The state of Hawaii is hoping the U.S. Department of Defense can help fill some of the thousands of state job vacancies through a program that connects military members nearing the end of their service with employers looking for workers.

So far the DOD’s SkillBridge program hasn’t gotten any people in their final months of service to apply for an internship in Hawaii’s government, but state human resources officials hope that will soon change.

For the DOD, meanwhile, the main goal is for industry partners to help military members learn the skills they need to work in the civilian labor force – what DOD spokesman Joshua Wick calls “enhancing their employability.”

Participants continue to take home their full military pay and benefits including healthcare during the program because they are still under the DOD’s purview. Hawaii’s Department of Human Resources Development was accepted into the program earlier this summer.

“It’s another pool of untapped applicants that we could bring onboard to join the state of Hawaii team,” said Patti Taketa, the state’s lead recruiter for the program. “The end goal is that they will be employed.”

Hawaii ended last year with an alarming statistic: more than 1 in 4 civil service positions in state government were vacant. Overall the state’s civilian labor force lost nearly 15,000 workers since 2019, a shift from about 684,000 eligible workers to 670,000.

Employers often say that it’s difficult to attract new workers to Hawaii, given the state’s notoriously high cost of living. But there’s an enormous untapped pool of potential workers right here. About 10,000 women and men exit the military in Hawaii each year, Taketa said.

It’s a large number for a small state, amounting to 5% of the roughly 200,000 who exit the service in the rest of the U.S. combined, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor.

DOD launched SkillBridge in 2011 to assist soon-to-be veterans transition from the military to the civilian labor force.

Employment is a top concern for military members exiting the service, says Daniel Perkins, founder and principal scientist at Pennsylvania State University’s military-transition applied research center. SkillBridge offers an opportunity to test the waters of a new job before committing to a career path, he said.

“It lets people get their feet wet and see what their new normal could be like,” he said.

For the state government, eligible applicants are military members serving out their last 90 to 120 days of active duty. The state is targeting interns to work in information technology jobs, as military personnel often have training in that background, said Taketa.

Employers Must Have Space For Long-Term Workers

To start the process applicants need permission from the commander in charge of their unit. Next, they select an approved industry partner from the DOD’s list of employers and applies directly to them.

Industry partners must tell DOD what type of worker they need and how the partners will train them. Partners also need room to hire participants after the training is over.

For potential Hawaii state workers, there’s little risk. They don’t have to commit to a permanent job if they decide a government gig isn’t for them.

“Obviously, we would like to make it a positive experience with the applicant and have them apply for a state job,” said human resources development spokeswoman Erin Conner. “But there’s no expectation.”

So far no one has applied to the state’s program. Taketa says this is partly because it’s in the early stages and human resources needs to do a little more work with state departments to have them identify specific programs and positions that DHRD can promote.

“Once we’re in a better position of having all that in place we will more actively promote the program,” she said.

But she says there’s a wide range of open IT jobs in every department, including system analysts, support technicians, security analysts, system programmers and network administrators.

Hawaii state government is not the program’s only participant. The DOD’s 4,945 approved partners include CVS Health, Harvard University and John Deere. On a local level, Hawaiian Electric Co., Aloha Nursing Rehab Care and the Honolulu Police Department are also partners. 

HPD has more than 450 vacancies across its eight patrol districts on Oahu. District 8, which spans between Ewa Beach and Kaena Point, has more openings than any other district with 68 available jobs.

Michelle Yu, the department’s spokeswoman, said several military members have expressed interest in the program and HPD is processing their applications. With most of Hawaii’s military personnel on Oahu, HPD hopes to attract applicants who want to continue to serve others and live in Hawaii.

Transition From Military To Civilian Life Can Be Hard

Aside from being in its early stages, the state-DOD partnership faces other obstacles in recruiting workers to apply for permanent jobs.

Perkins says many veterans don’t stick around their first civilian workplace for long for several reasons: most jobs don’t provide the same sense of purpose and camaraderie people find in the military.

There’s also the issue of military members who move from managing a team of personnel below them in the service, to starting over in a new career field and being managed by someone else, Perkins said.

“It’s one of those things civilian employers need to understand,” he said. “These veterans have held leadership posts and need to utilize those skills and feel purpose in where they work.”

A more basic question is whether state employers can offer competitive compensation, says Randy Perreira, executive director of the Hawaii Government Employees Association.

He said many state departments face upwards of 40% vacancy rates because the state’s salaries lag the private sector.

“Until the state addresses compensation, you’ll continue to see employees choose the private sector over government, and that includes candidates leaving military service,” he said.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii has another centenarian: Betty Mitsuko Tokunaga!

She turned 100 on Sunday and celebrated with a party at the 100th Infantry Battalion Memorial Building in Mo’ili’ili.

She was born on Aug. 11, 1924 in Paia, Maui. She eventually moved to O’ahu and built a life with her husband, Mike Tokunaga, in Niu Valley. He has since passed, but is remembered for his time in the armed forces with the ‘Go For Broke’ Battalion.

Together they raised two daughters and one son. Over the years, their family grew to include seven grandchildren and one great grandchild, with another one on the way, family members said.

Affectionately called ‘Grandma Betty’ by her loved ones, she retired as a payroll clerk for the city’s transit department.

At her party Sunday, she spoke about what it was like growing up in her time.

“When I was young, I used to play games. I played even with the boys. Football, baseball, you know. When they were playing on the road, I just joined them. And they let me play too. So I played with the boys,” she said.

She added how she would also help her mother with daily household chores.

To reach her age, she also stayed active as much as she could. Family members said she loved going on daily walks around her neighborhood.

They added that Grandma Betty was the “authoritative figure and didn’t let anything slide.” While keeping the family together, she also had lots of aloha for those around her.

“All those who have encountered her knows that she took care of everyone like they were her own family and fed them,” family member Chanteyl Tuvale said.

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked into Hawaii’s evolution into a haven for billionaires at the expense of the local population, as part of a long history of the state prioritizing wealthy outsiders. “For native Hawaiians, it must be difficult to shake the feeling that you’re an afterthought,” he said. “It’s like be introduced by your parents saying ‘these are our sons Tommy and Tommy’s brother,’ or having a TV show announced as ‘stick around after House of the Dragon’.”

It is “no wonder” that nearly two-thirds of residents believe that their state is being run for tourists at locals’ expense. “The more you look at Hawaii, the clearer it becomes that they’re not wrong about that, but it’s not just tourists,” he said. “Hawaii has long been run for the benefit of everyone but Hawaiians.”

At least, when run by the US; prior to its annexation, the islands, long ago settled by seafaring Polynesians, was ruled by a constitutional monarchy that abolished slavery in 1852 – before the US. In 1983, a very small group of wealthy white landowners forced the final ruler of Hawaii, Queen Lili’uokalani, to cede power of the kingdom of Hawaii to the US. The islands became the 50th state in 1959.

“Over the past century, a number of groups, from the US military to tourists to the extremely wealthy, have continued to exploit Hawaii,” Oliver noted.

Firstly, the military, which leases large swaths of Hawaiian land at extremely low rates – in one case, $1 – and have bombed areas for “training purposes”, not cleaning up waste. Just three years ago, the military’s massive fuel storage facility on Oahu had a spill which poisoned the water system that served 93,000 people. “The US military has a pattern of causing an absolute mess in Hawaii, with activists having to struggled to undo the damage,” said Oliver.

Case in point: the US army seized the Mākua Valley after Pearl Harbor, evicting local families who lived there for generations with the promise that the land would be returned six months after the end of World War II. That still hasn’t happened. “Instead, it’s yet another of Hawaii’s sacred spaces that’s being used for target practice,” said Oliver. The activist group Mālama Mākua successfully sued the army to stop live fire training in the valley in 2004, but can only visit twice a month under military supervision.

On the tourism front, though it contributes over 18% to the state’s GDP, “Hawaii does seem set up to benefit wealthy outsiders”. There are currently 32,000 short term rentals in the state, meaning one out of 18 houses is a vacation rental, and nearly a quarter of Hawaiian homes were purchased by buyers outside the state. Hawaii is now the most expensive state in the nation for housing, and because the state imports about 90% of its food, residents also pay some of the highest prices in the nation for groceries.

“But maybe the ultimate expression of the extent to which Hawaii is being reshaped by wealthy outsiders is its growing population of billionaires,” said Oliver, noting that 11% of the state’s private land is owned by just 37 billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Oprah Winfrey. Ellison bought 98% of the island of Lanai – including its grocery store, single gas station and the community newspaper – for a reported $300m. “He’s basically everyone’s boss and landlord,” said Oliver.

But “nothing compares to what’s being done on Kauai” by Zuckerberg, “a real boy who wished upon a star to become a wooden puppet”, Oliver joked. The Meta founder and CEO is building a giant compound on the island that has more than a dozen buildings, at least 30 bedrooms and bathrooms, a tunnel that leads into a 5,000-sq-ft underground bunker and 11 treehouses connected by intricate rope bridges. To secure the land, Zuckerberg sued hundreds of local residents to dispute their ancestral land rights, “using a legal maneuver pioneered by white sugar planters”, Oliver explained. “It is the most on-brand white guy in Hawaii thing he could possibly do.”

Zuckerberg did eventually withdraw from those lawsuits, and penned an op-ed promising to “work together with the community on a new approach”. But he continued to buy up parcels of ancestral rights land and support his co-claimant in the lawsuits, an owner who wanted to buy out the rights of all the others. That co-claimant did successfully get the land to be put up for auction, then bought them for $2m. “Who can say where he got the that money?” Oliver mused. “Apparently, not me, legally. Maybe $2m just fell out of a random treehouse somewhere.”

“It does seem like that new approach for the community ended up with Zuckerberg getting what he wanted anyway,” Oliver continued. “And billionaires like him will insist that they contribute to local charities and help the economy there, but it’s the larger dynamic at work here, where wealthy outsiders can out-purchase and out-maneuver a local population, that can be so dispiriting.”

Taken together – “the cost of living crisis, the low wages of a tourism dominant economy, the off chance of being exploded or poisoned by the US military” – it’s “frankly no wonder that so many are choosing to leave the island,” said Oliver. Each year, 15,000 native Hawaiians leave the state for the mainland, which now has a larger Hawaiian population than Hawaii itself.

What can be done? “When a situation is this complicated and took this long to develop, there aren’t going to be quick and easy solutions,” said Oliver. But he recommend some “obvious” steps, such as not renewing US military leases on Hawaiian land, restricting short-term rentals and second homes, and focusing state government resources on developing a diverse local economy.

“The solution is not going to come down to any single trip you might take,” he added. “It’s going to require much bigger systemic choices. That said, if you do end up visiting, try to be aware of the history that you’re stepping into.”