Airport upgrade welcome, sort of
It’s great news that the state is planning $750 million in upgrades to Honolulu Airport, starting in June and ending in 2017.
The work will result in new terminals, larger gates, a new rental car building and other improvements, as well as years worth of jobs for probably hundreds of workers, at least, and a better impression for visitors to Hawaii when they first get here.
On the other hand, like we said, the state is planning $750 million in upgrades to Honolulu Airport, and you know what that means: Delays, detours and debris. For four years.
And will it really be completed by 2017?
Let’s hope somebody will be bird-dogging this project to make sure it doesn’t go on and on and on … and on and on …
Union factoid a bit of a mystery
A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics about union membership is a head-scratcher. The basic statistic is that Hawaii’s employees who belong to union rose from 21.5 percent to 21.6 percent. Not a huge bump, but it’s a departure from what is happening elsewhere: Union membership nationally fell by about 400,000. So what does it mean?
A lot of people lost their jobs here during the recent recession, so is it just that union members represent a bigger share of those still employed? Were frozen government positions thawed after the anemic economic recovery loosened state budgets? Government workers are union members, by and large.
Still, it’s too soon for celebrations in the labor movement, even in Hawaii. The overall trends, unions would admit, are not encouraging.
