Bills drive union challenge of Hawaiian Electric

The powerful Hawaii Carpenters Union has launched a high-stakes campaign against Hawaiian Electric Co. over wildfire liability legislation that has driven a deeper wedge between Hawaii’s trade unions, which publicly pride themselves on labor solidarity.

Both Hawaiian Electric and the carpenters union argue that their positions for and against earlier versions of House Bill 982 would be best for Hawaii when it comes to recovering from future wildfires in the aftermath of the Aug. 8, 2023, Maui wildfires, which killed 102 people and all but obliterated Lahaina.

The bill came back this legislative session after stalling in 2024.

As originally introduced, HB 982 would have limited Hawaiian Electric’s liability in future wildfires and has since been amended to merely create a working group “to conduct a study concerning the creation of a Wildfire Recovery Fund.”

The current version of Senate Bill 897, however, would limit liability damages for Hawaiian Electric. It would also enable Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative, not Hawaiian Electric, to recover wildfire damages through an automatic rate adjustment or other mechanism.

But SB 897 also faces strong differences in the state Legislature.

The House on Friday sent SB 897 back to the Senate over “disagreements” over different versions of the bill, leaving its future uncertain in the remaining days of the legislative session.

The Hawaii Carpenters Union two weeks ago launched a campaign against Hawaiian Electric to convince customers and legislators that limiting the utility company’s costs for future wildfires will further drive up the cost of living in a state that already has seen rates rise 90% from 2009 to 2014 compared with just 31% on the mainland for the same period, according to the carpenters.

Capping Hawaiian Electric’s liability on future wildfires would place the burden of additional liability on its customers, who are already struggling to keep up with the high cost of living in Hawaii, carpenters union spokesperson Andrew Pereira told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Even journeyman union carpenters who earn a solid paycheck of $115,000 annually, Pereira said, rank at only 80% of what’s known as area median income, a measure of individual economic wealth in a community.

The union described the original draft of HB 982 as a “bailout” for the utility company that would be ultimately paid for by customers.

“We’re raising the alarm because no one else is,” Ronald Taketa, executive secretary-treasurer of the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters, said in a statement. “Hawaii’s working families should not be forced to pay the price for HECO’s negligence and corporate excess. This fight is about fairness, accountability, and standing up for the people.”

Hawaiian Electric spokesperson Jim Kelly, however, said limiting liability costs for the company would follow the trends of other states that are also trying to manage the threat of wildfires that have grown more frequent and powerful.

Putting a cap on Hawaiian Electric’s wildfire liability, Kelly said, would help ensure a Hawaii-based utility company continues to provide service for island customers. “No one is going to be in the utility business anymore if the potential of unlimited liability is still a risk,” he said.

While legislators debate how to proceed, HB 982 has little to do with the carpenters’ real goal, according to Leroy Chincio, business manager and financial secretary for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1260, which has the exclusive labor agreement with Hawaiian Electric.

The carpenters threatened to launch their publicity campaign against HB 982 — and Hawaiian Electric — unless the company signed a 20-year project labor agreement exclusively with the carpenters union, cutting out the IBEW, Chincio said. He called the carpenters’ campaign against limiting Hawaiian Electricity’s financial liability “blackmail.”

“They want an exclusive project labor agreement or else they would hold the bill as hostage,” Chincio said. “If the carpenters union got what they wanted, it would cut out all of the other unions, too. Wow. They want it all.”

“While we may not agree with everything Hawaiian Electric does,” Chincio said, “the health of the company affects our members, also. And this bill is best for ratepayers in the long run. It’s good. They (Hawaii Carpenters Union) wen’ on one propaganda, making it about something else because they didn’t get one PLA.”

This session, as HB 982 moved through the Legislature, the Hawaii Carpenters Union, Hawaiian Electric and the IBEW agree that the carpenters leadership approached Hawaiian Electric with its proposal for a 20-year project labor agreement.

Hawaiian Electric has no experience with so-called PLAs, uses IBEW for its unionized work and said it needed more time to consider the proposal while asking whether it was possible to limit a potential PLA to, say, five years, Kelly said.

Taketa, instead, made it clear there was no room for negotiation, Kelly said.

Taketa characterized the carpenters’ proposal as a “take-it-or-leave-it deal” that would lead to a public campaign to generate public sentiment against HB 982 — and Hawaiian Electric — if the company turned it down, Kelly said.

Without a project labor agreement in place, and with HB 982 still alive, the carpenters then unveiled a website two weeks ago called nohecobailout.com.

According to the website, HB 982 would allow “HECO to pass the financial fallout of wildfire damages onto ratepayers — even if HECO’s own negligence contributed to the disaster. That means higher monthly bills for families already struggling with the cost of living.”

The carpenters have staked out public, political positions of opposition in the past, notably challenging former Gov. Ben Cayetano during his 2012 campaign for Honolulu mayor in which Cayetano pledged to kill the city’s rail project if elected. Cayetano lost to Kirk Caldwell, a rail supporter, and later filed a defamation suit against Pacific Resource Partnership, the carpenters union’s political arm.

In a settlement, PRP had to apologize for its negative campaign against Cayetano and donate $100,000 to the University of Hawaii Medical School and $25,000 to the Hawaiian Humane Society in Cayetano’s name.

In the 2018 race for lieutenant governor, the carpenters criticized former state Sen. Jill Tokuda in a race she lost to Josh Green, who later went on to become governor. Tokuda now serves in Congress representing rural Oahu and the neighbor islands.

More recently, the carpenters backed former Honolulu Council Chair Ikaika Anderson in his 2022 race for lieutenant governor against state Rep. Sylvia Luke. Luke, who defeated Anderson, wanted to limit the state’s financial support for a permanent tax for rail construction.

But the carpenters’ newest public campaign against Hawaiian Electric stands out, according to Colin Moore, who teaches public policy at the University of Hawaii and serves as associate professor at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.

This time, Moore said, the carpenters are not focusing on a single political candidate who questions rail, Hawaii’s largest public works project, which carries the potential of work for generations of trade unions.

And they’re notably taking on Hawaiian Electric alone, without the support of other unions.

“It’s extremely rare to see this,” Moore said.

But given the carpenters’ history of political activism and willingness to challenge established and well-known political candidates, Moore said he isn’t surprised.

“The carpenters play offense, and most unions in Hawaii play defense,” he said. “The carpenters play a more sophisticated game that requires the ability to poll and have the public relations talent to execute a PR strategy like this. The carpenters stand out.”

The carpenters’ campaign against Hawaiian Electric has angered its fellow trade unions, which offered a rare, public rebuke Thursday.

The Hawaii Building and Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO — composed of IBEW and other island labor unions — blasted the carpenters for what it called “a smear campaign reeking of mainland politics and misinformation.”

The Trades Council said the Hawaii Carpenters Union wants to “secure an exclusive labor agreement with Hawaiian Electric Company that would exclude other construction trades unions from the work they perform.”

Gino Soquena, executive director of the Hawaii Building and Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO, said in the statement “that the Carpenters are known for poaching other trade unions work, and this would allow them to do that.”

Chincio, of the IBEW, told the Star-Advertiser that in all his years on jobs for Hawaiian Electric — which have involved tearing up concrete, digging holes for poles, wiring them for serv­ice and pouring new concrete — “we’ve never had carpenters since the beginning of time, going back to Thomas Edison.”

Pereira, of the Carpenters Union, could not immediately identify any work that union carpenters currently perform for Hawaiian Electric.

Kelly, the utility’s spokesperson, said, “We don’t build a lot of houses here at Hawaiian Electric.”

“We also don’t have experience with project labor agreements, so we also didn’t know what the potential impact would be of a 20-year exclusive project labor agreement with the carpenters,” Kelly said. “I don’t know why this was an issue and they decided to attack the company and alienate some of their union colleagues.”

To try and prevent a showdown between the carpenters and Hawaiian Electric, Chincio said, “I told Ron (Taketa), ‘Everyone come talk story.’ But he said, ‘Nope. Not interested.”

The carpenters’ campaign against HB 982 shows the level of the union’s sophistication and its willingness to fight for what it wants — even if it means alienating other labor unions, Moore said.

“Taking a technical, utility bill and transforming it into a kitchen table issue that typical ratepayers can understand (serves as) a master class in a way to expand a contained, elite-level policy dispute into this broader public policy,” Moore said. “They’ve turned it into ratepayers vs. a monopoly utility.”

The carpenters’ pressure also “puts the legislators in a difficult position because I suspect this is not popular, and it’s difficult to communicate to residents why they have to pay even more for electricity to help a public utility that is not well liked, to put it mildly,” Moore said. “Technical legal bills are tough to debate in public, and now they will have to explain it to their constituents.”

A compromise for legislators could include the possibility of deferring both HB 982 and SB 897, Moore said.

Whatever happens, even following its apology and settlement with Cayetano, Moore doubts that Pacific Resource Partnership and the Hawaii Carpenters Union will change tactics or their reputation as a union willing go it alone.

“They’re known for being aggressive and smart,” Moore said. “They’re certainly among the most sophisticated political operatives in the state.”

Cayetano used less charitable terms.

“These guys have no hesitation to say and do anything to accomplish their aims,” he told the Star-­Advertiser. “The carpenters have been accused of trying to infringe on labor unions, electricians and everybody else.”