Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Marshals union, city in standoff

Sides disagree on which officers will get 11 percent raises

Despite already signing the contract, Las Vegas and the union that represents city marshals are at a stalemate over exactly who in the law enforcement corps will receive the 11 percent pay raises called for in the new labor pact.

After both sides failed to resolve their disagreement in a meeting on Monday, union officials said they plan this week to ask the state's Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board to intervene and settle the dispute.

"We agreed we're going to disagree," Mick Gillins, assistant executive director of the Police Protective Association, said of Monday's talks.

Union officials said when they signed the agreement they understood the contract's hefty raises were to be awarded to all 58 city marshals. But City Manager Doug Selby said Las Vegas intended to give those raises only to entry-level officers, with the other officers receiving just cost-of-living pay increases.

"The city misunderstood what it was they were agreeing to," said Dave Kallas, executive director of the police union. "The contract says what it says."

Selby countered, "The language is pretty vague on what each side intended."

Human Resource Director Claudette Enus, who oversees the city's labor negotiations, said late Monday she was unaware the union intended to ask the Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board to settle the dispute.

"As far as I'm concerned, we're still talking," she said. "I want those talks to stay at the table."

She declined further comment.

The marshals, who are charged with policing city property, investigating threats against elected city officials, and conducting some internal investigations, have worked without a contract since June 2002.

During negotiations, both sides agreed they wanted to bring city marshals' pay closer to parity with other law enforcement agencies in Southern Nevada.

City officials believed they were losing young officers to other agencies because of low pay. The remedy they believed they had agreed to was an 11 percent increase in pay for entry-level marshals.

In addition to the increase in the pay scale, the contract calls for cost-of-living raises of 2.5 percent in June 2002 and June 2003 and 2 percent each June of the following two years.

If the raises were implemented today, marshals would, including the two retroactive cost-of- living raises, receive a 16 percent pay increase.

"The city was looking for parity and wanted to make sure the agencies in Southern Nevada were comparable, within a small range of one another," Deputy Chief Wayne Griffin said. "We didn't want to lag too far behind. If we did, officers would naturally look for a better paying job."

The raise called for in the contract would boost an entry-level city marshal's pay from about $37,000 to about $42,000, according to Gillins.

Annual pay for entry-level officers at other Southern Nevada law enforcement agencies is: $42,118 for the Metropolitan Police Department; $46,362 for the Henderson Police Department; $44,946 for North Las Vegas police; and $38,000 for Nevada Highway Patrol troopers.

"That's more competitive," Gillins said. But it's also necessary for the other officers to receive similar increases, he added. Otherwise, marshals who have been on the force for three years would earn the same salary as new hires.

"That's not what we agreed to," he said. "We have ratified our contract based upon what we had negotiated, and we don't feel it would be fair to change that now."