Public-sector labor unions today offered to take a 5 percent pay cut to help with the state’s budget deficit, the same amount as the governor, the lieutenant governor, state lawmakers, judges and department directors have approved for themselves.

The offer came as union leaders met today with Gov. Linda Lingle, county mayors and representatives from the state Department of Education, the University of Hawaiçi, the Hawaiçi Health Systems Corp., and the Judiciary.
Lingle said afterward that the state would consider the unions’ offer.
Randy Perreira, the executive director of the Hawaiçi Government Employees Association, said the unions submitted formal and informal offers today to achieve what he described as “very real salary savings.”
“Our members are willing, as we’ve said all along, to make a sacrifice,” Perreira said. “The sacrifice we put on the table is the same sacrifice that legislators have made, the same sacrifice that the governor and her Cabinet have made to date, the same sacrifice that the mayors and their respective Cabinet members have made.”
Perreira said “basically, we’re taking the position that this is a situation in which we’re all going to share equally, and it’s fair to have the employees put in, if you will, the same as their bosses have, and that’s what we’re looking to do.”
Labor talks between the unions and the state have been stalled because Lingle has said her administration did not want to come to the table unless the unions made a formal offer.
Marie Laderta, the governor’s chief labor negotiator, was scheduled to meet this morning with the HGEA and the United Public Workers to discuss furlough plans in the wake of a Circuit Court ruling this month that found that furloughs should be the subject of collective bargaining.
The leaders of all four unions -- HGEA, UPW, the Hawaiçi State Teachers Association and the University of Hawaiçi Professional Assembly -- arrived for the talks just after 10 a.m. at the state Department of Human Resources Development.
All four county mayors and the leaders of independently governed state agencies also attended.
Lingle, informed that a formal proposal was being submitted by the unions, arrived just after 11 a.m.
Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann said that the labor stalemate had been broken by the talks but cautioned that a master agreement with the unions is not imminent.
“We’re pleased that the stalemate has been broken,” Hannemann said. “We’ve insisted all along that now it was the time for the principals to come to the table. We’re pleased that the governor finally came to the table. We’re pleased that the unions put a proposal on the record on the table. And there’s still some massaging that needs to be done, but clearly now the principals are involved, across the board.”
Last week, isolating Lingle, the mayors announced that they and the independently governed state agencies had reached an agreement in principle on a framework for negotiations. The mayors urged Lingle attend today’s meeting, but Lingle said she would not attend unless there was a formal offer from the unions.
Under state labor law, the governor must get the votes of a mayor, educator, chief justice or hospital administrator to make contract offers to bargaining units of the four unions.
This year is the first time the state and mayors have made separate proposals to unions under the same umbrella.
Lingle indicated today that the state was united.
“We are a united state employer group, and we’re going to go back and work as quickly as we can on what we received,” the governor said.