2010-12-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MR. TAKAHASHI: My personal opinion is it has its pluses and minuses, but it allows for continuity of one master of how everything runs. But you do also have the flexibility to do supplemental agreements which is the good thing about it. It’s the way the law is set up, and that’s just the way where we operate under, good or bad. My personal opinion is it has its pluses and minuses. Otherwise we’d be competing with each other for workers. They city could go negotiate higher wages because they could afford higher. And all the workers would run to Oahu to work I believe. Whereas, if we couldn’t match their wages here, we would not get the top quality workers. That again, a minus to that. Or a plus, depending on how you look at it. It would create that kind of situation if we did have individual bargaining within the county. That’s just one example, and I guess that would have affected a lot of areas. MS. NICHOLSON: So when the furlough program went into effect, it had to go into effect for all counties and the state? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Because it was negotiated. MR. TAKAHASHI: The furlough program was negotiated, it had some dynamics to it where the terms were the jurisdiction could furlough its employees from zero up to 24days per fiscal year. So that left the flexibility up to each jurisdiction. So the master agreement says you can furlough zero to 24 days. The jurisdictions all went and negotiated separate supplemental agreements on how they were going to implement that. Maui for an example, I believe is one day. That state went 24 days for both fiscal years. The County of Hawai‘i went 24 days for the second fiscal year. Went zero for the initial fiscal year. That was different variations to that negotiations, but the master agreement allowed for flexibility from zero to 24 days. MR. MATSUDA: Although it’s specific, I’m speaking about the supplemental agreements, because it’s specific to a particular jurisdiction, are the qualifications to have this supplemental agreement approved, is it the same process as a regular negotiation? MR. TAKAHASHI: Good question. The answer is no. Supplemental agreements do not require the ratification per se of the membership. However, I would go as far as to say I don’t think the union is going to agree to something that they’re members are not in favor of. So we don’t need ratification. A master agreement needs to be ratified by its members. Supplemental agreements don’t have to be ratified. The commonality though is any cost item must be approved by the appropriate legislative body. So, I cannot go and negotiate cost items for supplemental agreements. I have to go to Council to get any cost item, increase in cost I should say, to be approved by the Council. MS. WONG: I got a few questions. Looking back at our notes from the last meeting and one of the reasons that we called you in, you see on the agenda, but to further build it out, some of the things that were added were how does overtime work? I think you’ve sort of addressed that. Combining personnel or moving positions from one department to another. Considering the union rules, is that doable or is that a long term process in 7