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Editorials
Friday, December 1, 2000Garbage strike mustn’t
threaten public healthThe issue: The city is asking the state Labor Relations Board to prohibit refuse collectors from going on strike.
HAWAII survived the disruptive 1979 strike by city and state workers without serious health problems, but a similar strike today could be more injurious. The potential of garbage accumulating and causing a health hazard because of a work stoppage by refuse collectors should not be allowed. Garbage collection is essential to the public health and should not be curtailed.
Trash piled up during the 43-day public employees strike in 1979, when only 117 full-time workers and 11 part-timers were deemed essential. However, the population has grown and federal environmental requirements have increased.
The right to strike provides a labor union the ultimate tool of workers' bargaining power. It is intended to be disruptive to apply pressure at the negotiation table. Depriving a union of that right is a drastic, power-sapping measure that should be taken only under the most extreme circumstances. Public health and safety are reasons that warrant such action.
State Health Director Bruce Anderson warns that even a reduction of refuse collection on Oahu could result in more flies and other pests spreading disease. Uncollected garbage could allow the winged creatures to double in three days. Dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera, salmonellosis, shigellosis, anthrax, trachoma, poliomyelitis, hepatitis and conjunctivitis are among the diseases that could afflict the public because of uncollected garbage, Anderson told the Hawaii Labor Relations Board.
City Managing Director Ben Lee said 214 full-time refuse collectors need to be on the job during the first day of a strike to maintain twice-a-week pickup for Oahu households. That represents a small fraction of the UPW's 1,716 city and state workers threatening to walk off the job as early as Dec. 27 because of a contract-renewal dispute.
City officials have asked the state labor board to declare nearly half of those UPW members to be essential employees who may not go on strike. While that percentage may seem excessive, the board should make its decision on the basis of public health and safety.
New transit system
appears on track
THE Harris administration was won the Honolulu City Council's near-unanimous support for mass transit improvements that include electric, rubber-tired trams traveling on tracks. While the plan is less ambitious than the elevated light-rail plan rejected by the Council eight years ago, it seems to be a workable deterrent to traffic congestion.
The 11.8-mile-long tram line would extend from Middle Street to downtown, where branches would go to the University of Hawaii at Manoa and to Kakaako and Waikiki. The proposal also includes an expanded bus system of hubs and spokes and an afternoon extension of the Zipper lane on H-1 Freeway and additional access ramps.
The cost would be more than $1 billion, but financing would come entirely from city bond issues and state and federal grants. The 1992 rapid-transit proposal's rejection -- when Frank Fasi was mayor and Jeremy Harris advocated the proposal as city managing director -- was based not only on its greater cost but on the tax increase that it would have required.
The trams would run frequently on a dedicated lane in the middle of the street, now used by automobile traffic. Councilmen Romy Cachola and Andy Mirikitani expressed concern that it could force traffic onto nearby streets, causing tie-ups. Other critics maintain the plan is not needed because bus ridership has declined in recent years and the trend toward people working from their homes by computer could lead to less commuting.
Duke Bainum, chairman of the Council's Transportation Committee, said details will become known as the plan reaches its design stage. Bainum said he is confident that the new system "will change the quality of life for people on Oahu."
City Transportation Director Cheryl Soon said the plan will be returned to the Council for approvals at various steps. While the Council will be asked to approve the project as it moves from engineering and design to construction, the support given by all Council members -- except Mirikitani -- indicates it is likely to go forward.
While it won't amount to the massive undertaking envisioned in the 1992 proposal that was rejected, this plan should succeed, easing Oahu's traffic problem at an affordable price.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
