Teamsters bid to lead teachers

Officials with Teamsters Local 14 announced the effort to gather support to unseat the Clark County Education Association, or CCEA.

Gary Mauger, secretary treasurer and chief executive officer of Teamsters Local 14, said teachers need a union that will stand behind them. Mauger and other members of Teamsters Local 14 cited low pay and a teacher shortage as primary concerns.

“We want them to have a voice,” Mauger said of teachers. “We want them to have representation. We want them to have a contract where they can hold their heads up high.”

But John Jasonek, executive director of the CCEA, said teachers will see past the tactics of the “predatory union.”

“Teachers are not easily fooled,” Jasonek said. “They won’t be fooled by Teamsters that want to take over other unions.”

The Teamsters are eyeing November 2008 as the time to file a request for an election against the CCEA, which has a membership of more than 13,000 teachers in Southern Nevada.

According to state code, a challenging union has 30 days — lasting from between 212 days and 242 days before the incumbent union’s contract expires — to challenge the incumbent union in an election. The CCEA’s contract expires June 30, 2009.

Until then, the Teamsters will gather pledge cards from teachers, indicating support for an election.

The Teamsters need to file a request with the Employee-Managemenent Relations Board and show the board that they have enough signatures — about 9,000 from the more than 18,000 teachers in the school system — to justify an election.

“Getting enough signatures won’t be a problem,” Mauger said. “Getting people to vote will be the issue.”

State law requires the winner of an election to receive support from more than 50 percent of all eligible voters. The law hindered the Teamsters in May 2006 when they unsuccessfully tried to gain the right to represent the district’s more than 10,000 support staff employees. Although they received 779 more votes than the Education Support Employees Association union, the Teamsters fell short of the 5,259 votes needed to win the election. They are challenging those results in District Court.

Mauger said teachers want a change in the district.

The CCEA recently negotiated that teachers at the district’s first four empowerment schools must go through a rehiring process led by their principals, Mauger said, calling it more proof that the CCEA is not interested in representing teachers.

When asked, Mauger said he didn’t know whether any teachers at the empowerment schools had been fired.

Jasonek said the Teamsters are making claims that aren’t supported by the facts.

“Nobody got fired from any empowerment school,” Jasonek said. “It’s a clear indication they don’t know anything about teacher issues.”

But it appears the Teamsters have the ear of some teachers. The Teamsters collected pledges from between 20 and 30 teachers Thursday, said Jim Wright, an organizer with the union.

Sally Magnuson, a special education teacher at Eldorado High School who has taught in the district for 28 years, dropped her membership with CCEA five years ago.

Magnuson stood up during the news conference Thursday and declared her loyalty to the Teamsters.

“I’ve seen the CCEA disintegrate into a lack of a union,” she said. “I say bring on the Teamsters, and I’ll be the first to sign on the dotted line.”