House Standing Committee on Tourism

Thank you, everyone. Convening this morning's hearing for the House Committee on tourism. Date is March 13, 2025 here in conference room for the 23. We are on the 10:30 am agenda for one bill, so just a few housekeeping.

We're going to try to keep the testimony to a 2 minute time limit, but we're not going to strictly enforce that because I don't think there's so many people that are going to line up and take 30, like not that long. So first up on the agenda, we're just going to go dive right on into it.

Senate Bill 1661 relating to employment. It requires employers in the hospitality industry to implement anti harassment measures, provide training and equip certain workers with panic buttons. Prohibits retaliation against hospitality workers who files a complaint, uses the provided panic, uses of the provided panic button or participates in an investigation or proceeding relating to a harassment complaint.

Requires Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to adopt rules, including rules determining penalties and establishing procedures for handling complaints. Requires all hospitality employers to comply no later than January 12026 effective 2050. First up, we have Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Good morning. Chair Tam, Vice Chair Templo and Member Ilagan, Bill Kunstman, Deputy Director of Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. The Department appreciates the intent of this measure, but we have some concerns due to conflicts and duplication with occupational safety and health as well as civil rights laws.

We'd like to note that HIOSH already requires an effective safety and health program to identify, evaluate and control workplace hazards, as well as responsibilities for managers and supervisors and penalties for violations. The HIASH law also has prohibitions on retaliation for reporting workplace hazards and will be available for questions.

And I have Roy Talaei here from the Occupational Safety and Health Division to help answer questions. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up we have Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, ANZU.

Chair Tam, Vice Chair Templo, Representative Ilagan. Good morning. My name is Marcus Kawatachi and I am the Executive Director of the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission. You have our written testimony and I stand by it. I am here to answer any questions, but I would just like to emphasize a few points at this time.

I did write them down so I would cover them all. And I do believe if I speak fairly quickly, I should be complete within two minutes. So first, the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission is very concerned about the danger of harassment and assault for all workers in Hawaii, but particularly the most vulnerable.

And through our experience, we recognize that hospitality workers can be particularly vulnerable to harassment and assault. Our mission is to provide a means for the public to file complaints of discrimination, which can include complaints of harassment, assault and retaliation, to investigate or settle those complaints and for cases with sufficient evidence to take them to administrative hearing.

And we have established procedures, statutory and rule based procedures for all of these functions. So we are concerned with certain sections of SB 1660 that would seem to create a process that would either duplicate or conflict with the established procedures that we have.

We would not want, you know, for example, the public to be confused about their rights or even to miss out on pursuing those rights. So also for as an example, we do have a statute of limitations for filing complaints.

So we would not want any workers to hold off on filing a civil rights complaint complaint while pursuing complaint, which would be contemplated under SB 1660. We also have highly trained, experienced and specialized staff whose sole job it is to handle discrimination complaints.

And so part of what we do, and this was not something that I saw within SB 1660, is we always seek as a remedy affirmative relief, which would be measures to prevent discrimination in the future, such as training, a review of policies and procedures and dissemination of policies and procedures to the workforce.

And so one other thing I should have emphasized more in our testimony is that while we do have reservations about the bill as written, we would be very willing to engage in discussions about the problem of harassment and assault in the hospitality industry and try to find some solutions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have State Commission on the Status of Women.

Hi. Yasmeen Chaney, State Commission on the Status of Women. Chair, Vice Chair, Members of this Committee, thank you so much for hearing this important bill. I stand on my written testimony and strong support and offer these brief comments. This bill is needed because it provides additional safety measures for protected classes that work in isolated work environments.

It acknowledges that these hospitality workers are often victims of sexual violence. Experiencing these abuses can be life changing. So it's important that we connect them to services to get treatment that deter short and long term negative effects.

SB 1660 thoroughly outlines prevention and intervention measures to address this range of sexual violence that could be experienced by hospitality workers, from sexual assault, from sexual harassment to assault.

So I ask you, if it was your wife, girlfriend, Auntie Tutu, sister or mother working in this industry, would you want her employer to acknowledge these hazardous conditions and have measures in place to increase her safety and well being or not?

Lastly, I stand before you today for all the women that don't have the privilege of having a family Member in a position of power and and beseech you to pass SB 1660 and stand in support of increased safety for these vulnerable employees. Thank you very much and I'm available for any questions.

Thank you. Next up, we have Pride at Work Hawaii on Zoom.

Good morning. Michael Golojuch Jr., President of Private Work. He him pronouns we do. We also would like to thank you for hearing this bill. We do not, we don't want any duplication of services that are already being provided and waste of taxpayer dollars.

But it's quite clear from what we've heard from our members and the public at large that there is need for reminders to an enforcement of retaliation for those that. For those employees that report harassment and discrimination from customers, especially those working in the night shifts or in areas where there's not a lot of public traffic, that the.

That the safety measures that this bill provides. So we encourage you to work with the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, the Department of Labor, to remove any duplications of services, but also to provide the much needed protections that this bill will provide the most vulnerable.

From our hospitality field, as was stated, for the most part, as we know that our hospitality field is being lifted up by women, minorities and immigrants, which fall under minorities, and that they need to be able to rest assured that if they were to bring a complaint that they will not lose their job and that we need to remind customers that the customer is not always right and they have no right to discriminate and harass our local workforce.

So we encourage you to work with the two entities to make sure that this bill moves forward and we protect our workers. Mahalo.

Thank you. That is all that we have signed up to testify in person or on zoom. Is there anyone in person that wishes to testify on the measure before us? Go ahead.

Good morning. My name is Jules Zavis here representing the Hawaii Workers Center, where we envision a Hawaii in which all workers are empowered to exercise their right to organize for their social, economic and political well being.

Testifying in Strong support of SB 1660 Many workers in the tourism industry and most residents of Hawaii, especially recent immigrants, are struggling to make ends meet. As you know, Hawaii's high cost of living means that our workers here often have to work two or three jobs just to survive.

Many workers in the tourism industry are immigrants, including 68% of housekeeping workers who are immigrants, primarily Filipino and COFA workers.

What we've found in organizing Hawaii's low wage workers is that many of them are afraid to speak out when workplace abuses happen to them, whether it be harassment or wage theft, because of factors like immigration status and the high cost of living here. They're afraid of what could happen to them if they do speak up.

They fear that retaliation could cost them their jobs and the ability to put food on the table for their families. We need to be doing all that we can to empower workers to speak up when they experience workplace abuses like harassment, especially in the current political climate where workers and immigrants alike are being vilified.

SB 1660 would provide workers with a necessary safety net to ensure their safety and well being on the job. Mahalo for the opportunity to testify. I urge you to protect Hawaii's workers by passing SB 1660.

Is there anyone else wishing to testify on the measure before us? Now we're going to go dive into questions. Members, any questions? Okay. Chair does have a question for the Department of Labor and Industrial Relationships. So I kind of want to go through the bill with you.

So it includes written policies that have to be on display, mandatory training, providing hospitality with a list of resources and a prohibition on retaliation. All that's existing law already. And the only thing that's different is just the panic button portion, right?

More or less. And I'll ask Roy, maybe he can supplement what I have to say. But we have in our law, in our administrative rules that employers have certain requirements.

They have 10 or more employees, and that includes having a written safety and health plan, one that includes spells out the responsibilities and the duties and the hazards for those that they supervise and requires the employer to provide training on that plan. And our law allows them to file complaints and also file complaints from retaliation.

And I don't know if there's anything else do you want to expand on that kind of covers it. So it's already covered in our law. To a certain extent there may be a problem, as some of the other parties have mentioned, but we haven't had those complaints specifically on that subject matter.

Can you elaborate on complaints like hospitality workers filing?

Correct. So we haven't had any on that basis. They may be filing complaints because they're criminal in nature or things like that. But our complaints for the hospitality workers.

Yeah, generally speaking, when we get complaints, it covers every employee across the state. So when we get complaints from the hotel industry, they're a little bit more industrial in nature. Bloodborne pathogens, hazard communication.

So when they do file a complaint with our office, it's considered a protected activity and the employer is prohibited from retaliating against that employee for filing a complaint. So this, in a sense, like bill said, it is covered.

So there aren't many, are there? Many? Because you just heard testimony that many People are afraid to file a complaint because. Because they fear retaliation. Do you think that played a factor, and do you think this bill would make any different and encourage people to be more willing to file a complaint if they do feel harassed?

We certainly encourage employees to bring up complaints. We don't want any type of chill factor. So in my experience, and a lot of the complaints do come across my desk, we've not had a complaint related to harassment to that nature with housekeepers and so forth.

You know, and if I may add, too, because we haven't had those complaints, but we recognize that there may be problems in the industry, and we're certainly willing, along with the Civil Rights Commission and other people who are involved in this bill, to continue discussions and look at ways that we can incorporate some of the current programs that we have.

We have a consultation and training branch in hash that goes out and proactively meets with employers and helps them develop these safety and health plans, and certainly could have discussions with various stakeholders involved in the industry and in the community to try to flush out whether there exists a problem.

And part of it may be because these individuals may not be aware of their rights underneath the law and things. So we're more than willing to work with all the parties on this matter.

Okay, maybe there's a better question for Civil Rights Commission. Are you still there? Yes, I'm here. So you just said, are you. Are you having the same issue where, like, you don't get that many filings of harassment claims from the hospitality? Do you categorize that?

We don't characterize it as such, but I did do a quick search in preparation for this hearing. And, I mean, we do receive complaints of sexual harassment. And that's what I searched. Sexual harassment. And just use hotel as a search term for respondents.

And so I can say over the past five years, give or take, we've had about 15 cases involving the hospitality industry. So this is employment discrimination, sexual harassment, which, I mean, I think that is underreported. I have no doubt that that's the case. I do think that there are anecdotally more cases of harassment and assault that.

That we have heard of. And it may be that if it's something like assault, that the party goes straight to the police. You know, that that could be the case. But in any event, I mean, I. We do get complaints of this nature. We do investigate them, and. But like I said, they probably are.

I have no doubt underreported.

Okay, Members, any other questions? Scene nine. We're just going to recess for decision making.

We're just going to recess.

Reconvening this morning's hearing for the House Committee on tourism today is March 132025 here in room 423. Time is 10:30am okay. So we had a good discussion about this bill. So the chair's recommendation is to defer it for now because, Chair, I'm not ready to pass anything that's duplicate to existing law.

And I do recognize the issue regarding underreporting because I because I don't have a doubt that that's happening. But I don't know how this bill would actually solve the under reporting issue. So I encourage the Industrial Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to work with the Commission on Status of Women as well as the bill introducer.

And I'll be willing to work on this during the interim as well to see if we can come up with a bill for next year. Okay. Thank you, Members. We are adjourned.