03-06-2011, 01:03 PM
According to the HELCO written press release on the front page of yesterdays Trib-Herald, there are 1280 IBEW union employees working for HELCO's parent company HEI. A little over 240 of those union workers work for HELCO on Hawaii Island.
Interesting to note, the neither of the two issue on the KITV link I posted originally are asking for more, just to maintain the benefits the employees have, yet most of the posters here have assumed that the union is asking for more. These are the 2 points given from the article:
"The union has said it opposes management's proposal to require employees to work two more years to get full retirement benefits, pushing back their retirement age to 62 from 60.
The union has said it also is against a management effort to create two tiers of wage increases, giving a smaller pay hike to office personnel and a higher raise for HECO crews that work in the field."
I am surprised that more people I know here are OK with the fact that the electric company wants to impose 2 tiers of raises (wage increase) giving the office workers far less annual raise than the field workers (this is not starting pay, which is based on job classification & hazard). This will create a case where the office workers will actually fall farther behind the field workers each year.
Think of the average office worker & the average field worker. Wage parity was fought by some of us, and Hawaii was the first state to ratify the wage parity laws - HEI & HELCO seem to working against this.....
Interesting to note, the neither of the two issue on the KITV link I posted originally are asking for more, just to maintain the benefits the employees have, yet most of the posters here have assumed that the union is asking for more. These are the 2 points given from the article:
"The union has said it opposes management's proposal to require employees to work two more years to get full retirement benefits, pushing back their retirement age to 62 from 60.
The union has said it also is against a management effort to create two tiers of wage increases, giving a smaller pay hike to office personnel and a higher raise for HECO crews that work in the field."
I am surprised that more people I know here are OK with the fact that the electric company wants to impose 2 tiers of raises (wage increase) giving the office workers far less annual raise than the field workers (this is not starting pay, which is based on job classification & hazard). This will create a case where the office workers will actually fall farther behind the field workers each year.
Think of the average office worker & the average field worker. Wage parity was fought by some of us, and Hawaii was the first state to ratify the wage parity laws - HEI & HELCO seem to working against this.....