Editorial: Collective bargaining not at fault

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 | 8:56 a.m.

Since 1995 wages and benefits for Clark County employees, on the whole, have gone up nearly 41 percent. During the same period, the Western Consumer Price Index increased only 23 percent. Allowing government salaries to rise that much above the cost of living cannot be justified, a point that is being made by top management officials in Clark County government. The problem goes far deeper than the obvious unfairness of county employees receiving wage hikes far in excess of those granted to most workers in the private sector. The real problem is that bloated pay for existing workers restricts the ability of the county to hire additional ones to keep up with growth. This lessens the quality of service to taxpayers.

We cannot go along, however, with those top management officials at the county who are saying privately that collective bargaining is the culprit and that it should be discontinued. Collective bargaining was granted to local-government employees 35 years ago by the Nevada Legislature. It's an efficient process that gives workers, through their union representatives, a say in the conditions of their employment. The alternative would be for the county to dictate the terms, with workers taking them or leaving them. In our view, this would create worker dissatisfaction and lead to an even greater lessening of service to the taxpayers.

The problem, as we see it, is that negotiators for Clark County have been asleep at the bargaining table over the past several years. County management has acceded to all of the wage and benefit increases that have led to the employees' burgeoning compensation. Collective bargaining is right. It's the county that has been wrong by not driving harder bargains.