It seems to me that his spirited defense of the United Public Workers begs a vital question: What should labor unions and their supporters do when confronted with credible evidence that union members are doing terrible things on the job? Ignore the evidence? Attack the evidence gathering as illegal? Vilify and harass those who gathered it? Call the victims liars and urge others not to listen to what they say?

UPW unfortunately chose all of the above. These responses go beyond simply "upholding due process and the contractual protections" to become abuses of power that are politically counterproductive for the labor movement.

Dinion's letter asserts that my story simply buys the anti-labor claims of our Republican governor and implies that somehow I've been transmogrified into a GOP mouthpiece. Dinion writes: "...it’s not surprising that [Gov. Lingle] would seek to place the blame for this situation on the workers and their union. It is sad, however, that the Weekly would buy this claim so unquestioningly."

I'm not sure what he was responding to with that comment because Lingle's viewpoint was not at issue in my story. She is not quoted, she was not a source, and her viewpoint on public employee unions never entered the picture. My story was not about Lingle. It was about the union's decades old legal strategy--long predating the Lingle administration--and its impact on generations of young people confined at the youth facility.

Although not described in my story, UPW's legal team has for years taken the position that first-hand descriptions of abuse offered by kids confined at HYCF should be discounted or ignored because supposedly "everyone knows" they make up stories to get back at guards.

But when Department of Justice investigators examined records looking for instances of staff-on-youth violence, they found 37 instances that led to injuries to the youth over a 14-month period which had gone unreported by staff and so remained officially unrecognized.

In other words, the kids' accounts of abuse proved more reliable than those of the staff being represented by UPW.

It also needs to be noted that by going beyond the call to back up allegedly abusive guards, and in the absence of any other response to the reported abuse, UPW empowered that minority group of apparently violent staffers at the expense of other union members at the facility.

The Department of Justice report, for example, cites a former facility administrator who reported that when investigating abuse, he had to be careful only to speak with kids and those youth correctional officers "with [a] conscience".

When asked to clarify, he observed that “if you talked to the wrong [YCO], you paid the price in staff shortages.” YCO “sick-outs” reportedly paralyzed the institution and occurred on a routine basis when investigations were pursued. Incredibly, the former Acting Administrator stated that the target of, and witnesses to an investigation often fail to report for duty for weeks on end in order to stifle the investigation. [DOJ report at page 21.

Dinion's letter to the editor ends by raising good questions: Why did it take an outside investigation to uncover the current mess, and why didn't the state know about it? Unfortunately, as I made clear in my published account, a clear look at the evidence places at least part of the blame on the UPW. That answer may make labor's supporters uncomfortable, but you can't ignore the evidence.

Finally, Dinion finds my 1998 story on the Hawaii Labor Relations Board akin to the views of "union-busting corporate attorneys", a criticism which makes me think that he didn't actually read the piece or views balanced reporting as suspect. I think that story successfully presented a good account both of the debate surrounding the labor board and the dynamics underlying labor's success in that venue. Readers, of course, are encouraged to make up your own minds.

Finally, I agree with Dinion that my Honolulu Weekly story would have been much stronger if it had included UPW's response to the issues raised. However, despite repeated requests for comment, UPW chose not to respond. Even my specific plea for at least the courtesy of a "no comment" was not replied to.

This was especially frustrating because of hints that the current UPW leadership has started to show a willingness to become a partner in cleaning up the situation at HYCF. But without anyone willing to speak about it, what would otherwise be positive and encouraging labor news again necessarily goes unreported.

Sometimes organized labor can be its own worst enemy.

The worst thing is that I can recall a time when UPW, under the leadership of Henry Epstein, was not only a labor organization but a leader in the community, when it opened the doors of its union hall to peace activities and community reformers, when counted itself as a very public and prominent part of the movement for social change. I can only hope that there will be another time when the union can reclaim that heritage.

--Ian Lind