Slaying leaves labor dispute unresolved

Alana Roberts

Wednesday, March 31, 2004 | 11:18 a.m.

Workers at North Las Vegas-based Best Water Truck Services ended a two-day strike by returning to work this week, as the company's interim president works to sort through a labor dispute left unaddressed by the company's deceased owner Donald Ursem.

Ursem, 61, was shot to death at his Carl Street home on Feb. 5, after providing the shooter with his ATM card and pin number. Police have detained a woman they suspect was using the card after Ursem's death. The woman has been linked to a man who was detained in an unrelated attack in which a victim was beaten and his wallet taken.

Best Water is a street sweeping company that contracts with the construction industry and has 20 employees. Of those employees, 16 laborers participated in the strike, which began Friday and ended Saturday.

The company's interim president and friend of Ursem, JR Reid, said he is working to understand the company's state of affairs, including the labor dispute. He said company leaders had planned to sell the company to another company that would have fired most of the workers, but decided not to.

He said the company is financially weak, and that the strike made things worse.

He said the workers went on strike on Friday, after the company's attorney asked the union for a 30-day extension before continuing negotiations, which were called off after Ursem's death. They're expected to pick up again Thursday.

Michael Chavez, of the Las Vegas office of the National Labor Relations Board, said the union won an NLRB-run election in November to become the bargaining representative of the workers. The election was run again in January and the union won again 14 to 6.

George Vaughn, director of organizing of the Laborers Union, said the union called off the strike in order to allow Reid to sort through the union's contract proposal.

Under Ursem's leadership the union alleges that the company's leaders discharged employees because of their union sympathies, threatened workers with discharge and interrogated workers about their union sympathies. An administrative law judge will hear testimony about those allegations in a hearing set for June 10.