Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Labor, to which was referred H.B. No. 1595, H.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to ensure that public employees excluded from collective bargaining are compensated at least equal to their included counterparts and subordinates.

Testimony in support of the measure was received from the Hawaii Government Employees Association, Managerial and Confidential Employees Chapter. The Department of Human Resources Development (DHRD) opposed passage of the measure.

Your Committee finds that under existing law, excluded employees are assured of receiving commensurate benefits and salary increases with whatever is negotiated for collective bargaining unit 13. However, under Act 253, Session Laws of Hawaii 2000, the provision of law that guaranteed this commensurate treatment was deleted. The deletion has thus concerned your Committee in that it leaves open the possibility that excluded employees may be treated less favorably than those belonging to collective bargaining units.

DHRD testified that although it opposes the passage of the measure, it is not the department's intent to treat excluded employees less favorably than their included counterparts with regard to fashioning compensation and benefit packages. However, DHRD would like the flexibility to craft compensation and benefit packages, which although different, will be at least equal to those agreed upon with collective bargaining units.

DHRD also had concerns that the language proposed in the measure would be interpreted to mean that any compensation or benefit adjustments negotiated with one jurisdiction would be binding upon another. Such an action would be in direct conflict with a basic tenet of Act 253, which in part authorized the counties to negotiate separately from the State for compensation packages for their employees.

Consequently, your Committee has amended the measure by only allowing a comparison of public employee compensation benefits from within an employer's jurisdiction, rather than allow for interjurisdictional comparisons.

Your Committee believes that the amended measure provides DHRD with the flexibility to craft innovative compensation and benefit packages that will serve as enticements and rewards to becoming public sector managers while ensuring that across-the-board reductions in salary and benefits do not occur.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Labor that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 1595, H.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 1595, H.D. 1, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.