[ ONE YEAR LATER: LESSONS LEARNED ]
Teachers nurse A year has passed, and the clash still rages between the key players in Hawaii's first statewide educational shutdown.
grudge from
last year’s strike
Their union president says teachers
Strike veterans hope they made a point Morale at UH has improved
now are distrustful of politiciansBy Richard Borreca
rborreca@starbulletin.comOn April 5, 2001, Hawaii public school teachers and university professors went on strike, effectively shutting down public education in Hawaii from kindergarten through graduate school.
The strike lasted 13 days for the professors and an additional seven days for teachers. It affected 185,000 public school students and 44,500 college students. Teachers won bonuses and a 16 percent raise, while professors had across-the-board raises of $2,300 and 6 percent the second year.
In comparison, the state workers' largest union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association, which was forbidden from striking, had a raise of 15 percent approved last year.
Today, the sides in the education strike are still fighting, and there is a good chance that the strike will be an important factor of the fall election campaign.
The principal protagonists -- the state administration and the Hawaii State Teachers Association -- both say they would not have changed their bargaining tactics and that they did all they could to avert a strike.
And while Gov. Ben Cayetano insists the teachers are now getting a fair wage, the teachers complain they are still without a formally ratified contract, and their health benefits are under attack at the Legislature.
"The impact on our teachers is, there is a distrust of politicians, that they aren't good for their word. They give you their word and then they turn on you," Karen Ginoza, HSTA president said last week.
Cayetano sees the HSTA, a politically potent force in elections, stepping up campaigning this year because of the strike.
"The HSTA says it is going to make endorsements on a case-by-case basis, so that tells me they have changed," Cayetano said this week in an interview.
Teachers and university faculty quickly personalized the strike and flooded Cayetano with bitter e-mails, attacking him and the state's refusal to give larger pay raises.
"I couldn't give in because they were stuck at $290 million (the cost of what the teachers wanted), and even when they came down to $200 million, we were at $96 million," Cayetano recounted.
Then the state Senate announced it would pass a budget with the teachers' request, and Cayetano said he had to dig in.
"Some of those guys (senators) were panic-stricken," Cayetano said. "That is not the way you negotiate. In the end, I had to make a decision: Do I give in to their demands, knowing how much the other state departments have been hurting?"
Ginoza maintains that the union, which always supported Cayetano in his elections, also would not have done anything differently to prevent a strike, saying the teachers simply had to have a larger raise than what the state initially offered.
The 2001 Legislature was key in causing the strike, according to Cayetano, who says the Senate Ways and Means Committee, led by Sen. Brian Taniguchi, insisted there was money to meet the teachers' demands.
Taniguchi says he also would not have changed his tactics, because they were in support of the teachers.
"The Senate still stands by what it did, and we are still trying to be supportive. If it were to happen again, I would be doing the same thing," Taniguchi said.
Now Taniguchi is worried that the teachers are coming back and asking for more from the Legislature. Specifically, the HSTA has been pushing a measure that would allow public employee unions to run health plans for their members.
"The HSTA is concerned about the health fund; we had struggled so hard to fund their collective bargaining, and in the end, they find for some reason the health fund issue was larger," Taniguchi said.
Already there is an HSTA push at the Legislature to repeal a portion of the health fund reforms that were enacted last year. But the measure appears to be dead for the year.
"The legislators will face a litmus test. They will be asked if they are willing to repeal the health fund reform.
"That will separate the wheat from the chaff because that reform was one of the big accomplishments of the Legislature," Cayetano said.
Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, Senate vice president, says the teacher's lobbying this year on the health fund is a direct outgrowth of a new militancy rising from last year's strike.
"There has been political fallout," Hanabusa (D, Waianae) said. "But for some strange reason, it is over the health fund. But one of the pluses from a union perspective is, if handled properly, it does make a more united rank and file."
Ginoza says the health fund and supporting wage increases for teachers are all part of the package they are asking candidates to support in return for an HSTA endorsement this fall. During this month, teachers will be given a ballot with the HSTA board's recommendation for political endorsements, and teachers will be asked to say whether they agree.
Those results will be compiled and used to help the HSTA board make an endorsement next month.
Cayetano, who is not running for re-election, says he will veto any bill that changes the health fund reforms.
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Some Hawaii public school teachers complain that the contract they fought so hard to get a year ago still has not been fully implemented. Strike veterans disappointed
but hope they made a pointPublic school teachers won a pay raise,
but part of the settlement remains uncertainBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com"We're basically disappointed, being out there in the rain, wind, whatever, and that somehow or another it's just not happening," said Wylyn Auna, a Moanalua Middle School teacher who said she has received about half the provisions called for in the contract.
The 20-day strike ended April 24 when teachers ratified a contract giving them a 16 percent pay raise and bonuses. But today a major part of the contract, which could affect about 6,500 teachers, remains uncertain.
The state and union were sent back to the bargaining table in February to determine whether a 3 percent bonus for teachers with master's or professional degrees will be paid out for the second year of the contract.
"We're getting everything piecemeal and it's coming down to semantics; one is saying this and one is saying that," Auna said, adding she continues to strongly support union leaders.
Karen Ginoza, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said "the state's reluctance to implement the contract" has been "very unfortunate." But she said informal talks are ongoing between the union, state and the state Department of Education.
Ginoza said the strike was for high-quality education and qualified teachers in the classroom and was a win for teachers and students -- even if it meant losing three weeks of class instruction.
"It hurts whenever you have to deny services to children -- teachers recognize that -- but we were doing more damage to our children in the long run by having a teacher shortage," she said, adding that high school students also raised concerns about qualified teachers.
Ginoza said the strike exposed students to "what collective action could accomplish.
"We hope in three weeks, students were also getting an education in how to fight for what they believe in," she said.
A year ago, Nanakuli student Stacelynn Eli was worried that a lengthy strike would cancel her varsity basketball team's season and push back graduation for seniors.
"For us that was kind of scary, and at the same time, through all that, we still supported our teachers, we drove by and waved to them. In fact, our team got together and took them pizza," said Eli, now a senior and student body president at Nanakuli High & Intermediate School.
Eli, whose friends were able to graduate on time and whose team made it to the OIA playoffs, said she did not feel shortchanged by losing class time because her teachers "were good about trying to get us caught up."
Catching up was the main concern for parent Gail Lee, who said she was afraid "these kids would be shuffled out the door with a diploma without enough learning.
"The next step is college. If they go to (University of Hawaii), they're all on the same curve. If they go to mainland, they're behind the curve."
Lee acknowledged she is unsure about the strike's true impact on her daughter, Jennifer, who graduated last year from McKinley High School.
"I'll never know," she said. "I wouldn't be able to tell."
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One year ago, Deane Neubauer wore a University of Hawaii Professional Assembly T-shirt that said "We're on Strike." 1 year after the strike,
morale at UH has improvedUH President Dobelle is given
much credit for creating a "can-do
attitude on the campusBy Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.comToday, he is the chief administrator of the university's flagship campus at Manoa.
UH President Evan Dobelle points to Neubauer's ascension from faculty member to interim Manoa chancellor as a sign that things have changed at UH and a demonstration of how much he values the faculty.
"I am their chief advocate," Dobelle says, launching into a discussion about how the faculty is underpaid, how community college professors carry too heavy a course load, and how too many classes are taught by adjunct faculty instead of tenured professors.
A year ago today, these issues and others drove the 3,100 UHPA membership to the picket lines, where after 13 days they came away with a contract that was little improvement over what they had been offered before the strike. It actually resulted in smaller raises for the higher-paid faculty.
Still, "one year after the strike, the morale on campus is much higher, much more positive, and maybe only a little of that has to do with the actual package that came out of the strike," said James Gaines, chairman of the physics and astronomy department.
Gaines said his workload has tripled over the past year -- in what he deems a positive way. "I was being underutilized a year ago. Now everyone has new ideas, new plans. The faculty members from the Institute for Astronomy ... have proposed a half-dozen new courses. All sorts of innovation is just coming along."
Gaines credits Dobelle, who took over the presidency on July 2, Neubauer and other new executive staff members with creating a "can-do" approach in the administration that he says was absent under the previous president, Kenneth Mortimer.
Union representatives also have been encouraged by their discussions with the administration.
"There's no reason not to feel optimistic, based on what they said to me," said J.N. Musto, UHPA executive director. "Their attitude is a positive one. Their words are positive words.
"We finally have an administration that advocates on behalf of the university and on behalf of the faculty."
But Musto said some things have not changed at all as the university faces another round of budget cuts this legislative session.
"It demonstrates a real loss of investment in higher education through its legislature and government," he said.