Every group of workers here in Hawai'i has the right to unionize. It is through collective bargaining that workers can bargain for higher wages, better benefits, all so they can have a living wage and not have to struggle through life while employed full time.

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     With that being said, it is the states job to ensure that it's citizens are protected, empowered, and uplifted. Ideally the state should be so responsive that the people should never have to unionize in order to ensure they are treated well and paid fairly. By extension one could argue that businesses and corporations should also have the consciousness of mind to pay their employees well and take care of them. But the truth is that historically, they don't. It always takes some kind of law and organizing to force them to behave and act in moral ways, kicking and screaming the whole way.

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     Laborers are the backbone of our State and the machine which keeps our economy going. Without Laborers, our state would not be able to operate. Unions are there for the tool in which the laborers are organized to demand better paying wages and conditions in which they operate. You cannot separate the laborer from the Union, by doing so you put the laborer at the mercy of the Management or Master as it was known in old Hawaii.

Not all people are in Unions and not all people agree with Unions but when it comes down to it, being in a Union does have its advantage. Unions are in place to protect workers, give them fair wages, and make the workplace safer.

     

     The International Longshoremen and Ware-houseman's Union, the ILWU, unified the former Japanese and Filipino racial unions into Hawai‘i's biggest single union representing sugar, pineapple and long-shore workers across the island chain. In the seventies with the passage of the state's collective bargaining law for public employees, amongst the lowest paid and least secure workers whose employment and wages were generally at the mercy of political caprice, state and county, workers now had the right to bargain contracts and file grievances like their brothers and sisters in the private sector.

     

     Today major corporations nowadays are raking in record profits. The kind of profits that could easily pay for living wages for their employees. On the other hand, many small businesses are struggling to get by for one reason or another. And yet, there are some small businesses that are doing really well and they still do not pay their employees a living wage. A whole separate issue is how more and more human beings are asked to operate, think like, and act like robots. What to do?

 

• Laborers are productive and bring about economic gain.

 

• Laborers are a people engaged in such activity, especially those working for wages.

 

• Laborers are a people considered as a class.

 

• We will support our Labores for better wages.

 

• We shall insure more access to benefits.

 

• We shall insure Job security through the Unions

 

• We shall support the Unions to ensure that our workers jobs are not outsourced to third parties.

 

• We shall support all our Unions in Hawaii that they may do justice for the workers.

 

• We shall call upon for wages that are fair and the same as our peers in the states.

 

• We shall see to it that all workers are paid fairly, regardless of race, sex, religion, and gender identification.

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With technology advancing and with greatly accelerated changes in the jobs of the future, it is very important that we have transitionary systems for workers whenever their traditional line of work is phased out or replaced. Job security does not have to mean that you require absolute security in your current job in perpetuity. Job security should be something that fills you with ease because you know that if your life changes for one reason or another, there will be systems there to help you transition into another line of work.

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In order to be more resilient in the face of all the issues we are facing we owe our workers the peace of mind they need in order to be happy while they are contributing to society.