Nice work …

An early version of the agenda for Tuesday's Henderson City Council meeting explained that closing down the city offices for an extra day this holiday season -- Dec. 30 -- and still paying city staff constituted "a one-time gift thanking all employees for their giving up of salary increases and benefits to help the city in this economic time."

That language had disappeared by the time staff issued the final agenda.

In fact, Henderson city staff aren't merely getting an extra day off with pay -- they're getting the whole week.

In a deal council members were expected to ratify Tuesday, Henderson will join the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas in closing down between Christmas and New Year's. But while workers in the other two cities will take unpaid furlough days that week as part of union contract concessions, Henderson workers will be paid for their time off -- and some of them are complaining it's a bad deal.

Henderson Human Resources Director Fred Horvath said the city's agreement with the Teamsters Union designates Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day as paid holidays, even when they fall -- as they do this year -- on the weekend. (Because Henderson municipal employees have a four-day work week, their weekends start Thursday evening.)

Rather than pay union workers roughly $600,000 in cash bonuses for those holidays on top of their regular wages, the city instead proposed observing the three holidays on Dec. 27, 28 and 29. But the union had to sign off on the contract change. So, to sweeten the deal, the city will give workers one additional day off with pay, Dec. 30, and close city offices for the entire four-day work week -- 10 straight days total.

Police and fireman, at least, will remain on the job.

Mr. Horvath said the Teamsters ratified the contract change last week over the objections of some rank-and-file workers, who didn't want to give up what amounted to a holiday bonus in exchange for the paid time off.

The unemployed -- and private-sector workers who happily work the holiday week and even the holidays themselves, grateful merely to have a job -- are welcome to gaze on all this with the expression of penniless street urchins pressing their noses against the windows of stores full of cookies and other holiday treats they can't afford.

Throughout the current economic malaise, Henderson has not laid off a single municipal worker, though the city has used buyouts and attrition to reduce its overall staffing by almost 200 positions.

A 2008 report commissioned by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce showed the average state and local government employee is already paid $47,450 annually in Nevada, 28 percent more than the average private-sector employee. In fact, Nevada's local government workers rank as the eighth-highest paid in the nation.

And now this.

Eat your hearts out, taxpayers.

It's nice work if you can get it.