EDITORIAL: Labor pains

Karma can be a bear. Just ask the Service Employees International Union Local 1107.

The union that represents Clark County’s roughly 4,900 rank-and-file employees has dragged out contract talks for years because it had no incentive to conclude them. Taxpayers funded the union work of members, and the pay raises provided in the expired contract rolled over until a new deal could be reached. No contract? No problem.

But after more than two years of intentionally fruitless talks, the rules changed. The 2015 Legislature passed modest collective bargaining reforms that prohibit taxpayer-funded union work and block pay raises for public employees if their union’s contract has expired and a new one is not in effect.

So the county sent a letter to SEIU President Martin Bassick and ordered him to return to his Public Works position this week, saying the law no longer allows full-time, taxpayer-funded union leave. And in another letter, the county notified Mr. Bassick that employees would not receive pay raises until a new contract is in effect. (An arbitrator is expected to settle the Clark County-SEIU dispute within a few months.)

The union disagrees with the county’s moves. Brian Shepherd, state director of SEIU Nevada, told the Review-Journal’s Ben Botkin that “county administration is kind of going rogue” and playing “some sort of political game.”

In fact, these collective bargaining reforms were written precisely to prevent the kind of bad-faith stall tactics deployed by the SEIU. They were written to compel unions to work with urgency toward new contracts, not use negotiations as an excuse to milk taxpayers dry.

If the union doesn’t like the effect of the new laws, it can do what it should have done two years ago: agree to a new deal.