In the state budget crisis: two weeks ' notice

If HGEA and the Lingle administration cannot reach agreement on a contract this week or next, the matter will go to binding arbitration, and the result will be a contract that is not negotiated but imposed. A three-person arbitration committee will be consist of one person from the union, one person from the government, and one person from California who belongs to the national pool of professional arbitrators. As local labor lawyer and mediator Mike Nauyokas puts it, this arbitrator will get to decide how much employees will make and how much taxpayers will pay, then fly home to the mainland, unaffected by the consequences of his actions. Both Governor Lingle and Governor Cayetano before her have indicated that they think arbitrators tend to be generous to employees, sticking taxpayers with the bill. HGEA officials dispute this, but in years past the union has seemed more than willing to drive negotiations to the point of arbitration, suggesting the union is not too displeased with the results. This year, however, the situation is so different that it might be harder to guess what an arbitrator might do. If arbitrators have been content to award all the funds from rising tax revenue to employees, they might feel impelled to take a more draconian view in a year of falling tax revenue, if only to forestall accusations of not really being impartial after all. In recent days both HGEA and the state have indicated that informal talks have been going on almost every day, and unless I'm reading it wrong it seems like both HGEA Executive Director Randy Perreira and Governor Lingle seem to be toning down their rhetoric on the matter. In most years, the union head would be judged by how big a raise he won, and the governor by how much she could hold the line on wage costs. This year both will be judged by the same criterion: how many jobs they can save.

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[ROGER KASSEBAUM]

Please, state and city employees, realize that even you have to deal with the realities of living in a capitalist free enterprise system - that we are all dispensible.