Unionized LV cement truck drivers reject wage cut

Two of Las Vegas' largest ready-mix cement companies are threatening to hire temporary or replacement cement truck drivers after their union drivers rejected a contract cutting their wages.

CSR and Nevada Ready Mix, fearing their fight with members of Teamsters Union Local 631 may prompt about 400 Teamsters ready mix drivers to go on strike, said they have taken steps to protect their businesses.

CSR said Wednesday it shut down and converted its distribution plant in Henderson into a training operation for the replacement drivers after the Teamsters rejected a five-year labor proposal. Their current contract expires May 31.

Jim Wilkerson, a Teamsters' spokesman, said a meeting scheduled May 26 with LaVonne Ritter, a mediator with the Federal Mediation Conciliation Service, offers the hope that "some kind of middleground" may be reached with the two cement suppliers.

"The current situation is headed for collision. But we still have some hope left right up to the last minute that the situation can be salvaged. We don't want to lose the industry," he said. "But if we can't strike an agreement at the bargaining table, we will take to the streets."

CSR and Nevada Ready Mix, the only two cement suppliers in Southern Nevada to be organized by the Teamsters, said they launched an aggressive multistate recruiting campaign for drivers to ensure delivery services to their clients' Valley development projects won't be disrupted should negotiations collapse.

"We have been forced to begin planning to train temporary drivers ... We were given no confidence by the local Teamsters that there will be a resolution to this dispute," said Ray Brown, a spokesman for CSR and Nevada Ready Mix. "We have lost substantial market share in recent years and are not in position to sustain any decrease in production or cancellation of contracts due to failed negotiations."

At issue is an existing compensation and benefits package under the current contract that CSR and Nevada Ready Mix say is uncompetitive and has eroded their combined market share to about 40 percent from 70 percent six years ago.

Brown said the two companies' "significantly high salary and benefit packages under the existing agreement ... antiquated seniority rules ... combined with a rise in non-union competition," caused them to be consistently underbid by their nonunion rivals.

"With the shift in market share here, the six other major competitors in the Las Vegas ready mix market ... all nonunion ... now account for 58 percent of market share from just 30 percent six years ago," he said.

Brown said the two cement suppliers' total compensation package of more than $27 an hour under the existing contract is about $6.38 an hour above that of its competitors. He said an independent study puts the closest nonunion payroll at around $23.48 an hour.

To boost competitiveness, Brown said the two companies' proposed a wage cut of $2 an hour for existing drivers and $4 an hour for new drivers, overtime after 10 hours instead of eight, relaxed seniority rules and an exemption from paying new hires pension, health care and other benefits for the first six months.

But what he called the companies' "last, best and final offer," which he said leaves the two companies as the highest paying cement suppliers in Las Vegas, was spurned twice by the 400 member bargaining units on April 11 and May 4, he said.

"The local Teamsters bargaining unit turned it down because they didn't believe they should have to take a pay cut when big companies like us are supposedly raking in big profits," Brown said. "But they don't know the state the company is in. The bottom line is if we can't get contracts, that will cost jobs."

Wilkerson of the Teamsters disagreed.

"It's hard to tell anyone to take a pay cut and $2 an hour is a lot of money. That works out to a loss of about $340 a month and a lot of the membership employees work overtime too, so the monthly income loss could be higher than that."

Brown attributed the stalemated talks in part to the "extreme turmoil and poor leadership" within the local 631 after it was placed under emergency trusteeship in early April following an internal investigation by the national Teamsters union. Grace Leong

is a business writer for the Sun. She can be reached at (702)259-2326 or by e-mail at [email protected].

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