EDITORIAL: SEIU should let members vote on UMC offer

Clark County has offered University Medical Center workers a deal so sweet their union might not bring it to members for a vote.

Three months ago, the County Commission scrapped a new contract for 3,000 UMC workers represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 1107 because it preserved longevity pay for future hires. The benefit gives workers a 0.57 percent raise for every year on the job after eight years of service, regardless of performance. Longevity pay has become so expensive for local governments amid slumping property tax collections that several bargaining groups have surrendered it for new hires as a concession.

But UMC negotiators this year inexplicably brokered a deal that preserved the benefit for new hires, in addition to offering UMC workers a compounded 5.6 percent pay raise over two years, the restoration of merit pay increases and an end to a longevity pay freeze. Getting rid of longevity pay for future UMC hires is especially important to the county because talks with the SEIU on a deal for the government’s 5,000 rank-and-file employees are headed toward arbitration. And the union wants to preserve longevity pay for future county workers, too.

Allowing UMC to keep the benefit for future hires would give the SEIU leverage to preserve it for future county workers and, in all likelihood, embolden bargaining groups that gave up the benefit to demand its reinstatement in future contract talks. So the county has upped its offer to what might pass for a bribe: a one-time $500 bonus for all UMC workers if they’ll give up longevity pay for future hires.

The short-term cost to taxpayers for this perk: about $2 million. But the expenditure would save UMC an estimated $150 million over 30 years. That’s big money for a public hospital with an annual budget deficit that’s expected to surge to $121.6 million by 2018.

As reported by the Review-Journal’s Ben Botkin, SEIU Local President Martin Bassick complains that UMC’s math “doesn’t add up” because the hospital just closed some underperforming clinics and laid off workers. Perhaps more jobs — and the hospital itself — might be saved if the union were less determined to increase costs.

Yes, UMC has problems retaining some workers, despite its pension plan, because local private hospitals can offer workers more take-home pay now. But even if longevity pay is preserved, new hires wouldn’t get it until about a decade from now.

UMC’s workers would overwhelmingly approve the county’s newest offer — if only the SEIU would let them.