When we last wrote about Hawaii's ocean safety officers, they had been without a contract for a year and no successor was on the public record. That has changed. On July 1, 2026, an arbitration panel issued a final and binding award covering July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2029. The City and County of Honolulu put the cost items before its Council two weeks later. This article does one thing with those numbers: it asks what they are worth.
What the Award Says
Negotiations opened July 1, 2024. The Hawaii Labor Relations Board declared impasse on January 28, 2025. On September 8, 2025 the parties selected Frederic R. Horowitz, Esq. as neutral arbitrator and chair of the panel. Hearings ran in Honolulu from March 2 through March 5, 2026, and the decision came down on July 1, 2026. The agreement runs four years, from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2029, which means its first year had already elapsed when it was written, and its second began the same day.
The increases to the salary schedule are these:
Across-the-board increases to the Bargaining Unit 15 salary schedule, as filed with the Honolulu City Council. Bar lengths are relative to the largest increase in the contract.
Alongside the wage schedule, the award carries a one-time lump sum of $2,000, effective retroactively to July 1, 2025, for every Unit 15 employee who is not eligible for step movements for the duration of the contract period, prorated for anyone less than full time. Step movement continues in all four years. The uniform maintenance allowance rises from $20.00 to $25.00 a month, and reimbursement for uniforms damaged in the line of duty rises from 75 percent to 100 percent of actual replacement cost. Travel reimbursement moves to the federal allowances. On health coverage, the employer pays amounts generally equal to 60 percent of the premium for the HMSA 80-20 plan, capped at 90 percent of total premium, with either party able to reopen that article by written notice by January 31, 2027.
In Honolulu the award covers 299 Water Safety Officers. The city put its four-year salary cost at $9,102,959 including wage-related fringe benefits, plus $688,198 in health fund costs across the first two years.
Everything below compares the salary schedule to prices. It is not a claim about any individual's paycheck. Step movement continues under this award, so an officer who moves a step in a given year receives more than the across-the-board figure. But on a ladder the 2022 arbitration panel described as twelve steps moving once every three years, most members do not move in most years, which is why we do not add steps to the across-the-board total as though everyone received both. The award itself acknowledges the members who will not move at all: that is who the $2,000 is for.
A Number on a Schedule, and What It Buys
A raise has two numbers. The first is the one in the contract. The second is what is left after prices take their share, and only the second one shows up in a grocery cart.
Start with the first. The four increases are 2.61, 2.49, 2.47 and 3.12 percent. Added together that is 10.69 percent, but that is not how a salary schedule works. Each increase applies to a base that already includes the ones before it, so they compound. Compounded, the four come to 11.12 percent. Compounding works in the employee's favor here, and it adds four-tenths of a point.
Prices compound the same way, and over the same four years, which is the whole reason the comparison is fair. The measure is the Consumer Price Index for Urban Hawaii, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics every other month. It is the closest thing to an official answer to the question of what a dollar buys in Honolulu.
What the Last Contract Actually Did
Before asking what the new award will do, it is worth settling what the old one did, because that is finished and can be measured rather than projected.
The 2021 to 2025 agreement, which came out of the previous arbitration, raised the schedule 3 percent in 2022, 4 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024, with a one-time 1 percent lump sum in the first year that did not touch the base. Compounded, the schedule rose 11.40 percent across the four years.
Over those same four years, from July 2021 to July 2025, the Urban Hawaii price index rose from 298.820 to 348.334. That is 16.57 percent.
Across-the-board increases to the Bargaining Unit 15 salary schedule against the CPI for Urban Hawaii, all items, not seasonally adjusted, July 2021 to July 2025.
The gap is 5.17 percentage points. Put the other way: measured against what it buys, the ocean safety base wage was worth 4.4 percent less at the end of that contract than at the start. The raises were real. They were also, over four years, a pay cut.
What the New Award Has to Beat
Now the same arithmetic, forward.
An 11.12 percent increase spread over four years breaks even against inflation averaging 2.67 percent a year. Below that, lifeguards gain ground. Above it, they lose ground. That number is the entire test.
Honolulu-area inflation over the twelve months ending May 2026 was 5.1 percent.
The contract term is not hypothetical at its front end either. Its first year is already behind us. From July 2025, when the term began, through May 2026, the Urban Hawaii index rose 5.48 percent. Year one of the award pays 2.61 percent. In the ten months we can already measure, prices moved more than twice as far as the schedule did.
There is one more comparison worth making, and it is the plainest. The award this one replaces raised the schedule 11.40 percent. This one raises it 11.12 percent. The new award is smaller than the one it replaces. Over the life of that old contract, Honolulu prices rose at an average of 3.9 percent a year, and the raises did not keep up. Prices are currently running at 5.1 percent, and this award breaks even at 2.67 percent.
Honolulu inflation did not sit still while this arbitration ran. Over the twelve months ending November 2025 it was 2.4 percent. Ending January 2026, still 2.4 percent. Ending March 2026, the month the hearings were held, 3.7 percent. Ending May 2026, 5.1 percent. It has more than doubled since late 2025.
If Prices Keep Running
Nobody knows what inflation will do between now and 2029, and this is not a forecast. It is the same break-even arithmetic run at several rates, so a reader can see how much of the award survives at each one.
| If Honolulu inflation averages | Prices over four years | Real change in base wage |
|---|---|---|
| 2.0% | +8.24% | +2.66% |
| 2.67% (break-even) | +11.12% | 0.00% |
| 3.0% | +12.55% | -1.27% |
| 4.0% | +16.99% | -5.01% |
| 5.1% (the current rate) | +22.01% | -8.92% |
Illustrative only. Each row applies a constant annual rate to the four-year term and compares it with the award's 11.12 percent compounded increase. Actual future inflation is unknown.
Only the top row leaves ocean safety officers ahead of where they started, and it requires Honolulu inflation to fall below anything the city has recorded since 2021.
The Three Awards, Side by Side
Hawaii's police, firefighters and ocean safety officers all bargain under the same state labor law, against the same employer group of the state and four counties, in the same economy. All three 2025 to 2029 contracts are now decided.
| Unit | Award date | Across-the-board | Compounded | Step movement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police, Unit 12 | Sept 24, 2025 | 5 / 5 / 5 / 5 | 21.55% | Continued |
| Firefighters, Unit 11 | Mar 30, 2026 | 3 / 3 / 2.5 / 2.5 | 11.46% | None, four years |
| Ocean safety, Unit 15 | July 1, 2026 | 2.61 / 2.49 / 2.47 / 3.12 | 11.12% | Continued |
Compounded figures are calculated from the published across-the-board increases in each award's cost items.
Police won close to double what either of the other two units did. Ocean safety came in lowest of the three, and it was decided last, which meant it was decided against the highest inflation reading any of the three panels had in front of them.
It Is Not Final Yet
An arbitration award settles what the parties owe each other. It does not by itself move money. Under section 89-10(b) of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, quoted in the city's own transmittal to the Council, the legislative bodies "may approve or reject the cost items submitted to them, as a whole." If any one county rejects any cost item, all of them go back to the parties for further bargaining.
Maui County moved first, and fast. Mayor Richard Bissen transmitted the cost items to the Council on July 9, 2026, writing that he was "respectfully requesting floor action as soon as possible due to time sensitivity." The two resolutions went straight to the full Council on July 24, 2026, skipping the committee stage that handled this unit's last contract. Both were adopted: Resolution 26-119 for employees included in the unit, and Resolution 26-120 for those excluded from it.
Maui's own summary of cost items lists the same four increases Honolulu filed, 2.61, 2.49, 2.47 and 3.12 percent, each with continued step movement. That is the first independent confirmation of the award's terms from a second county. Maui put its added cost at $2,846,372 over the four years for included employees, and $96,724 for those excluded.
Honolulu introduced Resolution 26-166 on July 15, 2026, and had not adopted it as of this writing. For comparison, the firefighters' cost items took from April 9 to May 13 to move from introduction to adoption in the same chamber.
So one county has appropriated its share and the rest have not yet. The numbers in this article are what the panel decided, what the employer filed, and what Maui has now approved. Any one council rejecting any single cost item still sends the whole package back to the parties.
Hawaii's lifeguards went a full year past the end of their contract before an arbitrator wrote them one, and the first year of the agreement they received had already elapsed by the time it was signed. What they were given raises the salary schedule 11.12 percent across four years, in a place where prices rose 5.1 percent in the last twelve months alone. The last contract raised the schedule 11.40 percent while prices rose 16.57 percent, and the people who guard the water finished it able to buy 4.4 percent less than when it started. Whether this one ends differently is not a question about generosity. It is a question about a single number, 2.67 percent a year, and whether Honolulu stays under it.
Where this comes from
Primary sources
- The award's terms. City and County of Honolulu Resolution No. 26-166, "Approving Collective Bargaining Cost Items for Employees of the City and County of Honolulu in Bargaining Unit 15 (Hawaiʻi Government Employees Association, AFSCME Local 152, AFL-CIO)," introduced July 15, 2026, together with its Exhibit A, "Report to City Council (BU 15)." We also read Department Communication D-486(26), the transmittal dated July 9, 2026 from Nola N. Miyasaki, Director of the Department of Human Resources, to Council Chair Tommy Waters, which encloses a second copy of the same Exhibit A. These are the source for the arbitrator, the impasse and hearing dates, the July 1, 2026 award date, the four-year term, the 299 Honolulu positions, all four across-the-board percentages, the $2,000 lump sum, the step movement language, the health fund and travel and uniform provisions, and the city's cost estimates. The two stated cost totals in Exhibit A, $9,102,959 in salary and $688,198 in health fund costs, each reconcile exactly against their year-by-year components, which is how we checked our reading of the figures.
- The prior contract's cost items. County of Maui Resolution 22-185, CD1, "Approving Cost Items for Bargaining Unit 15, Ocean Safety Officers," and Committee Report 22-84 of the Council's Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee, dated September 2, 2022, reporting a 9 to 0 vote taken August 17, 2022. Exhibit 1 to that resolution lists all four years: a one-time 1 percent lump sum effective July 1, 2021 with continued step movement, then 3 percent effective July 1, 2022, 4 percent effective July 1, 2023, and 4 percent effective July 1, 2024, each with continued step movement. The committee report records the arbitration decision and award date as July 22, 2022, and states that Bargaining Unit 15 then contained 65 Maui employees. The same cost items appear in Honolulu Resolution No. 22-180, which we cited in our earlier article on this unit.
- Maui County's adoption. County of Maui Resolutions 26-119 ("Approving Cost Items for Employees Included in Bargaining Unit 15, Hawaii Government Employees Association for Fiscal Years 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029") and 26-120, the companion for excluded employees, together with Exhibit "1" to each and the transmittal letters of July 9, 2026 from Mayor Richard T. Bissen, Jr. to Council Chair Alice Lee. Both appear in the agenda packet for the Council's regular meeting of July 24, 2026. The Council's published status agenda for that meeting records both resolutions as Adopted. That document records the disposition of each item but not the vote tally, and the official minutes carrying the tally were not yet posted when this article was published. Maui's resolutions cite the July 1, 2026 arbitration decision and award and section 89-11(g), Hawaii Revised Statutes; the excluded-employee resolution proceeds under chapter 89C. Maui identifies the unit as "Ocean Safety and Water Safety Officers" and directs certified copies to the Fire Chief, ocean safety being part of its fire department.
- Prices. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, Urban Hawaii, all items, not seasonally adjusted, 1982-84 = 100, series CUURS49FSA0, retrieved from the BLS public API on July 28, 2026. This series is published every other month. The index values used here are July 2021 = 298.820, July 2025 = 348.334, May 2025 = 349.555 and May 2026 = 367.429. The twelve-month changes quoted (2.4 percent to November 2025, 2.4 percent to January 2026, 3.7 percent to March 2026, 5.1 percent to May 2026) are computed from that series and match the figures BLS publishes in its Honolulu-area news releases.
- The comparison awards. Police, Bargaining Unit 12, arbitration award of September 24, 2025. Firefighters, Bargaining Unit 11, arbitration decision and award of March 30, 2026; its cost items are documented in Honolulu Resolution No. 26-83, CD1, introduced April 9, 2026 and adopted May 13, 2026 by a vote of 9 to 0, which lists 3 percent effective July 1, 2025, 3 percent effective July 1, 2026, 2.5 percent effective July 1, 2027 and 2.5 percent effective July 1, 2028. The zero-step-movement finding for the firefighters and the police figures are carried from our earlier article on Hawaii's two-tier public safety system.
- The pay ladder. The description of the Bargaining Unit 15 schedule as twelve steps moving once every three years is the 2022 arbitration panel's own, quoted in our earlier article on this unit.
- How the arithmetic was done. Compounded increases are the product of each year's factor, so 1.0261 x 1.0249 x 1.0247 x 1.0312 = 1.1112, or 11.12 percent. The prior contract is 1.03 x 1.04 x 1.04 = 1.1140, or 11.40 percent; the 1 percent in its first year was a one-time lump sum rather than an increase to the base, so it does not compound and is excluded. The real change in the base wage is the wage factor divided by the price factor, so 1.1140 divided by 1.1657 gives 0.9557, a decline of 4.4 percent. The break-even rate is the fourth root of 1.1112, which is 1.0267, or 2.67 percent a year.
- What we could not establish. We have not been able to obtain the full text of the July 1, 2026 arbitration award. What is on the public record so far is the employer's summary of its cost items, filed with the Honolulu City Council. That summary contains no change to the structure of the salary schedule, but a change carrying no direct cost would not necessarily appear in a cost-items exhibit, so we make no claim about whether the panel addressed the step ladder. The award is not posted by the Hawaii Labor Relations Board, whose published decisions do not include interest arbitration panel awards, and Maui County's 385-page July 24 agenda packet reproduces the cost items without the award itself. Kauaʻi attached the 2022 award to a council communication, so a county filing remains the likeliest place the full text surfaces. We also do not have headcounts for counties other than Honolulu, and we have not established where Kauaʻi County, Hawaiʻi County or the Legislature stand on adopting the cost items. Corrections and documents are welcome through our contact page.