Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawaii - West Oahu: Honolulu Record Digitization Project

Honolulu Record, Volume 10 No. 9, Thursday, September 26, 1957 p. 1

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Chili Duarte Tells How Much Better C and H Pays at Crockett than Aiea

The difference in wages paid by the California & Hawaii Sugar Co. at its local refinery at Aiea and at its plant at Crockett, Calif., runs anywhere from 90 cents an hour to $1.50 an hour—with the California workers getting the higher wage, of course.

That is the finding of Charles (Chili) Duarte, president of ILWU Local 6, and of August Hemenez ILWU business agent for the Crockett unit of Local 6, two officers who are presently in the islands for the ILWU territorial convention, but who are taking a careful look-see into C&H policies here.

Neither Duarte nor Hemenez a stranger to the problems of labor in the islands both, in fact are "local boys," Duarte coming originally from Waipahu and Hemenez from Ewa.

The policies practiced by the company here and on the Mainland vary as widely as the wages, says Duarte, but ILWU members at Crockett are strongly behind an effort to improve the situation of their union brothers at Aiea to the same level of wages and conditions they enjoy. If they can move to make the company revise its local policy, they will do so.

"We have already been negotiating at Crockett," says Duarte, "and we have been offered a 13 cent raise. But we have agreed to fore go a raise at Crockett if the company will equalize wages at Aiea with Crockett."

The base rate at Crockett, says Duarte, is $2.07 per hour, whereas the rate at Aiea starts at $1.30 an hour.

On the top level, the pay rate at Crockett is $2.93, a scale not en-joyed locally except on the supervisory level.

One difference in listings of workers between Crockett and Aiea is that here the listing is by labor groups," at Crockett by classifications. But in general even the job titles are the same, as are the actual jobs performed, though at much lower pay.
 
More Benefits at Crockett

A difference in policy is shown by the health and welfare plan at Crockett, which costs workers nothing and which, is extended to members of the workers' families At Aiea, the plan covers only the wage-earners and workers pay between $8 and $9 a month Duarte says the union will surely seek to extend the plan locally to cover dependents, as at Crockett.

At Christmas, whereas workers at Crockett get $250 as a Christmas bonus, workers at Aiea get a $20 bonus, and only supervisory employes get $250.

At Crockett, an injured worker gets 100 percent of his pay for the first three days, and 80 per cent of his pay for 52 weeks.
"We believe," says Duarte, "that industry here should follow the same policies and pay the same wages for work that it does on the Mainland that end has been won by longshoremen, and it should be won by other workers as well. The employers here have got to realize the workers are a part of the American trade union movement."

p /> I do not say that at odd hours a patient must be given the regular hot dinner or supper. Few people would expect this.
 
But what is so complicated about opening and heating a can of soup, making some toast, or preparing instant coffee or tea? Why cannot a night nurse do these simple things after the kitchen to closed? Is it just too much trouble?

It is only common humanity to feed the hungry. If our hospitals are too big, too complex, too impersonal to do these small kindnesses for the sick, something is very wrong.