Unions battle for representation of school support workers

The representation tug of war drags on for 11,000 Clark County School District bus drivers, janitors and other support staff being courted by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Teamsters Local 14 represents a variety of public and private-sector workers in Southern Nevada but has just 3,500 members. Its membership would quadruple if it persuaded school support staff to abandon their current union in an election that was set for February but is being rescheduled for the spring.

The Teamsters also may seek to represent the 1,250 government employees in the Las Vegas City Employees' Association, according to Brian Scroggins, commissioner of the state's Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board, which oversees matters of collective bargaining for public workers.

Scroggins received a letter from the Teamsters expressing interest in doing so.

Despite these efforts, the Teamsters union isn't looking for a bigger foothold in Southern Nevada, President Al Ghilarducci said.

"They've come to us and requested that we represent them," he said of school support staff and Las Vegas city workers.

The Teamsters' push into the School District has been fraught with problems. The union has campaigned for a decade to represent school support staff. In 2006, an election was held to give the choice to support workers. The Teamsters received 57 percent of the 4,736 votes cast, trumping the 41 percent of votes garnered by the Education Support Employees Association. Ninety-three votes were cast for no representation at all.

But ESEA has retained control for the past six years.

That is because the Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board ruled in the 2006 election that the Teamsters must obtain an absolute majority, meaning more than 50 percent of all 11,000 support staff must vote for the union, not just a majority of those voting on the issue.

The ruling isn't the standard for all unions battling for representation of Nevada employee groups, but it has been upheld by the state Supreme Court in this case.

Just getting 50 percent of 11,000 district workers to vote seems impossible, let alone having that many support staffers vote for one side, said Ghilarducci, whose union has been contesting the state board's decision in court since the 2006 votes were counted.

"Take a look at the presidential election," he said.

Scroggins acknowledged Ghilarducci's point: "Any election for nearly anything else, you don't get a supermajority."

Voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election was a little more than 57 percent, according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

The 2006 support staff election didn't attract enough voters to give any side an absolute majority. So the status quo continues.

A 2009 Nevada Supreme Court ruling said an absolute majority would remain the bar to meet in the upcoming election unless the two unions could reach an agreement.

The ESEA, favored under the current system, has refused offers from the Teamsters, Scroggins said.

John Carr, ESEA president, didn't return the Review-Journal's calls last week or Monday.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.