2010-12-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MR. MATSUDA: On the supplemental agreements, for the Big Island, and the Big Island only, what’s an example of a supplement agreement to this particular contract compared to the rest of the State. MR. TAKAHASHI: Police has, we have our own subsidized auto program where the police officers are, we use their personal vehicles for work but we provide for them a car allowance. Hawai‘i County has a supplemental agreement to negotiate that, the terms and conditions of that supplemental use. Those things are an example of a supplemental agreement. Whereas Maui has all fleet, all blue and white. Kauai has all fleet. So, yeah, they are different. That’s an example. Another example is like our Solid Waste Division has a 4-10 schedule. Their workers work four 10-hour days, and their schedules are based on that. So we have a supplement agreement for that type of condition of work. The Golf Course also hassupplemental agreements for their special schedules. We don’t have very many, but it’s primarily in those areas that we have special and unique hours of work that we need to try to address. Specific needs. MS. O’HARA: And does supplementalshave to go through that process of being inaudible. MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes, except it would be with just the one jurisdiction. MS. NICHOLSON: One of our correspondencesthat we got said that the city and county of Honolulu had experimented with the 4-10. How were they able to do that? Was that negotiated separately? Is it the city and county that did it? MR. TAKAHASHI: It was the State, I believe that implemented a pilot program for 4-10. MS. NICHOLSON: And so they tried it. Number one, it didn’t work. How were they able to negotiate something? MR. TAKAHASHI: Through negotiation with their union to say this is our proposal. There arecertain identified units of government or of the state that has that. And they did it. It would go into a 4-10 schedule. The terms and conditions of which would be negotiated with the union. They were able to reach agreement I believe,as the pilot program on how that was implemented. And you’re right. The program was terminated because they felt it wasn’t working. MS. NICHOLSON: Is it common in a state for all of the counties and the state government to have the same agreement and bargaining units? Or is this a little different in Hawai‘i? MR. TAKAHASHI: I believe it’s kind of unique to Hawai‘i, this type of collective bargaining where you have, especially when we’re on different islands, you have this kind of requirement where you have one master agreement for all the counties that are party to here. MS. NICHOLSON: And is this a good thing? 6