Tough Act To Follow
As Joan Husted steps down after 36 years with the Hawaii State Teachers Association, she hands the reins, and an apple, to the new executive director Mike McCartney
By Alice Keesing
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These days, Husted is often recognized in the supermarket checkout line as “the strike lady.” In 1972, HSTA became the first public employee union to use its new striking power. Striking against then-Gov. John Burns made Husted the brunt of some heavy criticism.
“John Burns was such an icon and people just adored him, and here I was, chairperson of the negotiations committee, tweaking his nose at the bargaining table,” Husted remembers. “There were a number of people in the political community who were very unhappy with us. ... (Burns) had had labor peace, and here was this upstart union plus an upstart chair of the negotiations committee who was going to bring people out on strike and damage his reputation.”
Through all the stress of negotiations, however, Husted earned a reputation as a woman of her word. Igawa says Husted is someone who is always guided by a genuine compassion for people.
“Joan doesn’t go with the tide - she’s a woman of her convictions,” Igawa says. “She does her best to follow through on really basic tenets of living, and that’s why her word was always respected among the state’s negotiators.”
The state’s deputy chief negotiator, Harold De Costa, has seen Husted coming from the other side of the table. She could be tough, he says, but she was always honest.
“She was a whiz,” he says. “Negotiation takes a certain kind of person - not anyone can negotiate - but Joan always, always saw both sides, and she understood the system and how to really get to the bottom of things.”
Husted leaves a union that has changed considerably since those early formative years. These days, the HSTA represents more than 13,000 teachers who wield their own political clout. The baby boomer generation of teachers is retiring to be replaced by next-gen recruits.
And there are new challenges, including federal mandates and testing.
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“One of my great disappointments, I guess, is that I have not been able to translate to the political community - and by that I mean more than legislators but the decision-makers, whether they’re on Bishop Street or Beretania or over at the Liliuokalani Building - how terribly important public education is to the future of Hawaii,” she says. “If public education doesn’t survive, our economy doesn’t survive, our state doesn’t survive.”
But after 36 years, Husted is handing all that over in favor of retirement (which includes a penchant to pursue taiko drumming). And she says she sleeps well at night knowing the challenges are in the hands of HSTA’s new executive director, Mike McCartney.
As it turns out, Husted and McCartney have a long history that goes back to his small-kid times. Husted was McCartney’s counselor when he was a student at King Intermediate. He even remembers her coming to his elementary school to talk about the upcoming transition to big-kid school, and how they all giggled when she told them that could be where they met their first girlfriend or boyfriend.
Husted also knew his parents, both of whom were teachers. And back in 1984 she hired him in his first job as a negotiations specialist and field representative for HSTA. McCartney, of course, has gone on to become a prominent figure in Hawaii as a state senator, state human resources director, the head of PBS Hawaii and co-founder and creator of the local television show Hawaii Stars. But he says coming back to the HSTA is like coming home.
“It just feels right,” he says. “Joan taught me a lot. I learned what it is to be a teacher advocate and to care about teachers and put teachers first. But this work is more than just about teachers, it’s about creating a future for Hawaii.”
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