Teachers union loses bid to delay arbitration decision

A teachers union complaint about bad-faith bargaining against the Clark County School District won’t stall an arbitrator’s decision that will affect looming employee layoffs, according to a Thursday state government board ruling.

The Clark County Education Association had filed a petition contending that because the state board hasn’t yet ruled on the bad-faith bargaining claims, an arbitrator would have to wait to decide the separate issue of teacher pay freezes that has deadlocked union and district negotiators.

An official with the Nevada Local Government Employees-Management Board confirmed the decision that rejected the union’s case for a delay.

The law cited by the union in its complaint said the arbitrator “shall consider whether the Board found that either party had bargained in bad faith.”

The union’s claim of bad-faith bargaining against the district centers on negotiations over payment of a rate increase to the state employee retirement plan for teachers and attempts to replace the union’s health trust with a traditional insurance provider.

The district no longer is pursuing the trust issue. Although state law requires teachers to pay half of the 2.25 percent increase to the retirement plan, the union wanted the district to increase teachers’ salaries by 1.125 percent to cover the cost.

Earlier this month in a separate case, an arbitrator sided with the district on the retirement increase, a biweekly payment of about $25, which the district has been deducting from teacher paychecks since July.

The School District disagreed with the union’s case for delaying an arbitration decision.

“CCEA is attempting to manufacture a conflict, or hole, in the statutes where none exists,” the district wrote in its response to the union petition. The district response also noted that the arbitrator has a set number of days to announce a ruling.

If an arbitrator has to wait indefinitely for a ruling on bad-faith bargaining, “nothing would stop a party that wanted to derail the impasse process at any time from simply filing a complaint.”

The district went on to call the union’s “dubious” complaints a “delay” tactic, wasting time that the district doesn’t have.

“The district has a substantial budget deficit to resolve (for 2011-12 school year),” the district wrote. “Kicking the proverbial can down the road only makes the available option less palatable.”

The deficit is unresolved because the teachers contract remains unresolved. An arbitration decision on teacher pay freezes is expected the last week of April. If the decision finds for the teachers union, which is fighting the pay freezes, the district has said it would need to cut 1,000 teacher positions.

Layoffs appear imminent for the cash-strapped district. Superintendent Dwight Jones emailed the district’s 37,000 employees earlier this week about planned cuts. Between 200 to 1,350 Clark County School District positions may be affected, depending on the teacher pay freeze arbitration outcome.

“Unfortunately, we must plan for more cuts, including a potential reduction in force,” Jones wrote in the email.