Kauai County United Public Workers members have voted to accept 15 percent of their base hourly pay for all the hours worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, the union announced Monday.
Friday’s ratification vote was nearly unanimous with 95 percent of the county’s nearly 400 UPW, AFSCME, Local 646, AFL-CIO members accepting the offer, which mirrors the July arbitration award that Honolulu workers are waiting to receive.
Honolulu and Kauai counties’ terms of the temporary hazard pay are based on the union contract’s language regarding temporary severe hazard pay, which is 15 percent of base pay.
Kauai UPW employees include those who are parks, roads, wastewater, golf courses, solid waste and transfer station workers, said UPW State Director Kalani Werner, who added, “We provide a very large margin of workers.”
He said the members are happy with the terms.
Werner said Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami and the Kauai County Council have been cooperative in this process, but “this March marks five years we’ve been going on … trying to resolve this, going back and forth.”
The union began negotiations since the pandemic began and Gov. David Ige’s suspension of Chapter 89, a state law that protects collective bargaining rights for state and county employees. UPW initially sought a 25 percent pay differential.
Werner did not have an estimate of how much money that amounts to for either Kauai or Honolulu county, since it covers any UPW employee working for the county from March 2020 to March 2022, and still awaits word from Honolulu and now from Kauai.
Those who are entitled to the hazard pay include people who have since retired, those who may have worked for a portion of that period, and survivors of workers who are now deceased.
Honolulu UPW workers did not vote on the matter because the decision was made as a result of legal arbitration to settle the dispute between the employer and UPW workers.
The arbitration decision, made in July by the arbitrator, former Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Simeon Acoba Jr., is final. It is equal to 15 percent of a worker’s base pay for up to 16 hours worked per day.
Werner explained that if a union worker put in a regular eight-hour day, then had to work an additional eight hours for a situation such as a water main break, the hazard pay would be covered for the entire 16 hours, or however many hours a person worked on any given day up to 16 hours.
Werner said that after the Honolulu arbitration award, “we offered the remaining sector to look at it. Only Kawakami was willing to engage.”
Maui County, however, already had settled in 2022. The mayor offered 20 percent for 18 months, which was not in tune with the union contract and didn’t cover the length of the pandemic, but the members took the offer, Werner said.
Hawaii County is the only remaining county. Arbitration stopped three days in, and arbitrators stepped down, so the parties are in the process of starting over the arbitration.
Hawaii’s government worker unions, including the Hawaii Government Employees Association, UPW and State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, have negotiated with the state and counties to pay their members hazard pay for their work during he pandemic.
As for Oahu UPW workers, the mayor’s office said in late September the city is still calculating the amounts due to UPW employees and has to consult with the union.
The Honolulu City Council and city officials are still trying to come up with the money needed to repay unionized city workers temporary hazard pay. The $115 million the city set aside in federal State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is likely not enough.
On Sept. 25 the Honolulu City Council’s Budget Committee urged the city to use the $5 million in leftover funds from ARPA projects for hazard pay payments.
