Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 290, S.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to convert several subject matter areas currently excluded from public sector collective bargaining into permissible subjects of collective bargaining.

Specifically, this measure authorizes public employers to negotiate over matters relating to the merit principle, the principle of equal pay for equal work, work standards and examination contents, efficiency and productivity in government operations, methods and means of government operations, and emergency actions.

Your Committee finds that current law expressly prohibits negotiations over proposals that interfere with these several subject matter areas, collectively known as the employer's management rights, under an older school of thought. Your Committee finds that reforms to traditional methods of management rights are needed in today's increasingly complex and interdependent world of labor-management relations.

Your Committee has amended this measure by making technical nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and style.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 290, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 290, S.D. 2.