Union Contract Concealed For 17
Years
Employees of an isle refuse firm had a
contract-and were never told
By Ian Lind
One of the state's largest refuse disposal firms signed a labor
contract making it a "union shop" but didn't tell its workers for more than 17
years, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
The labor contract between Honolulu Disposal Service, Inc. and the
Laborers' International Union Local 368 was renewed and updated five times between 1979
and 1996, but they "failed or refused to inform" most employees
of its existence, the suit says.
"It's mind-boggling," said Honolulu
attorney Jim Bickerton, who filed the suit along with co-counsel Barry Sullivan.
"I'm really looking forward to questioning these defendants
under oath and finding out just why no one bothered to comply with or enforce these
contracts."
The contract was not disclosed until early in response to an
organizing drive by the Carpenters' Union, which had succeeded in signing
up one-third of the employees. After learning of the secret contract, the Carpenters Union
complained to the National Labor Relations Board, which reached a January
1997 settlement with the company and the Laborers' Union voiding the long-standing
contract.
NLRB election tomorrow
An election under the supervision of the NLRB is
scheduled to take place tomorrow afternoon. The company's 75 employees will choose between
the Carpenters' Union or remaining without union representation. The Laborers chose not to
appear on the ballot.
The company was accused of threatening, coercing,
and intimidating employees to ward off the Carpenters' organizing drive, NLRB documents
show.
Honolulu Disposal used the Laborers' pact to
qualify to work on large unionized construction projects while not providing union
benefits called for in the contract, the suit alleges. The missing benefits included
overtime pay, paid holidays and vacations, travel benefits, contributions to union pension
and welfare trust funds, job protection and grievance procedures, the
suit states.
Alii Refuse, Inc., a related company operating from the same Sand
Island headquarters as Honolulu Disposal, was allegedly covered by the
contract for all or part of the time and is also named in the suit.
No stranger to trouble
Alii Refuse has been in trouble before. In 1991, the company
pleaded guilty to federal anti-trust charges and agreed to pay a $100,000
fine. The company admitted that it conspired with other garbage-collection firms during
the mid-1980s to artificially drive up prices by agreeing not to compete for business in
certain parts of the island. Clyde T. Kaneshiro, president of both Honolulu Disposal and
Alii Refuse, could not be reached for comment. His office initially said he was in a
meeting, and later said he was out of town and unreachable by phone.
Kaneshiro is an officer and investor in Mahalo Airlines, Voyager
Submarines, the Sand Island Business Association, and a number of other trucking,
recycling and real estate-related companies, state business registration records show.
He was appointed to the Convention Center Authority in 1994, and
resigned in December 1996, about a year after Honolulu Disposal got a contract to haul
trash from the convention center construction site.
Benjamin Saguibo, Laborers' Union business manager whose signature
appears on the Honolulu Disposal contracts signed in recent years, did not respond to
repeated telephone messages.
Attorneys who represented the company and the union during the
NLRB proceedings were also unavailable for comment yesterday.
Bickerton has asked the court to allow the case
to proceed as a class-action, and hopes to recover the value of all benefits that
employees were entitled to under the terms of the contract.
Bickerton said only a handful of employees who
had to enter union job sites as part of their waste-hauling duties were issued union
cards, while the rest were told nothing.
"Regardless of what motivated this conduct,
it clearly violated both federal collective-bargaining laws and pension laws,"
Bickerton said.
"From the employees' perspective, it is difficult to
understand how this could have happened without a conscious conspiracy between Honolulu
Disposal and the Laborers' Union," Bickerton said.