News Archive
Working for You at the Legislature
February 21, 2019
During this and every legislative session, HGEA staff is at the Hawaii State Capitol tracking, monitoring and testifying on bills that affect working families like yours.
We’ve upgraded our bill tracking software to make it easier for you to keep up with the progress of bills of interest to our HGEA members. We will periodically highlight one of the many bills HGEA is testifying on.
One of note relates to our priority of making HGEA members’ health insurance more affordable. We introduced and strongly support House Bill 392 and Senate Bill 785, which would allow your union and the employer to negotiate the benefit plans and contribution amount employees pay and also to resolve these disputes through arbitration. Currently, while contributions to the Hawaii Employer Union Health Benefits Trust Fund (EUTF) are negotiable, the benefit plan is not negotiable. We strongly support the negotiation of a full compensation package, including health care benefits.
To get real time updates on this and all HGEA priority bills, you can always visit our Priority Bills page under the “It’s Political” tab on our HGEA website at https://www.hgea.org/its-political/priority-bills/.
To see HGEA’s legislative priorities, click here. To learn more, click here