HECO union employees give 48hr strike notice

[Obie]

Do they understand that there are many thousands of unemployed workers on the mainland that would love to have their jobs ??

I am talking about fully qualified electrical workers.

An airplane ticket away from replacing them !!

[Shekelpal]

Solar???????

[Kapohocat]

If the CEO only made $1.8M instead of $2.8 that means if they have 3000 employees on strike - does anyone know the actual approx # on strike ? - then each employee using my example could increase salaries/benefits $3333 without a rate increase to customers.

Joke seen recently:

A ceo and a teacher and a tea partier were looking at a dozen cookies on a plate. The CEO took 11 of the cookies. The CEO then told the tea partier "be careful, the teacher is going to take your cookie".

[TrevorKane]

Ummm... Kapahocat, I think the number you are looking for is $333...

It's really hard to do anything for line workers by deflating CEO salaries - CEO salaries are actually somewhat scaled like that- he's costing every working in the company a cup of coffee a day - in the worst cases it's a latte from Starbucks.

Unfortunately, without strikes and unions, it's really hard for common workers to negotiate anything.

In this case, it's a shame they're melting your ice cream to make a point.

[Carey]

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.....

[KeaauRich]

quote:

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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.....

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I assume the average office worker works in a chair, in an air conditioned, dry environment. The field workers are out day and night, rainy or dry, hot or cold, driving on bumpy back roads, walking through scrub or dangling in bucket trucks handling live electrical wires. If the office worker isn't happy, their skills are easily transferable to other jobs, but the field crew, not so much. So yeah, I guess I'm OK with the tiered pay grades.

[konadave]

I can tell you that, at least in my neighborhood, the poles and wires are going back up rather quickly. The management and private sector workers they are using have almost all the poles and wires back up again. I heard on the news today that only 500 people are still without electricity. Original numbers were roughly 10,000.

We were without power for about 20 hours this time.

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[konadave]

quote:

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Originally posted by Carey

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.....

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Carey,

I have a question. How are the raises supposed to addressed? Are the raises as a percentage of their current salaries or are they a set dollar amount?

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[Obie]

"2 tiers of raises"

What is a raise? Most have taken massive pay cuts.The days of annual raises are coming to an end.

We have the highest electric rates in the United States and HELCO employees want a raise ??

Sorry,not going to get much sympathy from someone who has gone through multiple pay and benefit cuts.

[Rob Tucker]

Is there any mention of executive pay or bonuses for HECO? I've never really heard of corporate executives going on strike for wages or work conditions....