Honolulu Record, September 2, 1948, vol. 1 no. 5, p. 8
looking backward
Sugar negotiations have been completed and a memorandum of agreement has been signed by the union and company representatives.
For the first time in labor-management relations in the islands the employers have gone to the laborers to request their kokua in keeping them in business. For the first time the ILWU is known to have negotiated a wage cut either here or on the Pacific coast.
Workers on the Onomea plantation took a five cents across-the-board cut. Subsequently, Olaa plantation demanded a 17.2 per cent cut. Whether the five-cent out will keep Onomea in business for years to come is a thing to be watched. Some of the sugar plantations are operating at a disadvantage, and. one of the influencing factors is their inability to mechanize because of unfavorable conditions; Among these are included natural conditions such as geographical location and topography.
Community Responsibility
ILWU's announced position during the negotiations was its community responsibility in keeping the sugar industry thriving. This time, the union made sacrifices during a transitional period for the plantations which are mechanizing, expending capital to cut down labor hours. Does the industry feel the same way about discharging its responsibility to the public by cutting down hours in a work day to maintain jobs which are becoming increasingly scarce.
The Pacific Commercial Advertiser of May 11, 1909, had an interesting comment on this. It stated in the editorial of that day: "It is a matter of surprise that the Hawaiian planters have not tried to increase their profits and reduce the margin of labor vicissitude in their business of encouraging, through the offer of large awards, the invention of certain labor-saving machinery. . .
"Coolies" Versus Machine"
Here in Hawaii, the planters indeed use steam plows, and have in a few years past, acquired practicable cane loaders and fine labor-saving machinery in their mills; but they still have to employ a veritable army of coolies to out the cane. Here is where their system is wrong. That cane, if reaped by machinery, would enable the plantations to enormously reduce their expenses and make it possible to get along for many years without a labor problem. "What is the use of plodding along with an army of laboring coolies when a machine which never goes on a strike, which has no concern in the advice of walking delegates and which is good for 24 hours' work every day, with no charges for overtime, might be got out of an invention for one-eighth of one per cent of the gross cash returns from the Hawaiian sugar industry in one good year?"