Going to Conference

The measures left WSD is still watching are SB1076 Relating to Employment Practices and HB 1434 Relating to Public Works Projects. Both bills have passed in some form in both the Senate and House and now will likely be resolved in conference. The Division is always looking at better ways to enforce the law. In a perfect world everyone would voluntarily comply. There are definitely more out there that comply than don't and even more that think they are in compliance.

Senate Bill 1076 Relating to Employment Practices is trying to protect employer-employee agreements to provide sick leave and balance attendance policies that conflict with it. In its current form it only applies to employers with 100 or more employees, and there aren't that many in Hawaii and it doesn't include the State or county employers. The impact of this bill on our office is unknown. Also, the law as currently drafted just applies to those employees with a collective bargaining agreement ("cba") and our policy and practice is to make sure employees have exhausted all their grievance issues before taking on a claim. If there is a dispute on the enforcement of the cba, there may be cause to defer the issue to the NLRB.

House Bill 1434 Relating to Public Works Projects wants to change the way DLIR imposes a Notice of Violation from issuing one per investigation, to one per project. If this passes the imposition of the penalty will have to change as well. Where previously DLIR would penalize each section violated for each person for each project or a % of the back wages found due, for each Notice of Violation, if HB 1434 passes DLIR will only be able to assess penalties for one project at a time and will be limited to looking at 3 projects before someone is eligible for suspension. It is true that the majority of violations we find relate only to one project, but there are enough situations where complaints are registered against one employer by an employee who worked on several projects, sometimes as many as 13. These employers will be suspended under this new law, but will end up paying fewer penalties. The DLIR would still pursue back wages for the employee, either way.

But again, nothing is final yet--it's still a waiting game.