About 400 county SEIU members to get $1.5 million-plus in back pay

Clark County will pay more than $1.5 million in retroactive wage and benefit increases to a group of unionized employees after settling a legal dispute with the Service Employees International Union Local 1107.

The money will be paid to about 400 workers who had an employment anniversary date between July 1, 2015, and Aug. 24, 2015, according to the county comptroller’s office.

County commissioners settled the matter when they approved their consent agenda Tuesday. The settlement followed two related court decisions and a deal reached by county management and the union in August.

The affected SEIU-affiliated employees should receive their money in their Nov. 23 paychecks, county spokesman Erik Pappa said. The county needs time to calculate how much each employee is owed.

In a statement, SEIU Nevada President Cherie Mancini said she was “gratified and relieved” that commissioners ended the legal fight “against their own deserving workers.”

“A year is an inordinately long time to wait for earned increases in pay and benefits,” she said.

But County Manager Don Burnette contended it was the SEIU’s fault that court proceedings had dragged onward. He said county management had already offered to reinstate the back pay and benefits twice.

“The goal was never to deny employees … the restoration of wage and benefit increases,” he said.

The goal, according to Burnette, was to receive a court’s opinion on Senate Bill 241, a state collective bargaining law that took effect June 1, 2015, and caused the disagreement between the county and SEIU.

Under the law, government agencies cannot give raises to union workers if their union’s contract has expired.

When the bill became a law, the county and SEIU were still undergoing contract renewal negotiations that began in June 2013. Arguments over the existence of longevity pay — which was eventually ended for future hires — had caused negotiations to stretch.

An arbitrator awarded a contract in favor of the county on Aug. 25, 2015.

But because the negotiations weren’t completed until after the previous contract expired, the county did not give pay raises to employees who would have earned them during the nearly three-month period from June 1, 2015, through Aug. 24, 2015.

The union had maintained that its expired contract contained an “evergreen” provision that allowed annual raises to continue and therefore prevented Senate Bill 241 from applying.

SEIU filed a complaint with the Employee-Management Relations Board. The board sided with SEIU, but District Judge Linda Marie Bell reversed part of the board’s decision this June.

Bell ruled Senate Bill 241 eliminated “evergreen provisions.”

As a result, the county was required to pay $900,000 to 253 unionized employees with anniversary dates in June 2015 because the union contract didn’t expire until June 30, 2015.

Tuesday’s settlement extended the back pay to unionized employees with anniversary dates in July and through Sept. 24, 2015.

Terms of the settlement stated that neither the county nor the SEIU could appeal Judge Bell’s decision or a subsequent decision by District Court Judge Rob Bare.

In a separate case, Bare ruled he would not fulfill a request by SEIU to vacate the arbitrator’s awarding of a contract in favor of the county. However, the judge did change the effective date of the contract from Aug. 25, 2015, to July 1, 2013.

Since July 1, 2015, the county spent approximately $292,000 to Las Vegas labor law firm Fisher &Phillips for outside legal counsel for arbitration and legal work.

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.