2022-03-10 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board March 10, 2022 b) Legislative Update MR. LEOPOLDINO: Moving on to the "Legislative Update," I kind of wanted to bring you all up to speed as to where we're at tracking certain bills that may affect us in Human Resources. So, we're actually working with the Employer group, which includes all HR directors from the State of Hawaii tracking specific bills that are currently going through the House and Senate. The first one is House—Senate Bill 2705. Senate Bill 2705 actually was proposed to reinstate the Public Employee Compensation Appeals Board. And what that does is it sets up a board that their sole purpose is to hear re -pricing grievances from members within bargaining units. That becomes a problem because the way House Bill 20—Senate Bill 2705 was written, the required number of members is heavily weighted on the unions end. If I remember correctly, it was 13 union members to 7 employer representatives. So, just in that setup alone it's problematic for all employers because it'll be in favor of the pricing. And so, they would have the authority to move forward any pricing grievances. And if it was denied by the employer, basically, we would go through 89, which allows them to go through the arbitration process. This would add a third layer of re-pricing—the opportunity to grieve re -pricing because we already have it built in where re -pricing is brought up through the negotiations process. So, this almost be like a double -whammy for the employer because unions can come in at the negotiations process and they can now go through this board to bring up re -pricing grievances, which would have a tremendous impact on employer budgets—and it would be a significant impact. So, that's kind of the gist of the senate bill. I did submit testimony against Senate Bill 2705. And Senate Bill 2707 is very similar. Senate Bill 2707 proposes that the unions may submit a grievance for re -pricing directly to the employer and has 30 days to respond. And, if no agreement is met within 90 days of the filing of the grievance, then we go—it's considered an impasse and we would also go through arbitration. So, that's even another—it's adding another opportunity for members to come in and grieve their compensation. So, thisI also submitted testimony against Senate Bill 2707 as it would there will be significant impacts on the employer. The third bill that I wanted to bring up is Senate Bill 2018, I'm sure you all are familiar with is the increased minimum wage, which we're tracking very closely. Although this bill excludes government entities, as you know, we're all having a difficulty with recruitment—having positions in the County that pay less than minimum wage is just going to add to that. Page 14