Hawaii Teachers Accept Governor’s Mediation Offer

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After reviewing Gov. Neil Abercrombie‘s remarks in a YouTube video last week, the Hawaii State Teachers Association board decided Saturday to make a last-ditch effort to resolve a month-long contract dispute.

HSTA President Wil Okabe sent a letter to Abercrombie on Saturday taking him up on his “offer to renew a dialogue with us.” The letter said the board had agreed to “mediation/binding arbitration” — despite a pending legal complaint with the .

“We agree that utilizing a third party to resolve the outstanding issues is the most productive route to achieving what is in the best interest of children, teachers, and the state,” the letter says.

Okabe said he was told by the governor’s staff that the letter had been received and would be passed on to the governor.

The union filed its complaint against the state last month after the governor unilaterally imposed a new contract for Hawaii’s 12,500 public school teachers. The contract went into effect July 1 and included a pay cut and increased health costs.

The state said it was compelled to implement the contract without union approval because negotiations had reached an impasse. The union has maintained that negotiations never reached impasse, and that the state’s actions violated teachers’ collective bargaining rights. The first hearing related to the case is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 10.

The case is of such magnitude that other unions are getting involved. If the labor board rules for the governor, it could mean that the state has the authority to impose terms of a contract with public unions, which would dramatically alter Hawaii’s labor landscape.

Okabe told Civil Beat that his letter was inspired by of the governor on the Big Island. In the clip, the governor says he would prefer to set the labor board complaint aside and “just do this.”

“It is the HSTA leadership that says they would rather be in front of the labor board instead,” Abercrombie tells a former teacher. “Not me. I’m ready today if we want to do do mediation or whatever it is. I’m ready.”

The governor had earlier told Civil Beat that he would be “happy to entertain counter offers” from the union. In that same conversation, though, he also seemed set on the outcome.

“It’s not so much getting back to the table — the table was gotten to,” he said. “The contract’s been implemented.”

Okabe said the governor’s YouTube statement was “a little different tune” from that one, and the union’s board seized on the opportunity to do what it has always said it wants: return to bargaining.

“We have always been open for negotiations, and when we saw that particular clip, we decided we were going to take it at face value — as the governor reaching out to us for this resolution,” Okabe said. “We held an emergency meeting, and unanimously accepted the governor’s offer to go through mediation and arbitration. Right now it’s going to rest upon the governor.”

“
We definitely want to get this thing resolved,” he added.

Incidentally, the state has said that HSTA rejected an offer for mediation earlier this year during collective bargaining. But Okabe maintains that the union has “never refused mediation.” Just another odd twist in a labyrinth of arguments and counter-arguments surrounding this contract.

Read the letter from Okabe to the governor:

View the video in question below. The relevant portion begins around the 5:30 mark, but it’s all interesting.

Miss something in our coverage of the teacher contract? Catch up with the articles below:

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