of the current labor negotiations with public employee unions might be acceptable. But not this year. This year, all of them should have been locked in a room until they struck a deal.

About 1,100 members of the Hawaii Government Employees Association and United Public Workers have been given layoff notices, setting off a long and painful cascade of moves by the more senior workers to "bump" their junior counterparts from their jobs.

And Gov. Linda Lingle has indicated there could be a second wave of layoffs, which she maintains are needed to cut spending and close a $786 million budget deficit.

Meanwhile, the state and HGEA agreed to extend Tuesday's deadline to submit their final offers to the arbitration panel. The last of those offers will now come in on Monday.

Why the foot-dragging? Union leadership has known the state's position for weeks; all the offers should have been submitted this week. Workers, left in fearful limbo, deserve an explanation.

Now it's time for some straight talk, from the grass roots back up to executive offices. And it's not just the union members who deserve a say.

Taxpayers have a clear interest in the outcome of the talks. They are footing the bill, and they have a right to see a budgetary crisis managed with minimum job losses and maximum services.

That is not how things have been handled in the course of these labor negotiations, and with each passing week that spending outpaces revenue, the budget gap grows larger.

Many employees have grumbled privately that the furlough plan was their best option and should have been taken more seriously long ago.

Whatever settlement they'd accept, they need to fire up their e-mail accounts and burn up the phone lines to the people in control. They need to tell them what they want — a contract — and that they want it now.