Teachers union to The public school teachers union announced yesterday it will file a claim with the Hawaii Labor Relations Board some time in the next two weeks in an effort to end its dispute with the state over teachers' bonuses.
file claim with
labor board over
bonus dispute
The dispute concerns teachers'
bonus pay for advanced degreesBy Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.comThe Hawaii State Teachers Association's 52-member board met yesterday to discuss options, including going on strike, seeking legal redress or accepting the state's proposal to renegotiate the contract, union president Karen Ginoza said.
The options had been presented to about 3,000 teachers statewide last week. Although the union membership did not formally vote, feedback from the teachers "was overwhelmingly for legal redress," Ginoza said.
The board decided to go before the Labor Board because "that's where we feel that we've had a very good success rate of getting our issues resolved," Ginoza said.Because the union believes it has a contract, a legal strike at this time is not possible.
"We will take it through the legal route and we will see what happens," Ginoza said.
The union and state are at odds over a stipulation in the contract that ended the teachers' three-week strike in April.
The disagreement has delayed teachers' pay raises and a $1,100 retention bonus.
The contract remains unsigned because of a disagreement over 3 percent bonuses for teachers with master's degrees and professional diplomas.
Although the contract says the bonuses are to be paid in each of the last two years of the contract, the state argues that the contract language is in error and the negotiators only agreed to pay the bonuses once.
The state could not be reached for comment yesterday, but on Monday the state's chief negotiator Davis Yogi countered HSTA's accusations that the state had reneged on the contract agreement, and said the state in fact has offered an additional $3 million to supplement the $6 million already allotted for the bonuses.
Ginoza said that further negotiations with the state are possible before the claim is filed.
"We never shut the door," she said. "There's always an opportunity we can resolve it."
Joan Husted, HSTA executive director, said that the union expects the Labor Relations Board to rule that the teachers have a legal contract that must be honored.
However, if the union loses its claim, "we'd be right back where we are now," she said.
The board could rule that there is no contract, opening up the possibility of a legal strike, she said. Or the board could rule that parts of the contract that have been agreed upon be implemented while the two sides continue to negotiate the other issues.
The board could also sidestep the issue and send the case to Circuit Court, she said.
