We have written a good deal about the distance between what Hawaii's firefighters do and what Hawaii pays them. There is a group standing further out on that same line, and almost nobody writes about them at all. Hawaii's ocean safety officers, the lifeguards, guard the water in the state with the second-highest drowning rate in America, and within that state, Maui's rate is the worst of all. In 2022 an arbitration panel described their pay ladder in a single sentence: twelve steps, four percent each, one step every three years.
A Unit Most People Have Never Heard Of
Hawaii's lifeguards are not in the fire department's bargaining unit, and they are not in the police officers' unit. They have been moved twice. The arbitration award lays out the history: starting in the 1970s, water safety officers were placed in Bargaining Unit 3, the white-collar non-supervisors. In 2013 they were moved into Bargaining Unit 14 alongside state law enforcement officers. In September 2020 the Legislature amended the labor law again and made them Bargaining Unit 15, on their own. On January 7, 2021, the Hawaii Labor Relations Board certified the Hawaii Government Employees Association, AFSCME Local 152, as their representative.
The award records why one advocate wanted the separate unit in the first place. Lifeguards were, in that advocate's words, in "a class that does not recognize the dangers in their daily work and therefore cannot get their rate compensated as public safety officers."
It is a small unit. The panel counted around 400 members statewide, of whom approximately 58 work for the County of Maui. The average member had almost 11 years of tenure. These are not seasonal kids working a summer. They are career employees, and the average one had been doing it for over a decade.
The state's own website still hosts a salary schedule page titled "BU 14, State Law Enforcement Officers and State and County Ocean Safety and Water Safety Officers." That title has been obsolete since 2020. Bargaining Unit 14 is law enforcement only now, and its published schedule does not cover a single lifeguard. Anyone looking up ocean safety pay from that page is reading the wrong document.
The Test Nobody Else Has to Pass
Before the pay, the job. The panel's own description of what a water safety officer does is worth reading in full, because it is not what most people picture.
Every year, a water safety officer has to recertify. Recertification is a 1,000-meter run paired with a 1,000-meter swim in under 25 minutes; a run-swim-run of 100 meters each length in under three minutes; and a 400-meter paddle board course in under four minutes. Officers train an additional 200 hours to run a jet ski, and must have served two years full time before they qualify. They work coastlines that produce, in the panel's words, "some of the biggest surf in the world."
Then the panel added one sentence that lands harder than any pay figure in the document:
"There is no physical recertification in the Police Department or the Fire Department."
Interest Arbitration for Bargaining Unit 15, Amended Award, HLRB Case No. 21-I-15-193We say this as a site that has spent a year writing about firefighter pay, and we mean it plainly: the lifeguards are the only public safety classification in this state that has to prove, every single year, that their body can still do the job.
Twelve Steps, One Every Three Years
Here is the panel's own description of the ocean safety pay ladder, in its own voice, under the statutory factors it is required to weigh:
"For the WSO I's, WSO II's and WSO III's, there are twelve (12) salary steps. Each step provides for a four percent (4%) salary increase. Salary step increases may occur on an employee's anniversary date every three years."
Twelve steps, with a three-year wait between each, is a 33-year climb from the first step to the last. That arithmetic is what the union's expert put in front of the panel: 33 years for ocean safety, against 28 for firefighters, whom we have already documented as climbing the slowest firefighter ladder in the nation. We want to be precise about whose number that is. The 33-year and 28-year comparison was evidence the union presented, not a finding the panel made. What the panel stated in its own voice is the structure above, and twelve steps at one every three years is 33 years no matter who does the multiplying.
Years from entry to the top step. The ocean safety figure follows from the award's own description of the schedule and matches the union's evidence in the arbitration. The firefighter figures are from our 50-state step-ladder survey.
A 4% raise is an ordinary raise. Receiving it once every three years, twelve times, is a working lifetime. An officer hired at 22 reaches the top of the scale at 55. According to testimony in the same proceeding, the average annual wage across the entire unit was $60,168.
What the Union Put on the Record
The pay comparison in the award belongs to the parties, and we present it as theirs. The union's evidence was that firefighters are paid $953 a month more than Bargaining Unit 15 at the beginning of their careers, a 23 percent difference, and that at maximum the gap between SR-17 firefighters and SR-17 ocean safety officers is $867, or 13 percent. Its sharpest point was this one: an SR-15 firefighter recruit was paid $4,777 a month, while an SR-17 Water Safety Officer II, a journey-level officer, was paid $4,213. A difference of $564, or 13 percent, in the recruit's favor.
The employers argued the opposite, and we present that too: that lifeguards receive less training than firefighters, carry "far less risk and job complexity," and that because firefighters work a 56-hour week against ocean safety's 40, a Water Safety Officer II actually earns more per hour. The panel heard both. It did not adopt either side's comparison as a finding.
These are 2022 figures and they are not current. The award that contains them granted across-the-board increases of 3% in 2022, 4% in 2023, and 4% in 2024, so today's numbers are higher. Maui's ocean safety bureau chief told the County Council in November 2025 that his officers start at roughly $56,000 after probation.
What the Panel Did Find
Set the parties' arguments aside. Three things the panel said in its own voice are the heart of this.
First, on who these people are: "BU 15 employees are first responders. It is in the public interest to provide special recognition (compensation) to these employees." That is the panel, not the union.
Second, on how the parties got there: before the arbitration, they "held only one negotiation meeting," a lack of process that in the panel's words "inhibits the purpose of the public policy encompassed in the labor statute." One meeting, and then arbitration.
Third, and this is the finding that should outlive this article, the panel gave an entire section of the award its own heading: Urge the Parties to Meet and Negotiate Modifications to the Salary Schedule. Under it, the panel wrote that a salary schedule is a legitimate subject of bargaining, that "The Whalen Award in 2020 directed the parties to negotiate the schedule, but they apparently did not do so," and that within 120 days the panel "strongly urges the Parties to meet and initiate negotiations on the salary schedule."
An across-the-board increase lifts every number on the schedule by the same percentage. It does not change how many steps there are or how long you wait between them. A 33-year ladder that gets a 4% raise is a 33-year ladder that pays 4% more. That is why two panels in a row pointed at the schedule itself rather than the size of the raise, and why the 2020 direction going unheeded matters more than any single percentage in the award.
The Contract Ran Out a Year Ago
The award produced a contract running July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2025. It granted no across-the-board increase in the first year, a one-time 1 percent lump sum, then 3 percent, 4 percent, and 4 percent. That contract has now been expired for more than a year.
Set that against the two units we have covered before. Hawaii's police officers, Bargaining Unit 12, received their 2025 to 2029 arbitration award on September 24, 2025. Hawaii's firefighters, Bargaining Unit 11, received theirs on March 30, 2026. Both are public, documented, and final. We wrote about the distance between them.
For Bargaining Unit 15, we reviewed county resolution records, the Hawaii Labor Relations Board's public decisions index, and press coverage across the islands. We found no public record of a successor agreement, and no public record of a successor arbitration award, for Hawaii's ocean safety officers.
It does not mean no contract exists. HGEA posts member-only updates titled "Unit 15 contract negotiations update" and "Unit 15 contract arbitration update," and we cannot read them from outside. The labor board's public index has not been updated past 2024, so its silence proves nothing either. What we can say is narrower and still worth saying: for police and for firefighters, the successor award is a public document any resident can read. For the lifeguards, a year on, we could not find one. If a successor exists, we will publish it and correct this article.
What the Towers Hold
Between 2013 and 2022, Maui County recorded 221 ocean drownings: 212 on Maui, five on Molokaʻi, four on Lānaʻi. Visitors were 69 percent of them. The county averaged 22 a year across that decade. Hawaii ranks second only to Alaska in drowning deaths nationally, and Maui's rate is the highest in the state.
The county covers that with 12 lifeguard towers, all of them on Maui island itself: two each at Mākena, Hoʻokipa and Kanaha, and one each at the three Kamaʻole beaches, Hanakaʻōʻō, D.T. Fleming and Baldwin.
What a tower is worth is measurable. Mākena Beach Park recorded eight drownings between 2004 and 2008. A tower went up in 2009. In the years since, it has recorded five.
"There's a lot of our guards that are considering going elsewhere because of the pay. It's tough living here in Hawaiʻi and what can you do? They gotta support their families."
Zach Edlao, Maui Ocean Safety Bureau Chief, to the Maui County Council, November 17, 2025In that same hearing, Edlao told the Council a December ocean safety recruit class had spots for eight new officers and drew four candidates. Council Chair Alice Lee urged the division to bring back a prioritized plan with specific funding requests ahead of the budget session: "We are more than willing to provide the adequate funding that is required and seems to be lacking, but we do need a plan."
A twelve-step ladder that moves once every three years is a plan. It is just not a plan to keep anyone.
Two arbitration panels have now pointed at the same thing, and it is not the size of the raises. It is the shape of the salary schedule. The 2020 panel directed the parties to negotiate it and, in the 2022 panel's words, they apparently did not. That schedule is being asked of career officers who average eleven years on the job, who requalify on a physical test every year that no officer or firefighter in this state has to pass, and who work the deadliest shoreline in a state second only to Alaska. The panel called them first responders and said compensation recognizing that is in the public interest. The people who watch the water deserve the same thing the police and the firefighters have: a current contract, on the public record, that a resident can look up.
Where this comes from
Primary sources
- The arbitration award. "Interest Arbitration for Bargaining Unit 15 - Amended Award," HLRB Case No. 21-I-15-193. Panel: Richard D. Fincher, J.D. (neutral chair), Stacy Moniz (union representative), Florencio Baguio, Jr. (employer representative). A hearing was held at HGEA offices in Honolulu over five days; closing briefs were submitted by May 27, 2022. The award is not posted on any state labor site; the copy we read was transmitted to the Kauaʻi County Council as communication C 2022-186, dated August 1, 2022, by the county's Director of Human Resources. It is the source for the unit history (BU 3, then BU 14 in 2013, then BU 15 in 2020); the roughly 400 members and approximately 58 Maui employees; the almost-11-year average tenure; the twelve-step, 4%-per-step, three-year-interval schedule description; the annual physical recertification standards and the statement that no such recertification exists in the police or fire departments; the panel's first-responder finding; the single pre-arbitration negotiation meeting; and the section urging the parties to negotiate the salary schedule, including the observation that the 2020 Whalen Award's identical direction went unheeded.
- Whose numbers are whose. The 33-year and 28-year ladder comparison, the $953 per month and 23 percent career-start gap, the $867 and 13 percent gap at maximum, and the $4,777 SR-15 firefighter recruit against the $4,213 SR-17 Water Safety Officer II were evidence the union presented through its expert, recorded in the award's summary of the parties' arguments. The employers' contrary evidence, that lifeguards train less, carry less risk and complexity, and out-earn firefighters on an hourly basis given a 40-hour versus 56-hour week, is recorded in the same section. The panel adopted neither as a finding. The $60,168 average annual wage is attributed in the award to testimony. We present all of these as what they are: the record of an arbitration, not the verdict of one.
- Contract term and award terms. The Bargaining Unit 15 agreement ran July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2025. The enumerated cost items are: effective July 1, 2021, continued step movement and a one percent one-time lump sum, with no across-the-board increase listed; effective July 1, 2022, continued step movement and a 3.00% across-the-board increase; effective July 1, 2023, the same plus 4.00%; effective July 1, 2024, the same plus 4.00%. City and County of Honolulu Resolution No. 22-180, approving the Bargaining Unit 15 cost items, records that negotiations began September 30, 2020, that "negotiation and mediation efforts were unsuccessful and an arbitrator appointed by the parties rendered an award on July 22, 2022," and that the agreement is "effective from July 1, 2021, to and including June 30, 2025."
- The bargaining unit. Act 031, Session Laws of Hawaii 2020, amending Hawaii Revised Statutes section 89-6. Hawaii Labor Relations Board Decision No. 500 (Case Nos. 20-RA-14-245a and 20-RA-15-245b), dated January 7, 2021, certifying HGEA/AFSCME Local 152 and ordering the transfer of positions out of Bargaining Unit 14. The state Department of Human Resources Development's list of exclusive representatives assigns Unit 15 to HGEA.
- The comparison contracts. SHOPO / Bargaining Unit 12 2025 to 2029 arbitration award, Arbitrator Russell Higa, September 24, 2025. HFFA / Bargaining Unit 11 2025 to 2029 arbitration decision and award, March 30, 2026. Both are documented in our earlier article on Hawaii's two-tier public safety system.
- Maui staffing and testimony. Zach Edlao, Maui Ocean Safety Bureau Chief, and Council Chair Alice Lee, before the Maui County Council, November 17, 2025, as reported by Maui Now, November 19, 2025, which is also the source for the roughly $56,000 post-probation starting salary and the eight-spot recruit class that drew four candidates. Tower count and locations: Maui Now, June 8, 2025 ("About 87 lifeguards work at Maui's 12 towers"), corroborated by The Maui News, September 2025 ("12 lifeguard towers on Maui with 80 water safety personnel").
- Drowning data. Hawaii State Department of Health data presented to the Maui County Council, November 2025: 221 ocean drownings in Maui County from 2013 to 2022 (212 Maui, five Molokaʻi, four Lānaʻi), 69 percent visitors, averaging 22 a year, with Hawaii ranking second only to Alaska nationally. The Mākena Beach Park figures (eight drownings 2004 to 2008, tower added 2009, five since) are from KHON2, November 20, 2025.
- What we could not establish. We could not locate the Bargaining Unit 15 collective bargaining agreement itself, which does not appear to be published anywhere, and no Unit 15 salary schedule is posted by the state. The award notes that its Temporary Hazard Pay article "does not refer to current hazard pay for beaches" and that the issue "is apparently linked to an ongoing grievance," which indicates a beach hazard pay premium exists for this unit; neither party opened it as an issue, the panel declined to consider it, and we could not verify its rate or terms. We found no public record of a successor contract or arbitration award after the June 30, 2025 expiration. Published counts of Maui's total ocean safety staffing conflict (about 87 in one 2025 account, 80 in another), so we cite the arbitration panel's Bargaining Unit 15 figure of approximately 58 County of Maui members and do not reconcile the others. Corrections and documents are welcome through our page.