The initiative "would be financially impossible to implement," Harris said yesterday.
"The city provides vital, essential services that cannot be trimmed," said Harris, who many believe is likely to challenge Cayetano in the Democratic primary next year.
Harris' criticism came after learning that Cayetano publicly disclosed that he has been having informal discussions with the leaders of two major public workers unions on cutting the work week as a way to balance the state's budget. The growth in state revenues has slowed as Hawaii's economy has stagnated.
"The only way we could pick up the slack caused by the move to a 35-hour work week would be to hire more people or pay a lot of money out in overtime so that essential and emergency services would still be available to the citizens," Harris said. "Therefore, this proposal would end up costing the taxpayers more money, not saving money."
Harris spoke out because collective bargaining agreements cover county as well as state workers.
If the white-collar Hawaii Government Employees Association and the blue-collar United Public Workers accept Cayetano's proposal, it would mean about 22,670 of their members on the state payroll would be working seven instead of eight hours a day. In the city, about 5,550 HGEA and UPW members would be affected.
But there would be more. Under state law, so-called exempt state and county workers who are not union members also would reap the benefits of a collective bargaining contract with a shorter work week provision, said state chief labor negotiator Manabu Kimura.
The state's current payroll for workers who are HGEA or UPW members totals $524.5 million annually, according to the state Department of Budget and Finance.
Harris also said a shorter work week would mean a cutback in police and fire protection, but Cayetano has not included the police, fire, public schoolteachers and university faculty unions in his proposal -- just the "general" government workers in HGEA or UPW.
UPW's two bargaining units have yet to reach a settlement for the current fiscal biennium that ends June 30. And all seven HGEA units and the two UPW units still don't have pacts for the upcoming biennium. The schoolteachers and University of Hawaii faculty unions agreed on four-year contracts earlier this year.
House Speaker Joe Souki (D, Wailuku) and Lowell Kalapa, executive director of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, viewed Cayetano's initiative more favorably than Harris, but they also shared Harris' concerns.
"I think it is a good idea. The main concern I have is that it doesn't entail hiring more employees," Souki said.
Kalapa, more cautious than Souki, said he fears the precedent a shorter work week might establish. Would it mean, he wondered, that the next time the state is suffering from financial problems, the governor will offer to reduce the work week from 35 to 30 hours to win a no-pay-raise concession from unionized state workers? "What about us as taxpayers 'buying' government services. Will productivity be 12.5 percent less?"
Cayetano's proposal to reduce the work week five hours while maintaining the current salary is the equivalent of giving HGEA and UPW members a 12.5 percent pay raise.
UPW leader Gary Rodrigues hailed Cayetano's initiative, which was first discussed a month ago, he said.
"I think it is a great idea because in these economic times if we can get a shorter work week while maintaining 40-hour pay, that's a form of a pay raise that doesn't cost the employer any more money," Rodrigues said.
"It is time we move toward reducing the work week for employees, whether or not they're government or private sector."
The overtime problem that some people fear is easily solved with the existing work force by creating more shifts, Rodrigues added. "It can be done. No question about it," he said.
If Cayetano wants a six-year pact with UPW, as he says he does with both UPW and HGEA, it could be done, Rodrigues added. "It would depend on how it is structured," he said.