In a recent letter to the editor regarding the now-resolved Hawaii Gas and Teamsters Union contract negotiations, the author asked, “Are the unions responsible for making Hawaii unaffordable?” (“Teamsters strike will cause increase in prices, Star-Advertiser, June 15).

We feel that question deserves an answer.

Hawaii’s high cost of living is often highlighted in media and business commentaries, and unions are often the easy scapegoats. But unions are not the primary cause of Hawaii’s high cost of living. In fact, unions help workers and their families to survive in Hawaii.

Unions play a crucial role in advocating for workers’ rights, ensuring fair wages and improving working conditions. While they negotiate for better compensation and benefits, it is important to recognize that these efforts are aimed at providing a higher standard of living for workers. Nothing wrong with that! Higher wages negotiated by unions often result in increased consumer spending, which has a positive impact on the local economy. This cycle of increased spending generates additional jobs and economic growth.

Unionized workers don’t control the economy. They primarily react to it in an attempt to get their fair share. The main leverage organized workers have is the ability to withhold their labor. Union members do not take walking off the job lightly. On the contrary, it’s a risk they take to better support their families.

Focusing solely on unions oversimplifies the situation and fails to address the broader factors that influence the economy.

So, what are these factors? They include Hawaii’s geographical isolation, its limited resources, the high costs of housing and transportation, a hierarchical economic structure, concentrated land ownership and over- reliance on specific industries such as tourism and the military.

Diversifying and supporting local industries and agricultural initiatives, along with greater investment in alternative energy such as solar, could develop a more balanced, self-reliant and resilient economy.

In some industries, the presence of monopolies or limited competition allows companies to charge higher prices for their products or services. This concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations like the oil companies has a much greater impact on the cost of living than union activities. The price gouging and escalating profits of oil companies have a huge impact on the cost of living, since gas prices affect almost every other economic transaction and need. It is clear that the huge, unjustified hike in gas prices was a major impetus and cause of inflation here and on the continent.

The scarcity of affordable housing in Hawaii, coupled with high demand from both residents and tourists, drives up housing costs and is a major factor in rising rents, home prices and the cost of living. This issue is not directly influenced by unions but is a result of developing Hawaii as a tourist destination and developing high-rise, high-priced housing units in Kakaako and other areas, units that are not affordable for most local residents.

Unions are a needed counterbalance to the inordinate and substantial power of the multinational corporations in tourism and transportation, the real estate developers, and the food importers and marketing companies. Unions are one of the major factors in helping local workers to be able to afford housing and remain in the islands. Unions have been a large part of the solution and not the problem. If anything, we need more unionization and empowerment of Hawaii’s working people.