Laid-off NLV employees lose state Supreme Court case

By Cy Ryan

Friday, June 19, 2015 | 10:15 p.m.

The Nevada Supreme Court rejected Friday the appeal of 19 North Las Vegas city employees who were laid off when the city decided to move inmates from the city detention center to the jail in Las Vegas, according to court documents.

The workers asserted their rights according to their union contract with the city, specifically "bumping rights" over employees with lesser seniority. The case went to Clark County district court in 2012 and was later appealed.

The union that represented the workers, Teamsters Local 14, declined to take their grievances through the dispute resolution process outlined in the contract, according to court documents.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled that individual union members did not have standing to bring the suit. The negotiated contract required the union, not the individual workers, to pursue these grievance procedures through the state agency Nevada Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board.

Yet the Nevada Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board filed an amicus brief in support of the employees, stating it does not have jurisdiction or authority over breach of contract disputes and that the district court erred in its interpretation.

The city of North Las Vegas laid off the workers after U.S. Marshals Service announced it would be moving 250 contracted beds from the North Las Vegas Detention Center to a new facility in Pahrump. At first, the city closed two towers at the jail and reduced the number of beds from 800 to 500. Then the cash-strapped city closed the jail and moved 240 male and 75 female inmates to the Las Vegas Detention Center, leasing and operating one housing unit at the jail, according to Sun archives. About 46 jobs were saved by having North Las Vegas corrections officers shift to the Las Vegas jail, but about 80 to 85 corrections positions were eliminated, the city's then police chief, Joseph Chronister, said.