hunterbishop.com

Several people called or e-mailed about the Hawaii Tribune-Herald article today announcing that a lawsuit filed by the Hawaii Newspaper Guild against the newspaper had been dismissed.

The story's correct. The Guild attempted to fix a jam-up in negotiations over selecting an arbitrator by seeking a federal court to appoint one. But the judge said he didn't have the legal authority so he dismissed the case. We tried. But now we're back to where we were with what the NLRB calls a "broken" arbitration process in our collective bargaining agreement, which means we go to trial every time in labor-management disputes. It's not a good thing for either side.

The newspaper however, which published nothing about the seven-day trial in October in Hilo on 13 complaints filed by the NLRB, chose to trumpet this decision as some kind of significant achievement. In fact it has no effect on the federal labor complaints that were heard in October (judge's decision not in yet) and the ones that will be heard in March.

Anyway, the story's old news. The Guild posted the decision at holomua. org on Feb. 8.