Union to protest school-building policy

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, June 27, 2002 | 9:40 a.m.

Members of a labor union plan to launch a fresh round of complaints at the Clark County School District tonight, claiming officials have unfairly hired out-of-state contractors for lucrative construction jobs at the expense of local workers.

Thomas Morley, an organizer with Laborers Local 872, said since 2001 more than $40 million of taxpayers' money has gone to pay laborers brought in from other states, including Utah, Arizona and California.

The union planned to protest today outside the district's offices on Flamingo Road before this evening's meeting of the School Board, Morley said.

Many of the contractors hired by the School District bring in workers from surrounding states so that they can avoid paying union-scale wages, Morley said. That leaves workers in Southern Nevada without jobs, he said.

"Clark County residents are getting stuck with the bills for unemployment, while the contractors take the cash home with them when they leave the state," Morley said. "How is that fair?"

Fred Smith, construction manager for the School District, said contracts are awarded -- by law -- to the lowest bidder. The only preferential treatment allowed is for companies that have paid taxes in Nevada for at least five years, Smith said.

"We have no control over who the contractors hire to do the actual work," Smith said. "If the contractors decide to go out of state to find their workforce, that's within their rights."

The union is also accusing contractors of fudging job descriptions so that workers won't have to be paid the full scale. At Miller Elementary School, one man was paid $30.50 an hour as a miner welder instead of as an iron worker earning $39.96, Morley said.

"Since when are there undergrounds at the elementary schools?" Morley asked.

Smith said obviously there are no mines at the elementary school, but some sites involve excavation that might have required the skills of a miner welder.

Clark County's soaring growth has spurred a school construction boom, funded by a $3.5 billion bond approved by voters in 1998. The school district's facilities division breaks ground on a new campus nearly every month, and is also in the midst of renovating existing buildings.