Clark County School District continues push for decertification of teachers union

The Clark County School District still wants the Clark County Education Association to lose its status as teachers’ exclusive bargaining agent.

The district filed an amended petition Wednesday with the Nevada Government Employee-Management Relations Board to have the quasi-judicial state agency decertify CCEA — or strip it of its recognition as the union that negotiates contracts with the district — because the rolling teacher sickouts that closed several schools last fall ran afoul of both the contract it agreed to and state law.

CCSD first filed the decertification petition with the labor board in July 2023 — about a month before the sickouts occurred but when there was a credible threat, CCSD said. The amended petition makes the same arguments for decertification while updating with references to the sickouts that came to pass and that a Clark County District judge agreed were illegal strikes for which CCEA was responsible.

Nevada has a no-strike law for government employees, a group that includes public school teachers.

“CCEA and its membership’s representations since at least July 12, 2023, demonstrate a flagrant disregard of the public policy of the state of Nevada prohibiting strikes against the district and the pledge not to strike. CCEA and its membership planned and promoted conduct amounting to a strike, directly or impliedly authorized and ratified a strike, and disavowed the pledge not to strike against the district,” the amended petition said. “As found in the district court proceeding, a strike occurred and substantial evidence demonstrated that CCEA was responsible for the illegal strike. In light of CCEA and its membership’s actions, the district requests permission to withdraw recognition of CCEA as the exclusive bargaining agent for licensed personnel in accordance with (state law).”

The union has until Sept. 3 to file a reply, according to the Employee-Management Relations Board, or EMRB.

The strikes happened against a backdrop of acrimonious contract renewal negotiations that took place over much of 2023.

CCSD and CCEA finalized a new contract through an arbitrator in December. Like the contract in place at the time of the sickouts, the current contract includes a pledge by the union not to strike.

It’s not immediately clear what it would functionally mean to teachers, and their ability to reach future employment contracts, to not have CCEA represent them.

A spokesman for CCSD said the district had no comment, as the district does not comment on pending litigation.

CCEA’s executive director did not return a message seeking comment on behalf of union members.

State law is explicit that unions for public employees must pledge not to strike at risk of not being recognized as the official bargaining agents, and it gives the EMRB the power to take that recognition away.

“A local government employer shall not recognize as representative of its employees any employee organization which has not adopted, in a manner valid under its own rules, the pledge required by paragraph (c),” a paragraph that reads that unions must commit to “a pledge in writing not to strike against the local government employer under any circumstances,” according to a section of Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 288, titled Relations Between Governments and Public Employees.

The same law further states that “a local government employer may withdraw recognition from an employee organization which … disavows its pledge not to strike against the local government employer under any circumstances … if it first receives the written permission of the Board.” That board is the EMRB.

CCSD filed for decertification in conjunction with its first of two requests for an injunction in District Court to prevent the strike. Although a District Court judge initially ruled that a strike was not imminent, that changed in late August and early September with the rolling sickouts that closed eight schools for a day each.

Another judge held CCEA liable for the strike, the first since Nevada outlawed public employee strikes in 1969, and issued an injunction to stop the sickouts from continuing.

The Nevada Supreme Court dismissed CCEA’s appeal of the injunction as moot in May because the District Court dissolved the injunction after the union and CCSD agreed to the current contract; that dismissal also meant the high court wouldn’t decide whether the District Court erred with its decision.

The decertification proceedings, which are separate from the court proceedings, had been stayed as the court cases played out.

Although CCEA denied involvement with the sickouts last fall, it does want teachers to be able to strike. Earlier this year it launched an initiative petition to put the right for teachers to strike on the ballot in 2026.

The CCEA-affiliated political action committee formed to allow teachers to walk out, called A Teacher in Every Classroom, had raised $2 million as of July. All of that came directly from CCEA, according to campaign fundraising documents.

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