Tag Archives: collective bargaining

University of Hawaii faculty get “last best final offer”

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The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, the faculty union representing faculty statewide, has scheduled an “authorization vote” on what the state is calling their “last best final offer”.

The union board of directors and bargaining committee recommend faculty vote “No”.

According to an early morning email accompanying a summary of the proposals:

The UH administration, by issuing a Last Best Final Offer, is indicating they are no longer willing to seek compromise. The use of the language “last best final offer” means that the employer is telling union members either to accept this offer or to have it unilaterally imposed upon them.

The offer includes a 5% salary cut in each of the two years for faculty paid with state funds, higher medical insurance premiums, a payroll lag that would cut one pay period during the current year, and right to “retrench” or layoff tenured faculty at the same time it would not restrict hiring of new administrators. The 5% salary cut would not be imposed on faculty who elect to retire before the end of 2009.

The state’s contribution to medical insurance premiums had been set at 60% of the total, but would fall below 40% under the new plan, leaving faculty to pay the balance, the union said.

The union distributed a summary comparing terms of the current “evergreen” contract extension and the state’s final offer.

The union stressed that this is not a ratification vote, but a vote to give the bargaining committee a sense of faculty opinion.

If you vote No, you will keep the current 2003-2009 contract with no salary reductions.

If you vote Yes, you accept the employer’s Last Best Final Offer to cut your salary. In this case, the UHPA Bargaining Team will then inform the employer that the conditions of the LBFO are acceptable and will enter into a Tentative Agreement. The Tentative Agreement must be presented for a ratification vote of all bargaining unit 7 members. If the majority of unit 7 members vote to ratify, the proposed contract will be in effect from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011.

The union has scheduled a series of meetings on campuses statewide “to provide members with information on and the opportunity to ask questions” on the state’s proposed contract.

Faculty at the Manoa campus say the university should not be able to cut faculty jobs, claiming financial exigency, while at the same time creating and filling new administrative positions and pressing ahead with building a new and expanded West Oahu campus.

Saturday (2)…A 1997 Attorney General opinion rejected the kind of budget approach urged by Governor Lingle

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Now that the 2009 legislature has wrapped up its work, all the bills that were passed are available in a quick list on the capitol web site. Click on any bill and you’ll get a summary page showing how it moved through the process and who voted for and against at each point. There are also links to testimony, committee reports, and the text of each draft. It’s a wealth of information.

With all of the political posturing around the budget and tax increases, including Governor Linda Lingle’s veto event, there has been little explanatory reporting on the budget process.

For example, a story in today’s Honolulu Advertiser quotes Senate President Colleen Hanabusa on the budget conflict:

“Contrary to what the governor says, she has not given us options,” said state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), speaking after the Senate session yesterday.

“Her option is to basically tell us ‘trust me,’ and I can fill a $300 million puka in the budget with collective bargaining (concessions) without laying off people. The problem, of course, is that we have an obligation to balance the budget and we can’t balance it on a promise to do something,” said Hanabusa.

This is contrasted to Lingle’s position, which follows immediately in the story.

Standing before hundreds of people massed in the state capitol rotunda Thursday, Lingle vetoed the tax increases, saying they would discourage investment, hurt small-business owners and hamper the visitor industry at a time when it is struggling. She urged residents to contact their lawmakers and ask them not to override her vetoes.

The problem is that it’s presented as a “she said – she said” standoff, as if it’s just a difference of political opinion, whereas the governor and legislature share an “obligation to balance the budget” established by the State Constitution and implemented by statute.

In 1997, the state faced a similar situation, and an opinion issued by the Attorney General concluded that the legislature could not legally adopt a budget relying on future unspecified spending restrictions to be made by the governor.

This is in response to your oral request for our advice whether the proposed executive branch budget that is submitted to the Legislature at the beginning of a legislative session must be balanced, i.e., that the dollar amount of proposed expenditures must be equal to or less than the dollar amount of anticipated revenues. We understand that it has been suggested that the budget could be submitted in an unbalanced condition, with the understanding that spending restrictions would be imposed after enactment so that actual expenditures would not exceed revenues and a balanced budget would result.

Short Answer
Although the express words “balanced budget” are not included in the Constitution or statutes relating to the state budget, the constitutional and statutory provisions do require a balanced budget by requiring a description of the proposed expenditures and the sources of revenues to pay for them. If there is a shortfall in resources to pay for the proposed expenditures, revenue enhancements to cover the deficit must be proposed or reductions in expenditures must be proposed to balance out the anticipated revenues.

You can read the full AG opinion (#97-01) along with the relevant parts of the State Constitution, Article VII, especially Section 8 and 9.

And these provisions have to be read in conjunction with the state’s collective bargaining law (Chapter 89 HRS), which requires the state, as employer, to “negotiate in good faith with respect to wages, hours, the amounts of contributions by the State and respective counties to the Hawaii employer-union health benefits trust fund or a voluntary employees’ beneficiary association trust to the extent allowed in subsection (e), and other terms and conditions of employment that are subject to collective bargaining and that are to be embodied in a written agreement…”

The governor, on the other hand, appeared to be trying to force certain contract concessions through the budget process rather than through good faith bargaining. The legislature was correct on legal as well as political grounds to refuse to go along. It seems to me that the news media failed in its obligation to make the legal framework understandable to the public so that this knowledge could have informed the rest of the political debate.