[ TEACHER STRIKE ]

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UHPA ratifies
contract but several
issues remain

Health care changes may
complicate future
contract talks

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By Leila Fujimori
Star-Bulletin

University of Hawaii faculty voted 1404 to 221 to ratify the tentative contract agreement that ended their 13-day strike.

But while announcing the ratification at a press conference yesterday, University of Hawaii Professional Assembly chief negotiator J.N. Musto warned that negotiations on the next contract will be complicated by a bill that would change the way health coverage is offered to all public employees.

The bill would put all employees in the same health system and end the practice of allowing unions to offer separate state-subsidized health insurance plans.

"It is a fundamental attack again on the public sector unions that's just not justified," Musto said.

However, without changing the existing system, the state auditor estimates the government's share of health costs is expected to grow to nearly $1 billion annually by 2013.

Musto said the state Employees Retirement System should pay for health coverage for retirees and unions should still be allowed to offer health insurance to their members. He said if UHPA could work directly with health care carriers to discuss cost vs. benefits, it could come up with a plan that would be appropriate for UH.

As for the ratification of the contract, Musto said a voter turnout of only about 50 percent was not significant.

"Most of the people understand that this would be ratified," Musto said. "They were concerned, quite frankly, with spending their time finishing the semester."

Had the strike gone on longer, confidence in the university may have gone down and enrollment may have fallen, Musto said.

"Could we have stayed out another week and gotten one more percent? Who knows what would have happened and at what cost?" said Bill Puette, a professor of labor studies at UH-West Oahu and a member of the UHPA board and the bargaining committee.

"The feeling was that the gains in teaching equivalencies, the advance in lecturer pay -- as small as these were -- added to (the fact that) we could still save the semester and come very close to what our bottom line was, made them accept the settlement," Puette said.

He added that this was not the end. With bargaining to begin again, he said there is a determination to raise salaries so UH can retain and recruit the best faculty and not be at the bottom of national statistics.

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