Delays by city and county attorneys who blew past legal deadlines and ignored court orders in grievance cases filed by the United Public Workers contributed to the final amount Honolulu taxpayers will pay to settle over a dozen claims.

The grievances were filed with the state Labor Relations Board by UPW against the Honolulu Department of Environmental Services and involved pay for garbage collectors and other union members.

A $3.2 million payout approved Wednesday by the nine-member Honolulu City Council resolves a total of 13 civil cases, grievances and claims from the UPW — one of which goes back to 2009.  

The council’s Committee on International Legal Affairs recommended it “was in the best interest of the city to settle the above-referenced case(s).”

Delays Slowly Add Up

But that final payout includes tens of thousands of dollars in fees and fines the city accrued because officials repeatedly missed deadlines and payments, ignored subpoenas and failed to provide documents despite court and arbitrator orders to do so.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s office said the city was taking steps to prevent that from recurring.

“While the Department of Corporation Counsel is ultimately responsible for the missed deadlines and other delays that contributed to the accumulation of awards against the city, this settlement affords a significant reduction in penalties that had accumulated before the Blangiardi administration came into office,” city spokesperson Ian Scheuring said Thursday.

“Corporation Counsel Dana Viola is taking the internal steps needed to address this matter to ensure the actions that led to the penalty accumulation do not happen again,” Scheuring said.

The delays are outlined in numerous court filings and arbitration hearing transcripts.

Those actions piled on tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees and at various times, daily fines for noncompliance – although the final total is unclear.

Civil Beat reported in June 2019 that those fees and fines exceeded $100,000. City officials had missed court-ordered and arbitrator-imposed deadlines and ignored subpoenas from UPW to attend hearings, records show.

Cases ended up getting sent back to arbitration and court several times, which led to additional fees and interest paid by the city. Payment delays added 10% in additional interest charges in one case.

Attorney fees added to that and at one point a state judge awarded UPW more than $50,000 in attorney fees and costs, court records show.

The union, which represents about 13,000 public and private-sector workers statewide, did not respond to a request for comment.

Arbitrator Can’t Conceal Frustration

The dispute settlement process between the city and UPW requires grievances to be filed with the Hawaiʻi Labor Relations Board followed by arbitration.

The earliest grievance from 2009 ended up going through seven different rounds of arbitration.

In 2013, UPW said bulk item trash collectors had been improperly denied overtime, and overtime pay also underpinned a 2015 case involving green waste collectors.

The 2015 green waste collector overtime case was still being arbitrated in December 2018, when Honolulu arbitrator Thomas Cestare wrote, “this is not a complicated case and it should have been finished long ago. It’s simply madness to waste taxpayer money to continue in this fashion.”

Cestare did not conceal his frustration writing that the city “has failed to live up to its agreed upon obligation to timely respond to any of the various arbitration decisions or court orders.”

But it wasn’t over yet.

In November 2019, UPW obtained a judgment against the city and the parties were ordered to settle.

In September 2022, the union filed a motion to attempt to collect on the 2019 judgment that the city tried to quash.

But following the council decision Wednesday the saga may finally end, as long as $3.2 million is paid to UPW by 4 p.m. on June 13.

Read the full settlement below: