Chun says the move is ‘disheartening’ Governor Ben Cayetano had his veto pen out earlier this week, striking down 20 bills including one that would have extended unemployment benefits for former Amfac Sugar Kaua’i workers. State Sen. Jonathan Chun (D-7th),
Chun says the move is ‘disheartening’
Governor Ben Cayetano had his veto pen out earlier this week, striking down 20 bills including one that would have extended unemployment benefits for former Amfac Sugar Kaua’i workers.
State Sen. Jonathan Chun (D-7th), in whose district most of the former Amfac workers (Kapa’a to Mana and Ni’ihau) reside, called the veto “disheartening.”
“This was one of the ways that we were aiming at trying to soften the blow of the sugar industry closing,” Chun said.
“There are other ways. I’m kind of disappointed that the Governor vetoed this, but there are other ways,” he said. “One of the ways we’re focusing on is to try, of course, (to) create new jobs. And that is going through right now.”
A call center, jobs at technical parks and related activities on the east and west sides of the island, and proposed expansion of the Kekaha shrimp-farming operation and U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands all offer hope for new jobs for the island.
“These things are still moving, however, the unemployment plan was made to offer immediate assistance,” Chun said of the bill, which would have extended Amfac worker unemployment benefits for six months to those workers currently in approved vocational or other educational programs.
“All these new jobs take time and take training, so it was our thought that while these new jobs are being created and while these people are being re-trained, they can receive additional unemployment benefits, and that’s what the bill did.”
It was an attempt, Chun said, to allow workers the additional benefits to stay in approved retraining programs and not have to take a job offering minimal pay to try to provide for their families. Taking such employment would, in most cases, preclude the workers from getting that re-training.
“Every time a major sugar plantation has closed (Hamakua and O’ahu Sugar, for example), the state stepped in and did basically the same thing we did with this bill, and nobody raised a squawk,” said Chun.
“But now, when it happens on Kaua’i, all of a sudden, it’s wrong, and we can’t do it,” he continued.
“That is very disheartening.”
“Extending unemployment benefits for only former Amfac Sugar Kaua’i employees creates a special group of unemployed workers. The Employment Security Law should be implemented fairly for all unemployed workers,” Cayetano said, adding that the veto was a fairness issue.
Further, Cayetano said the cost of the measure would have been $5 million, which would have resulted in a higher unemployment tax to all employees. Also, various state agencies have offered retraining and job-placement assistance opportunities to the former Amfac workers on Kaua’i, Cayetano said.
The Unemployment Insurance program was intended to provide economic assistance to all eligible unemployed workers on a short-term, temporary basis while they seek other job opportunities, and the state could not afford to extend the same benefits to all of the state’s unemployed workers, Cayetano concluded.
“The overall plan is still to get them re-trained and re-employed, and find new jobs for them. And we’re going to continue to do that,” Chun said.
“It (the veto) just will make it a little bit harder.”
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
