by Andrew Walden

The HGEA settlement with the State has been in the news since October 2.  Labor negotiations driven by Hawaii’s budget crisis could be resolved before next year’s legislative session but powerful forces are arraying themselves to stave off labor peace. They are stalling in hope that the artificial crisis purposefully created by the DoE/HSTA furlough scam will spur legislators to call for a special session to enact tax increases and raid the Hurricane fund.

Only one of the state’s four Democrat mayors need approve the HGEA-State agreement to move forward to ratification.  Yet in the week since word of the settlement first emerged, none has done so.  Mufi Hannemann in in Japan, one of three of the four mayors who have absconded from these Isles.  Finally after a week of stalling, they sent demands to Lingle's negotiation team to provide the counties with flexibility in applying furlough days and HGEA health care costs. 

The choice of the DoE and HSTA to place all 17 HSTA furlough days on instructional Fridays is playing out exactly as intended.  Many Hawaii charter schools, like mainland school districts faced with furloughs, were able to schedule them on “program days” and/or set furlough days at the beginning and end of the school year to minimize the inconvenience for working parents.  But the Hawaii DoE has worked to maximize chaos and is even coming up with excuse after excuse to block parents from privately paying teachers to keep schools open.

That is not the only manufactured crisis the DoE/HSTA has taken straight out of the Cloward-Piven playbook. The DoE’s choice to furlough special ed teachers may yet trigger a lawsuit which could effectively re-negotiate parts of the contract in court, exactly as lawsuits against drug testing brought down the last HSTA contract. That would make two contracts in a row which were fatally and purposefully ‘defected’ by the DoE and HSTA in anticipation of collaboration by Hawaii’s venal and disgusting Judiciary—many members of which were appointed under a Judicial Selection Committee including criminal union boss Gary Rodrigues.

In spite of widespread anger by public school parents, few legislators have joined the call by former tax cheat and Lt Gov candidate Gary Hooser for a special session.  But that is not the only game in town. While the mayors stall for time, the UHPA has rejected the UH system’s contract offer--unsurprising since Dan Inouye's handpicked UH system President is a poster girl for profligacy.  UHPA boss AJ Musto, now calls for the legislature to return to session and enact tax increases.  They will head to arbitration.  The UPW is refusing to engage in serious negotiations, also insisting on arbitration—a strategy designed to bring a December arbitration ruling which will deliver the problem to the next legislative session in January.

Every bit of this game is about next year’s gubernatorial election.  With the obscurantist media running interference, will a Hawaii Democrat be able to ride this wave of raw sewage back to Washington Place?

What emerges is a campaign theme for Duke Aiona: “Adult Supervision for Hawaii Government.”

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TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY RELATED: Furloughs vs Layoffs: The union no-solution strategy

Cloward-Piven Strategy: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967

Executive compensation at UC- MRC Greenwood and the $871 million dollar secret

Sen. Gary Hooser campaign website linked to Holocaust deniers