Associated Press Writer HONOLULU — Educators on picket lines across Hawai`i are shouting for higher pay. But the roots of the labor dispute lie much deeper in a state still struggling to free itself from the image of a sugar
Associated Press Writer
HONOLULU — Educators on picket lines across Hawai`i are shouting for higher pay. But the roots of the labor dispute lie much deeper in a state still struggling to free itself from the image of a sugar economy and a university system in academic chaos.
Statewide strikes by schoolteachers and University of Hawaii professors shut down Hawaii’s public education system for a second day Friday with no resolution in sight.
The state Department of Education said it would reopen only one school, the Big Island’s Laupahoehoe High and Elementary School, on Monday and only for the 20-member senior class. Only 148 of the Hawai`i State Teachers Association’s 13,000 members reported to work Friday.
Teachers and UH/college faculty members are demanding pay raises that meet Hawaii’s cost of living, estimated at 30 percent higher than most mainland communities. Teachers are seeking raises totaling 22 percent over four years, retroactive to July 1999. Professors want raises of 13 percent over two years.
The requests come as the state is emerging cautiously from a nine-year economic slump. While tourist arrivals, job creation and tax collections are up, state officials say that growth could be slowed by a sagging stock market and overseas economic troubles.
“If we agreed to fund those (teacher) pay raises, I would again be forced to cut programs for the poor, disabled and elderly,” Cayetano in a televised speech.
Those “are the people who suffered most when I cut the state budget because of the downturn in Hawaii’s economy,” he said, while teachers received a 14 percent pay raise in 1997 that boosted their average salaries from 24th to 18th in the nation.
The debate has become part of a larger, often politically laced discussion in the islands about the quality of public education.
Since statehood in 1959, Hawai`i has moved from a plantation economy to one dominated by tourism. The state’s once-dominant sugar industry has withered to a handful of holdout plantations.
While promoting the $12 billion tourism industry, Cayetano has tried to attract high-technology firms to the islands to ease the state’s dependency on visitor dollars.
But the state can’t expand the pool of highly skilled workers without better-paid educators, said J.N. Musto, executive director of the UH Professional Assembly.
“What message are we sending right now to the world? We have no public education in the state of Hawai`i,” he said. “We’re telling the world that education isn’t our No. 1 priority.”
Adding to education troubles, university professors have been working without a contract for nearly two years.
The faculty strike comes after six years of cuts that reduced the University of Hawaii’s budget by 13 percent and led to the departure of several top instructors and researchers.
In 1999, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges reaffirmed the university’s accreditation but said it would revisit that in three years instead of the usual 10.
Professors have said they are watching the slow death of the 94-year-old university that serves as the intellectual and athletic center of island life.
Some have accused Cayetano, a UCLA graduate, of targeting the university because he’s not an alumnus and because the faculty union supported his Republican election opponent, Linda Lingle, in 1998.
The union also was the only public employee group that refused to support Cayetano’s proposal for a payroll lag for state workers.
“That we supported his opponent is a big factor. That we refused to take a payroll lag and that we would even stand up to him has totally irritated him to no end,” said Harry Davis, an associate professor of chemistry at Kapiolani Community College, one of the 10 UH campuses that include Kaua`i Community College.
Cayetano has said he holds no grudge and that the faculty union has refused to accept changes that would make the university more efficient.
While the teachers strike also has focused on pay, it has drawn attention to Hawaii’s one-of-a-kind statewide public school system, part of a strong central government that dates back to the state’s monarchical and territorial past.
Republicans have called for reform of the school system to allow more decision-making at the community level.
“It does highlight a major weakness of a state-operated system that you would have an entire system like this go down at one time,” Lingle said.
Defenders say the system is preferable to those dependent on local property tax revenue, where poorer districts might be shortchanged.
HSTA president Karen Ginoza spoke by phone with Governor Ben Cayetano on Friday, but no formal talks were scheduled.
“They agreed to keep the lines of communication open,” union spokeswoman Danielle Lum said. “He needs to go back to his side and look at some options. We’ve got our people in and we’re looking at options, as well.”
Cayetano said the statewide picketing by the teachers demonstrates their solidarity, but “that’s not going to change the state’s ability to pay one iota.”
“I expect this will be a prolonged strike,” he said. “I think that the teachers feel very, very strongly, but we have a responsibility as well.”
University of Hawai`i Professional Assembly executive director J.N. Musto said he told a federal mediator the union is willing to meet this weekend, but the state wants to wait until next week.
“That is absolutely an irresponsible position to take,” Musto said. “The public should demand both the union and the governor meet constantly.”
Chief state negotiator Davis Yogi could not be reached for comment.
