Hawaii’s World

By A.A. Smyser

Tuesday, December 9, 1997

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Rodrigues might
support privatization

GARY Rodrigues, leader of the United Public Workers and the target of many brickbats, is one of the people I count on to help bring Hawaii to more privatization of government services.

Privatization means letting private business operate services previously provided by government. Its advantages include these:

Private enterprises face the discipline of the competitive marketplace to require them to be efficient.

They can make quicker decisions, free of the burden of red tape required in government where, for example, check approvals may have to pass through over a dozen hands.

Instead of being a cost to government, they pay taxes.

If the private operators buy their property from the government -- an airport, for instance -- they immediately reduce public debt.

They are more likely to be free of the political burden of having to put people on their payrolls for patronage reasons, rather than for either need or merit.

Rodrigues has said on several occasions that he is not fundamentally opposed to privatization, only to bad privatization that may in itself be a political pay-off. He seems to have some valid examples of the latter. Thus I believe him.

I count him as a truly forward-looking Hawaii labor leader, not unlike the late Jack Hall of the ILWU, who fought through bitter strikes to advance the lot of his members yet realized that their fates were tied, too, to the building of a better, stronger Hawaii community and economy.

Rodrigues will not let his members down, but I don't think he will let Hawaii down either.

Earlier this year I was struck by a key similarity in speeches made to different Rotary clubs by him and a former deputy prime minister of New Zealand, which is perhaps the world's No. 1 example of a nation using privatization to turn around a moribund economy. Both said privatization can be either good or bad.

The New Zealander, James K. McLay, whose wife is from Hawaii's Farden family, has made a number of Hawaii appearances this year to explain his country's success. Now a private business consultant, he has suggested that Hawaii might copy Indianapolis, Phoenix and some United Kingdom jurisdictions in awarding contracts to provide specified government services but allowing government providers to bid, too. Private winners may employ former government workers who may even keep their union.

Rodrigues has met with McLay and plans to go to New Zealand. Based on my observations there earlier this year I think he will find privatization widely popular, even with most union members.

I await with crossed fingers his reaction to the law banning compulsory unionism in New Zealand. Since 1991 workers have had the right to either join unions, which most still do, or represent themselves in bargaining with both government and private employers. That, too, seems popular and was followed by substantial new job formation.

Whether a unionist like Rodrigues can buy into that, I don't know, but he could buy competitive bidding for government contracts even without going that far.

He joined in the unanimous vote of the Economic Revitalization Task Force to "Enable government to implement public-private competition through a managed process." I think he means it.