Presently, ILWU contracts require each hotel to provide medical and dental plans for qualified full-time and part-time employees and their dependents. This means that each hotel must purchase these plans from HMSA, Kaiser, or one of the other insurance providers.

Recently, a beverage worker at an ILWU hotel on the Big Island was denied a bank after the hotel received a bad credit report on that employee. The hotel said it was corporate policy to run credit checks on all employees applying for jobs which required handling money. Workers who fail the credit check don’t get hired or risk losing their current jobs.

Political action in Local 142 is on fire and getting hotter everyday. The primary election is on September 18 and there are only a few weeks before the November 2 General Election.

Each of the four island Divisions of Local 142—Hawaii, Maui, Kauai, and Oahu—are already hard at work registering members to vote and educating members on the issues. As the election gets closer, the work will shift to actively supporting those candidates endorsed by the union and getting members to vote at the polls or by absentee ballot.

WAILEA, Maui—”No need worry about job security!” This was the most frequent comment heard as Grand Wailea members voted to approve a new labor agreement at membership meetings held throughout the day on May 21, 2004.

It is a privilege and an honor for me to be here as the newly elected president of ILWU Local 142 and to be talking to such an important and distinguished group of people like yourselves. I say “important and distinguished” because you are the ones who really deserve the credit for building this union and for making Hawaii a better place.

The ILWU Local 142 is proud to join over 20 unions in endorsing and supporting Mufi Hannemann for Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu.

William Kennison 
Maui Division Director

Willie Kennison is on leave from Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co. (HC&S). “I would like to bring the membership together in supporting the programs of the union. I also believe it is important to negotiate fair and equitable contracts that benefit all of the workers.

During the three years of the Bush administration, more than 3 million jobs in the U.S. have disappeared, been destroyed, dismantled, vanished.

Not since the early years of the Great Depression of the 1930s has America experienced three consecutive years of net job destruction. Nor has any president since Herbert Hoover faced the prospect of leaving office with the economy having fewer jobs than when he entered.

Impact on wages and profits 
While Bush’s tax-cuts-for-therich solution has failed to produce jobs, it has succeeded in reducing wages. For the year 2003 aggregate wage and salary income has fallen by 0.7 percent. Bush’s cuttaxes-for-the-rich program has proved, for workers at least, to be the equivalent of economic snake oil. But for the owning class, the employers, it’s been more like manna from heaven.

Substantial gains were made in other areas as well. Wages will increase by about 2.5 percent each year for a total gain of 10.5 percent over the life of the contract. Tipped workers will get 10 cents added to their hourly base pay every year for a total gain of 50 cents. As the result of these increases, the wages paid for many of the job classifications at the Grand Wailea will be the highest of any Maui hotel.