Category Archives: Labor

Hawaii Monitor at Civil Beat: Behind the arbitrators decision

1 Reply

I finally got around to following-up on my post last month concerning the failure to use details from arbitration proceedings involving public employee unions in reporting on state and county wage increases (“Public again left to guess about arbitrators’ decisions“).

In my Hawaii Monitor column in Civil Beat this week, I dug through the arbitrators’ decision in the case of HGEA Unit 9 nurses.

It’s an interesting behind-the-scenes look at bargaining positions of both sides, and how those were evaluated in light of evidence introduced by the state and the unions.

The column appears at Civil Beat today (“Hawaii Monitor: Records Disclose Details Of Negotiating Positions“). Check it out!

Two wrongly-fired reporters still awaiting NLRB-ordered back pay

Leave a reply

Stephens Media, the union-busting owner of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, is back at it again. In the latest chapter of a long running saga of labor law violations, the Tribune-Herald is stalling payments to two journalists previously ordered by the National Labor Relations Board, according to a release from the Pacific Media Workers Guild, which now includes Newspaper Guild members in Hawaii.

Hawaii paper seeks to stiff wronged reporters

By Carl Hall

April 26, 2013

HONOLULU — More than seven years after illegally firing two reporters for union activity, management of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald is seeking to reduce the amount of back pay it owes the wronged journalists.

Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey D.Wedekind conducted a two-day compliance hearing at the Honolulu offices of the National Labor Relations Board in March – the last phase of a legal marathon that started when the Hilo daily suspended, and then fired, reporter Hunter Bishop in 2005, and David Smith in 2006.

Lawyers at the hearing slogged through a mountain of paystubs, overtime logs and unemployment records. The company faces a bill of about a quarter of a million dollars, including back wages, expenses and interest.

The Tribune-Herald, the Big Island’s leading daily, also had to offer Bishop and Smith their jobs back. Bishop returned to work last year. Smith declined to come back, saying he didn’t want to subject himself to any further harassment.

The company now claims that Smith – who is owed the bulk of the back pay — took himself out of the job market in 2007 when he was forced to file for his Guild pension.

Evidence shows Smith mounted a diligent search for work, however, but was unable to find steady employment. Smith was named full-time news editor for the Hilo-based online news site, BigIslandNow.com, about 10 months ago.

He and Bishop will have to wait at least another six weeks before the case is ripe for decision – barring a settlement. Once the NLRB finishes checking its arithmetic one more time, the company lawyers get a week to double-check the figures, and then all the lawyers will take up to another 35 days to submit legal briefs.

The administrative law judge’s ruling can be appealed to the courts.

Over at West Hawaii Today, also owned by Stephens Media, editor Reed Flickinger apparently got the heave-ho from the paper on Thursday. Word is that David Bock, editor of the Tribune-Herald, will be running WHT, apparently from his office in Hilo.

Bock was in the middle of the firings of Smith and Bishop back in 2006, according to the March 2008 findings of an NLRB administrative law judge.

And just last month, a news item from the Pacific Media Workers Guild repoted:

In two days of talks last week, management of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald not only refused any pay raises, it “cautioned that a pay cut is possible if negotiations take too long and the economy worsens.” The company also seeks to delete a provision in the contract prohibiting the company from interfering with the operation of the Guild, leading the union to file an unfair labor practice charge during a caucus.

For some of the history, check out previous posts here:

DC court slaps Tribune-Herald for numerous labor law violations
April 23rd, 2012

National Labor Relations Board says Tribune-Herald owner violated labor laws
February 19th, 2011

NLRB ruling finds Hawaii Tribune-Herald and Stephens Media violated federal labor law
March 11th, 2008

Union busting in Hilo
April 28, 2006

Faculty union board under pressure following vote to drop NEA affiiliation

5 Replies

Opponents of the recent decision by the board of the faculty union board’s decision to end its affiliation with the National Education Association are organizing on several fronts to reverse the decision.

• A petition is being circulated calling for the board “to rescind the vote to disaffiliate from NEA.

The petition begins: “We want our voices to be heard. We want leadership that actively engages us in important decisions.”

The overriding complaint seems to focus on the board’s distance from the faculty.

“Despite the year of discussion the Board had about disaffiliation, the Board failed to engage us in meaningful discussion until the eleventh hour, just two weeks before the Board’s vote to disaffiliate.”

• Opponents of disaffiliation have been soliciting support for candidates running for seats on the board who will vote to overturn the board’s prior decision.

• And NEA has been recruiting volunteers for a “virtual phone bank” on April 13 and April 20 reaching out directly to UHPA members.

In an email soliciting volunteers, NEA wrote: “We are phoning members to find out their opinion on the recent board vote to disaffiliate and get them to turn out for a membership meeting at the end of April. The phoning?will happen between the hours of 10 am and 2 pm Hawaii time: 1 pm and 5:00 PDT; 4 pm to 8 pm EDT.?

NEA also reported on the result of an earlier effort: “In 90 minutes, the 28 people calling dialed over 500 numbers and talked with 95 members. Many people in Hawaii still have land lines and they answer the phone when they are?home. We are still following-up with some of the people who wanted to become active.”

UHPA fired back yesterday with an email to its members.

“NEA’s communications are designed to undermine the UHPA elected leadership and the By-laws of our union,” UHPA’s email charged. “The NEA direct communication with members also challenges UHPA’s role as the exclusive collective bargaining representative for the UH faculty through attacks on leaders that do not agree with them.”

UHPA also claimed an exclusive right to use the university’s email system for union business, and alleged that use by members to communicate via email on UHPA issues without its approval is a violation of the State Ethics Code.

“UHPA has not authorized any other persons, faculty members or organizations to use the UH system email for communications with faculty regarding UHPA or its role as bargaining agent,” the email said.

Frankly, that sounds like quite a stretch, and perhaps an indication the opposition has hit a nerve.

Public again left to guess about arbitrators’ decisions

1 Reply

Hawaii’s public sector nurses, represented by the HGEA, were awarded an 8% pay raise via an arbitrators’ ruling this week after a long delay and bitter negotiations.

There’s obviously a lot of public interest in this latest arbitration award.

So how was it reported?

Leila Fujimori’s story in the Star-Advertiser on Wednesday was the best of the lot so far. Fujimori provides more background on the negotiations than other reports, and identifies one of the three arbitrators, the so-called “neutral” arbitrator.

Like other reporters, Fujimori goes right to the bottom line in the award–4% retroactive to January, and another 4% effective April 1.

But while the story quotes both sides talking about the arbitration award, we get nothing from the arbitrator’s decision itself. No information about the arbitrators’ findings, their decisions on issues that formed the basis for their decision on wage increases. It’s that discussion and the conclusions drawn by arbitrators that explain the ultimate award.

It may be that the arbitrators’ full written decision isn’t available yet, and only the specific salary awards have been made public. If so, shouldn’t that be reported somewhere in the story? And, more importantly, shouldn’t the guts of the arbitrators ruling be reported when the full decision becomes publicly available?

This seems especially true in this case since Gov. Abercrombie has publicly attacked the nurses over the past couple of years. How do the arbitrators’ findings reflect on the governor’s public posture? Wouldn’t that be of public interest?

Yes, I’ve been harping on this same strange blind spot in reporting on public employee arbitrations for years. Salary awards are reported, but the public rarely hears about the substantive issues considered by arbitration panels or the detailed reasoning behind their decisions.

I found a couple of entries here back on February 2 and 3, 2004, on precisely the same issue. They make interesting reading in retrospect.