Category Archives: Labor

Djou appears to trip on minimum wage numbers

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Hawaii Public Radio’s “Town Square” yesterday featured an hour-long live interview with GOP congressional candidate, Charles Djou.

In the course of the interview, Djou estimated that all but 10-15% of minimum wage workers are teenagers, program host Beth-Ann Kozlovich commented later in a Facebook post.

But she referred to a March 2014 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that “tells a different story.”

The report, “Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2013,” estimates there are now 10,000 workers in Hawaii earning the minimum wage, and another 5,000 earning below the minimum wage.

The 15,000 workers at or below the minimum wage represented 4.6% of all workers in the islands paid hourly rates. Those at minimum wage made up 3.1% of the total, while 1.5% were paid less than the minimum wage, according to the report.

And the number of workers paid at or below the minimum wage has increased almost four-fold during the Great Recession, rising from 4,000 to 15,000 since 2007, according to a separate BLS report on minimum wage workers in Hawaii (“Minimum wage workers in Hawaii – 2013“).

These reports don’t appear to include data on the number of teens among Hawaii’s minimum wage workers. However, nationally, just 24% of those earning the minimum wage or less were teenagers. Young people age 20-24 made up another 26%, and those 25 and older were 50% of the total.

Nationally, women were 62% of all workers paid the minimum wage or less. In Hawaii, women were about 50% of the total minimum wage workers.

More than $850,000 at stake in legal appeal by disgraced former union leader

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A case involving Gary Rodrigues is back before the Hawaii Supreme Court.

Most readers likely remember Rodrigues, the former state director of the United Public Workers, which represents blue collar employees of the state and counties. He was once considered one of Hawaii’s most influential political figures, sometimes referred to as the “26th Senator.”

Rodrigues was accused of defrauding the union and its members, and convicted in 2002 on 101 federal counts of mail fraud, money laundering and embezzlement. He served four years in federal prison after exhausting all appeals in the criminal case.

Here’s how the 9th Circuit Court summarized the criminal case:

In his capacity as the State Director of the United Public Workers, AFSCME, Local 646, AFL-CIO (“UPW”) Petitioner Gary Wayne Rodrigues negotiated contracts with dental and health insurance providers, ostensibly on behalf of UPW members and their families. The providers were Hawaii Dental Services (“HDS”) and Pacific Group Medical Association (“PGMA”). At Rodrigues’s request, the providers included in these contracts what purported to be “consultant’s fees.” These fees were effectively to be paid by UPW members as part of their insurance premiums to the insurance providers, but the fees eventually ended up in the pockets of persons Rodrigues designated as the “consultants.” As it turned out, the purported consultants were (1) the stepfather of Rodrigues’s girlfriend and secretary, Al Loughrin, and (2) shell companies of which Rodrigues’s daughter, Robin Haunani Rodrigues Sabatini (“Sabatini”), was the sole share- holder, only Director, and simultaneously the President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. During the investigation of these relationships and transactions, it was discovered that neither designated consultant did any real consulting work on these contracts, and that part of the “consultant’s fees” were diverted to Rodrigues’s personal use — circumstances unknown to the UPW.

The case now pending before the Hawaii Supreme Court is the culmination of a set of parallel civil lawsuits involving Rodrigues and the union.

Following his criminal conviction, UPW filed a federal lawsuit seeking to hold Rodrigues responsible for losses stemming from a series of investments made by a union trust fund in a Florida start-up company, Best Rescue.

According to the Supreme Court summary: “Following a bench trial in March 2008, the U.S. District Court determined that Rodrigues was liable to the Trust in the amount of $850,000.00 plus costs and fees for negligent breach of fiduciary duties.”

In December 2008, Rodrigues’ lawyers filed a lawsuit in state court asking that UPW be required to indemnify the former union leader and cover the $850,000 in losses, as well as attorneys fees and costs.

They have argued that Rodrigues’ actions were all taken in his capacity as an agent for UPW, and were authorized by the union and the board of the trust fund.

Both the trial court and the Intermediate Court of Appeals rejected Rodrigues’ claim. The appeal of that ruling is awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court.

You can find a concise description of the case and the issues being argued, and a link to a recording of last month’s oral arguments, on the Judiciary website. The ICA decision, issued earlier this year, can be found here.

Rodrigues is represented attorneys Eric Seitz and Della Au Belatti, a state representative and chair of the House Health Committee. Belatti’s latest financial disclosure reports she earned income of between $50,000 and $100,000 as an attorney for Seitz’ law firm during the past year.

Labor Day, the 8-Hour Day, and Honolulu’s 12-hour “solution”

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It’s Labor Day.

Originally, Labor Day was celebrated on May 1, which is still recognized as International Labor Day. And it was intimately intertwined with organized labor’s struggle to reduce working hours and achieve an 8-hour day.

That’s why I was so irritated by Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s recent trumpeting of his plan for a regular 12-hour work day as some kind of breakthrough in working conditions for the city’s emergency medical personnel.

“Twelve hours is less than a 16-hour day, so it’s a good thing,” the mayor seemed to be arguing.

But it seems to me city workers took a big step backwards with this adoption of a standard 12-hour work day as the city’s solution to the real problem, chronic underfunding of an essential public service.

Here’s an entry from the Encyclopedia of Chicago History:

When the Chicago labor movement emerged in 1864, the eight-hour day quickly became its central demand. Exhausted by 12 to 14 hours a day of work, six days a week, workers throughout the city and state organized to secure a law limiting the workday to eight hours. In 1867, the Illinois legislature passed such a law but allowed a huge loophole that permitted employers to contract with their employees for longer hours. Trying to eliminate that option, Chicago labor called for a citywide strike that began on May 1, 1867, and practically shut down the city’s economy for a week. When the strike collapsed, the law collapsed with it and workers were left unprotected.

In the 1880s, the issue resurfaced and became the key demand of a movement that shook the city and the nation. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions—predecessor of the American Federation of Labor—urged American workers to observe an eight-hour day beginning May 1, 1886. Implying direct rather than legislative action, the eight-hour movement united skilled and unskilled workers of all nationalities. Chicago anarchists, trade unionists, and the Knights of Labor, despite the coolness of their national organizations, actively promoted and profited from the movement, and made Chicago its national center.

According to Wikipedia:

Labor Day was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, who organized the first parade in New York City. After the Haymarket Massacre, which occurred in Chicago on May 4, 1886, U.S. President Grover Cleveland feared that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the affair. Thus, in 1887, it was established as an official holiday in September to support the Labor Day that the Knights favored.

So this official Labor Day holiday was adopted to try to diminish the influence of the more radical wing of the labor movement, it seems.

From there, though, it took decades longer for American workers to win an 8-hour day.

Again from Wikipedia:

The United Mine Workers won an eight-hour day in 1898.

The Building Trades Council (BTC) of San Francisco, under the leadership of P.H. McCarthy, won the eight-hour day in 1900 when the BTC unilaterally declared that its members would work only eight hours a day for $3 a day. When the mill resisted, the BTC began organizing mill workers; the employers responded by locking out 8,000 employees throughout the Bay Area. The BTC, in return, established a union planing mill from which construction employers could obtain supplies — or face boycotts and sympathy strikes if they did not. The mill owners went to arbitration, where the union won the eight-hour day, a closed shop for all skilled workers, and an arbitration panel to resolve future disputes. In return, the union agreed to refuse to work with material produced by non-union planing mills or those that paid less than the Bay Area employers.

By 1905, the eight-hour day was widely installed in the printing trades – see International Typographical Union (section) – but the vast majority of Americans worked 12-14 hour days.

On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford’s productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.[11][12][13][14]

In the summer of 1915, amid increased labor demand for World War I, a series of strikes demanding the eight-hour day began in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They were so successful that they spread throughout the Northeast.[15]

The United States Adamson Act in 1916 established an eight-hour day, with additional pay for overtime, for railroad workers. This was the first federal law that regulated the hours of workers in private companies. The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act in Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917).

The eight-hour day might have been realized for many working people in the U.S. in 1937, when what became the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S. Code Chapter 8) was first proposed under the New Deal. As enacted, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented about twenty percent of the U.S. labor force. In those industries, it set the maximum workweek at 40 hours,[16] but provided that employees working beyond 40 hours a week would receive additional overtime bonus salaries.[17]

And so it goes on Labor Day 2014.

Honolulu’s mayor: EMT’s “still not really tired” after 12-hour shifts

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Am I the only one who was pretty depressed by Keoki Kerr’s report on Hawaii News Now last night about the city’s shortage of emergency medical technicians?

Here’s part of the story:

The city Emergency Medical Services division suffers from a 15 percent vacancy rate among paramedics and emergency medical technicians on its ambulances. As a result, medics are routinely forced to work a second shift, meaning 16 hours straight caring for critically ill and injured patients.

Caldwell said the medics’ union, the United Public Workers, has initially agreed to increase their shifts from eight to 12 hours. That would allow the city run its 22 ambulances using one third less staff each day.

“If they get a 12-hour shift, they’re still not really tired,” Caldwell said.”And they can go home after the shift, and they don’t have to stay for another shift and it also means that they’re going to get more time off, get time off on the weekends so they can re-charge their batteries so that when they come back to work they’re sharp.”

Kerr also reported:

Medics are calling in sick after sometimes working three or four 16-hour days in a row, making the shortage worse. And others are leaving for higher-paid, less stressful jobs at fire departments and hospitals.

So here we have another city service that’s been underfunded for years, causing a chronic staffing shortage, creating forced overtime that employees rebel against, etc., etc.

Longer shifts translate into doing the job with fewer people doing the job. Will the savings be invested back into salaries? Better working conditions?

The mayor put on a happy face and blithely said, “If they get a 12-hour shift, they’re still not really tired.”

Really? No reason to be tired after a routine, 12-hour shift. And no wonder EMTs are said to have a higher proportion of drug abuse issues than other occupations.

According to one source:

Exposure to traumatic events was reported to be between 80% and 100% among EMTs, and rates of PTSD are >20%. High-risk alcohol and drug use rates among other emergency response professionals were reported to be as high as 40%.

Just another indication of the poor shape of our city budget and the erosion of city services.