Labor sees new day in Southern Nevada

Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.

If there was any doubt about the resurgence of organized labor in Southern Nevada, it was erased last week when union leaders persuaded elected officials to broker a deal to get hospital nurses back to work.

Even Republican Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons, a political foe of labor, sat down behind closed doors - with three union-friendly Democrats - to force management at Desert Springs Hospital and Valley Hospital Medical Center to return to collective bargaining after locking out the nurses.

Mike Sloan, a former casino executive who has been on the other side of labor at the bargaining table, said Nevada's unions appear stronger today than anytime in the last decade.

"Under the radar," he said, "there have been a lot of things going on in terms of union participation in politics that indicate they are going to be in an ongoing assertive mode." For instance, aggressive organizing by the Service Employees International Union, which represents the nurses, has pushed local membership from 9,000 to 15,000 in the last two years.

The resurgence comes at a critical time for labor in Nevada and nationally.

The largest and most politically active Nevada local, the 60,000-member Culinary Union, is preparing for potentially hostile contract talks this spring with 40 casinos on the Strip and downtown.

More broadly, the state's entire labor movement is gearing up for Nevada's early 2008 presidential caucus, which will put issues important to working families under a national spotlight and give labor leaders clout in the selection of the next Democratic nominee for president.

Traditionally, the first two contests of the presidential primary season have been in Iowa and New Hampshire - two states without strong organized labor. Shoehorning the Nevada caucus into the calendar between Iowa and New Hampshire ensures that candidates will have to address labor's concerns, especially in Las Vegas, now the symbol of new labor and one of the most heavily unionized cities in the nation.

Labor's skill in drawing some of the state's top politicians into the hospital contract dispute concerns one veteran pro-management labor lawyer.

"This was the first real test of the strength of this new labor coalition, and management flinched," said the lawyer, who asked not to be identified. "It could change the power mix in future labor actions."

Certainly the outcome will further embolden organized labor, which has been buoyed by aggressive campaigns this year to win a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage and to unseat a veteran state senator and two Clark County commissioners who fell out of favor with the unions.

"They showed their muscles in the last election, and it's starting to pay off," said Michael Green, a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada.

Danny Thompson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO, an organization with 200,000 members statewide, attributes labor's strength to its resolve to remain united during trying times.

"Our commitment to solidarity is stronger than ever," Thompson said. "What you're seeing are the results of us staying together."

Last year a serious split within the national labor movement created uncertainty among Nevada union leaders. Five major unions - including the New York-based UNITE HERE, the headquarters for the Culinary Union - broke away from the national AFL-CIO in a dispute over how to increase labor's declining numbers and formed their own labor organization, the Change to Win Coalition.

Together, those unions - which also include the Teamsters, Laborers, Food and Commercial Workers and the Service Employees - made up about 35 percent of the 13 million AFL-CIO members nationwide and about 80 percent of the Nevada AFL-CIO.

Through independent "solidarity" agreements approved by the national AFL-CIO, the five unions eventually were able to remain part of the state labor federation under Thompson's leadership.

"It took some time, but we crafted a solution for us," Thompson said. "That whole exercise made us stronger, and we've become more in tune together."

Thompson said the proof of that new unity occurred last week when other unions, in perhaps the quickest response he has ever seen, rallied behind the picketing nurses.

"You saw electricians, laborers, craftsmen, teamsters and many others out there walking that picket line with those nurses," he said.

Among those closely following the hospital labor dispute was D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the mammoth Culinary Union.

Many regard Taylor - who understands the power of union solidarity heading into his own tough contract negotiations this spring - as the most influential labor figure in Southern Nevada, and maybe the state.

Taylor said he played no official role in the efforts to get both sides talking again.

But he was a player behind the scenes.

Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, the most vocal of the elected officials who met with hospital officials last week, sought Taylor's advice on how to break the impasse before heading into the meeting.

Taylor downplayed the significance of labor's ability to persuade the elected leaders to step into the fray. But he wasn't shy about voicing his opinion about the way hospital management conducted itself.

"I saw this as a bipartisan recognition of a crisis within the nursing profession," Taylor said. "It seemed idiotic that, when you have a shortage of nurses and the state is working hard to recruit nurses, you have a large out-of-state hospital chain locking out its nurses."

And although Taylor did not want to discuss labor's latest good fortunes on the political front, Thompson made it clear that the state AFL-CIO is just getting started.

"We're becoming a little more aggressive with candidates who are just giving us lip service," he said. "Everybody wants to be our friend when they're running, but after they're elected and there's an issue important to us, some of them run for the door.

"But they're no longer going to be able to take us for granted."

Much of labor's new political energy is tied to efforts to take advantage of the early Democratic presidential caucus, which Thompson worked hard to get for Nevada.

"We have a plan for the presidential caucus, and we're building on that plan today," Thompson said. "We're going to be more politically involved than ever before."