Election not end of CCSD support staff union dispute

Or not.

On Tuesday night, a runoff election that has been pending for nearly a decade was held between the Education Support Employees Association and Teamsters Local 14 for the right to represent the Clark County School District’s support staff at the bargaining table.

The Teamsters garnered 71 percent of the 5,190 votes cast in the runoff election, which has been delayed for years over legal wrangling.

The Teamsters were quick to declare victory.

“These workers have spoken. They exercised their democratic right to vote for the union representation of their choosing and they chose the Teamsters union,” said Larry Griffith, Teamsters Local 14 secretary-treasurer.

Not so fast, said the Education Support Employees Association, which currently represents district support workers and is affiliated with the Nevada State Education Association and the National Education Association.

Those years of legal fights, which began in 2006, ended with the Nevada Supreme Court ruling that the Teamsters must obtain an absolute majority before taking over as the bargaining agent. That means more than 50 percent plus one of all 11,258 support staff must choose the union, not just a majority of those who took part in the vote.

Education Support Employees Association Executive Director Brian Christensen said there are no plans to challenge the vote, which took place at the Riviera.

“We will not challenge the vote. ESEA remains the bargaining agent for the Clark County School District support staff employees, and as such we intend to continue bargaining on their behalf with the next bargaining session being Feb. 17, in which we will be negotiating salary and benefits,” Christensen said.

On Wednesday, Griffith, in a statement left on his union’s voice mail system, agreed that a “supermajority” was needed for the Teamsters to become the bargaining agent for the workers, but the union is still fighting.

The next battleground will be at a Nevada Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board meeting set for Feb. 11.

The board will be asked to validate Tuesday night’s election. The question will be whether the board will appoint the Teamsters as the new union for support staff or keep the Education Support Employees Association in place.

“We are hopeful that the EMRB will recognize that an overwhelming majority voted to join the Teamsters. We are confident that the Board will make the right decision for the CCSD workers,” Griffith said in a statement.

Christensen said he didn’t question whether the vote was valid or not. However, “a majority of the bargaining unit members are not supportive of Teamsters and as such ESEA will remain the bargaining agent for the support staff,” he said.

Meanwhile, district officials are waiting to find out which union they will negotiate with.

“The Employee Management Relations Board supervised the election and has the voting data. The district is waiting for official notification and interpretation of the results from EMRB,” a district spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Even if the state board rejects Teamsters Local 14, the union could have another route to challenge the Education Support Employees Association.

State law requires unions that represent government workers to have more than 50 percent of a group as members to be able to bargain on their behalf. But membership in the support staff union has teetered under 50 percent of district workers in recent years.

In 2013, the Review-Journal learned that just 49 percent of the support staff had membership dues deducted from their paychecks. The district on Wednesday declined to release more recent figures and asked the Review-Journal to submit an information request for that data.

However paycheck deductions are not definitive; they doesn’t account for workers who may pay their dues another way. But it’s the only indicator available because unions aren’t required to release membership numbers.

Contact Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512. Find him on Twitter: @fjmccabe