A soda tax would hurt business revenues and cause worker layoffs

Good intentions can have negative consequences.

That is my message to the Hawaii Legislature as it considers two different proposals to tax sweetened soft drinks.

This issue is personal to me and it should be personal to every person living in our community. As an employee of Ball Hawaii Can Plant, a company with a long and well-regarded history in the state, the consequences of taxing soft drinks could put my job, and that of my 45 fellow employees, in jeopardy.

A tax on soft drinks is estimated to cause a 10 percent drop in volume — a dramatic enough hit that would force Ball Hawaii Can Plant, which has provided good jobs on the island since 1979, to shut down production and close its doors for good.

We are the only can manufacturing plant in Hawaii. If you are holding a canned soda, fruit drink, punch or any other beverage made here in Hawaii, you are holding a can we made locally. If our plant shuts down, not only would 46 hard-working people be out of a job, cans would have to be shipped in from the mainland. This would add significant cost to the entire supply chain that would eventually be passed to the consumer. That cost would be in addition to the tax. Can you imagine the cost — and waste — of shipping empty cans to Hawaii?

Remember when Frito-Lay had operations in Hawaii? Weyerhaeuser? Soon-to-be-gone Tesoro? They all have found that doing business in Hawaii did not make economic sense, so they closed their doors. No local labor, no local jobs.

As a manager at Ball for some 23 years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and hire some of those displaced workers. The stories we heard of good-paying jobs disappearing were painful.

When the deposit bill became law in 2005, we lost about 8 percent of our volume, and we had to lay off an entire crew. Through tough economic times, changes in consumers taste, the bottle deposit bill, etc., we persevered to make our operations viable.

However, our plant simply cannot take another hit from the Legislature. That’s why I recently testified at a legislative hearing to explain the serious consequences of how this tax would damage families whose livelihoods now rest in the hands of our state politicians. It was a humbling experience for this can-maker from Makaha Valley.

If people understood the serious consequences of taxing soft drinks — that local Hawaii jobs will be on the chopping block as a result of this unfair policy — I know they would agree with me.

My colleagues and I are proud members of the local community and would be the unintended victims of the beverage tax.

I don’t want to have to call a meeting with my fellow employees and announce that we no longer have a job — not because we failed as a plant, but because our elected officials failed us.