Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

City government:

Largest Las Vegas city employees union returns to table

LVCEA president says he hopes to hear back from the city Monday

As the deadline looms Tuesday for the Las Vegas City Council to cut its budget by $80 million for the next fiscal year, the head of the largest employees' union has made another concession offer to save his members' jobs.

Don King, president of the Las Vegas City Employees Association, said he was hoping to hear a response from the city on Monday on the union's latest offer.

"We're not releasing any details at this point. We're waiting on a response from the city," King said Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, King said he's been told that 107 more city employees would be affected by the latest round of cuts, including 87 more of his members. King said he didn't know how many of those would lose their jobs and how many would be bumped down to a lesser job they had held previously.

"They city is hell bent on laying people off," he said.

Mayor Oscar Goodman had said Thursday that about 200 employees would lose their jobs under the latest tentative budget proposal expected to come before the city council for Tuesday's budget hearing.

A tentative budget proposal approved by the council in March axed about 145 jobs.

The city has asked all the employee collective bargaining units, in order to save jobs, to hold flat their automatic increases in cost-of-living-adjustment, steps or longevity, plus take an 8 percent cut in salaries and benefits.

For the LVCEA, that figure amounted to about $16 million. The LVCEA's leaders had earlier floated an offer to the city that would cut $8.8 million, but that offer was scuttled. Before it could be brought to the full LVCEA membership for a vote, the members voted against any concessions.

Since that vote, the city came to the LVCEA with another offer last Friday, King said. King said the LVCEA board met early this week and on Wednesday sent the city a counter-offer.

"I'll be trying to make contact with Betsy (Fretwell, city manager) Monday," King said.

King said he didn't know if the matter could be settled by Tuesday's budget hearing. If negotiators reach an agreement, he said he would call a meeting of his members to vote on it.

King said he has not been personally pleased with how negotiations have been going with the city.

"I don't think they want to settle," he said. "I think they're just trying to bust up the unions to a point. That's my personal opinion."

King did not like Thursday's news from the mayor that none of the jobs of firefighters would be touched under the latest round of cuts, despite being told by Goodman that firefighters would "feel the wrath" like every other employee group.

"That's a lot of the trouble," King said. "We don't know what to believe any more."

David Riggleman, the city's communications director, said this afternoon that the position impacts and the cuts by department from the latest round of cuts would be posted Sunday on the city's website.

"We need to wait a few days as some employees are still being notified," he said. "As I mentioned yesterday, we have many different employee groups working different shifts and having different days off. We need a few days to be able to talk with all of them."

Riggleman said the reason no firefighter positions are being cut in the latest round of cuts is because they found a way around it by reducing man-hours.

"The fire department was able to hit its latest budget target of nearly $5 million in cuts through the 'browning out' of about three units a day," Riggleman said. "The department was able to hit that target without the need to lay off any employees. For other departments, the only means of reaching the targeted amount of cuts was through the inclusion of layoffs.

"As far as the negotiations with the bargaining units, discussions between the CEA and the city management are continuing," Riggleman said "We are in the process of reviewing each other's latest offers, and hope to find a resolution."

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