NLV Police union heads back to council in search of contract

The North Las Vegas Police Officers Association is seeking the support of the City Council today to allow police and detention officers to begin working with a contract for the first time in nearly a year.

Some assert the police union also needs the council's approval to make the operation legal under state law.

Members of the association approved a four-year agreement with the city Wednesday by a vote of 86 percent in favor. The contract that covers 280 officers now goes before the council for ratification at 5 p.m. at City Hall.

If approved, the contract reportedly will give the officers, who have not had a contract since last June 30, a 4.29 percent pay raise -- retroactive to July 1 -- for the first year.

"We have proven statistically that we handle more than three times the crime (as other officers), so we think we should be paid three times as much," Dave Galyen, association president, said. "This agreement is equitable, for the city and for our officers."

But if the council votes the contract down, as it did in August with the last contract the association approved, union members say they will plan an informational picket in front of City Hall. Under state law, they are not allowed to strike.

The city and the union have been at odds since the council voted Aug. 5 not to accept the proposed agreement because the increased cost of the contract for the first year would have been about $1.5 million, $833,000 more than what had been budgeted.

As part of the new contract, the association gave up its plans to add an eighth step to the annual salary schedule, a small allowance for continuing education and a small incentive for bilingual officers, Galyen said.

Sources within City Hall say the contract as written would have cost the financially strapped city more than $12 million extra in pay raises among other items over the contract's lifetime.

In addition to increasing wages, the contract -- if ratified by the council -- would break the union up into two bargaining units: supervisory and nonsupervisory.

Some nonunion officers within the department allege the union has been operating illegally for the past 30 years because supervisors and rank-and-file employees have been in the same bargaining unit.

Concerning the determination of bargaining units Nevada law says that "a head of a department of a local government, an administrative employee or a supervisory employee shall not be a member of the same bargaining unit as the employees under his direction."

However, attorney John Harper, counsel for the union, said the state law, which he describes as ambiguous, contradicts itself.

"At one point it says supervisors can't be in the same bargaining unit, and another part says if it is a community of interest, it's OK," he said.

"My opinion is that the North Las Vegas Police Officers Association has always been in compliance. Now it will be broken into different bargaining units, but it has always been within the law."

The union does not negotiate for administrators, according to Galyen, who added the breakup of the bargaining unit was at the city's urging.

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