Employees get new contract

Thursday, April 3, 2003 | 9:39 a.m.

Clark County commissioners on Wednesday approved a new contract for about 10,000 local government employees, ending eight months of federally mediated talks.

Members of the Service Employees International Union Local 1107, which represents employees of the county, the RTC, the flood control district and other agencies, approved the same contract last week.

"The union recommended adoption," Tom Beatty, local executive director, said. "It seemed to us to be a fair and reasonable closure to a long and contentious process."

He said more than 90 percent of more than 2,500 members voted for the new contract. One of the main goals, successfully achieved, was protecting the members' health insurance benefits, Beatty said.

The contract provides 2.75 percent automatic cost of living pay increases for the first two years, followed by 3 percent raises.

The contract also calls on union and county management to meet again in six months to discuss merit and performance pay increases, which can now add 4 percent to annual raises.

The commission vote to approve the contract was 5-0. Commissioners Bruce Woodbury and Yvonne Atkinson Gates were absent.

County Manager Thom Reilly told the commission before they voted that media portrayals of the contract as guaranteeing 7 percent annual raises were not accurate. He said all governments have merit or performance incentives, but the county does not award those additional raises when employees have "topped out" in their pay grades.

Still unresolved is the issue of new contracts for physicians in the county's University Medical Center and Quick Care system. Beatty and Reilly said they will return to the bargaining table to work out that issue.