PUHI, Kaua'i — The University of Hawai'i Board of Regents is tiptoeing through a policy-change minefield: how to handle the 2,600 employees of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai'i and not risk eroding the $328 million it attracts to the university system.

Regents were warned yesterday that if they make RCUH operations too cumbersome, research dollars and respected researchers will go to other institutions, but if they leave it wide open, they risk challenge by government employee unions.

"My biggest concern is my 2,600 employees. It is really disconcerting the uncertainty this has created," said Michael Hamnett, executive director of the RCUH. He told the board at its meeting at Kaua'i Community College yesterday that some researchers and key technical personnel have reconsidered working at the University of Hawai'i, just on hearing about the possibility of an increased "hassle factor."

The regents considered suspending all their previous policies in hopes of clearing the air, but university general counsel Walter Kirimitsu said even that could launch a protest from the Hawai'i Government Employees Association, which represents many university employees and has already filed a complaint against the last regents' policy with the Hawai'i Labor Relations Board.

"I would like to leave here today giving our researchers comfort that their jobs are not at risk," regents chairwoman Kitty Lagareta said, but the regents late yesterday deferred action on the measure to further consider options, and plan to take it up again today.

The RCUH is a private corporation formed to support research and training at the university. A key function is to manage grants that university researchers acquire. And it serves as the employer of personnel hired under those grants. At a third of a billion dollars, its budget has become a huge part of the university establishment.

While normal University of Hawai'i employees are unionized, the RCUH is a non-union environment. University interim President David McClain said the HGEA wants as many of the positions as possible to move over to the university where those workers can gain union representation.

The RCUH until 2002 handled its employees administratively and without a regents' oversight policy. In 2002 the board established a policy limiting employment in RCUH to one-year contracts, but the board immediately suspended its policy to consider its consequences. Since then, there have been extensive negotiations among researchers, the union, faculty representatives and university executives, but without broad agreement.

When the board in 2004 passed a policy that "the faculty liked and HGEA didn't," university Vice President James Gaines said, the union filed a prohibited practices complaint with the Hawai'i Labor Relations Board.

McClain said the university needs to find a way to keep the research dollars flowing into the university system, and regents said they need to reach an agreement that doesn't throw their policy powers into the hands of the Hawai'i Labor Relations Board.

"We have a strategy issue we have to think about," McClain said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.