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By Dave Toplikar (contact) 
Thursday, April 15, 2010 | 1:11 p.m.
Sun Coverage
- Mayor: Some Las Vegas city jobs might have to be privatized (4-7-2010)
- Union leader hopeful about reaching agreement with city on salary cuts (3-26-2010)
- City employee union offers to take furloughs, pay cut (3-23-2010)
- Goodman cites ‘gridlock’ in union negotiations (3-18-2010)
- Goodman backs off proposal to fire, rehire city employees (3-15-2010)
- Mayor ‘serious’ about firing/rehiring city employees (3-11-2010)
- Council advances budget that would leave 146 jobless (3-10-2010)
- Council advances budget that would leave 146 jobless (3-10-2010)
- Las Vegas mayor: Salary cuts needed to save 171 city jobs (3-4-2010)
- Goodman: City could save 171 jobs if unions agree to pay cut (2-25-2010)
- Las Vegas Mayor: No agreement yet on city employee contracts (1-28-2010)
- Las Vegas mayor calls on city employee unions to reopen contracts (1-7-2010)
- Las Vegas City Council OKs 8 percent salary, benefits cut (1-6-2010)
Time is ticking away for Las Vegas city employees unions to reach agreement with the city or face 141 layoffs, says Mayor Oscar Goodman.
"This is coming to a screeching halt and the window is closing," Goodman told reporters today at his regular weekly press conference at city hall. The city council plans to approve a final budget on May 18.
The city wants employees to make concessions, which include no cost-of-living increases and an 8 percent salary cut to trim $29.7 million from the budget. The unions' offers have amounted to a $10 million cut, leaving a $19.7 million difference.
As a prelude to the final budget meeting, the city council will hear May 5 from people in the private sector about how they are dealing with bad economic times, Goodman said.
"I want people to understand what the truth is," the mayor said.
Goodman said he met with a woman this week who had been employed by one of the major local hotels for about 15 years, who was making about $120,000 a year. The woman worked 60 hours a week, received no overtime and no travel reimbursement, the mayor said.
She and fellow employees were told their salaries would be cut by 10 percent across the board and their 401K retirement accounts would be put on hold, he said. The employees were told they could leave or stay under those circumstances, Goodman said.
"That's the way the private sector addresses these issues," he said.
The May 5 meeting will feature local business leaders and members of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, he said.
"I just want the city employees to know that this is serious business, that we don't want to lose any of our employees," Goodman said. "If they're going to do anything, they have to do it right away or else that we're going to be acting more like the private sector."
New LVCEA offer coming
Goodman indicated he will soon get a formal review of the latest salary concession put out by Las Vegas' largest city employee union, the Las Vegas City Employees Association.
The LVCEA, which has about 120 members who would lose their jobs under a tentative budget approved by the city council in March, has been meeting with city staff for several weeks. The two sides are about $8 million apart in their talks.
Goodman said he couldn't comment yet on the union's latest offer, which he said is being modified.
However, he said it still does not meet the 8 percent salary cut the city staff has requested.
He said he had not seen any new proposals from the city's three other employee unions, which represent firefighters, corrections officers and city marshals.
The city has asked for $8.8 million from firefighters, but they have offered $900,000 in concessions, a $7.9 million difference.
Goodman said none of Las Vegas city firefighters were among the list of 141 employees who would lose their jobs.
"But that doesn't mean that things won't change," he said. "And I'm not threatening. I'm just trying to be realistic about it."
According to the city staff, the corrections officers union have been asked to trim their budget by $3.1 million, but their concession offer would not save any money, so the difference is still $3.1 million.
The city marshals' union has been asked to trim $1.1 million, but their offer amounts to $400,000, which is a difference of $700,000.
If each of the unions come in with less than an 8 percent salary cut, the city will consider that offer, Goodman said.
"I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth," he said. "But I don't see anything close to that taking place at this time."
Hypothetically, if all the unions decided they wanted to take a 6 percent salary cut, that would save the city money and not as many of the 141 employees would be laid off, he said.
"From my perspective, I want to be reasonable. The other council members appear to want to be reasonable. The (city) manager wants to be reasonable, but we haven't gotten those kinds of offers," he said.
Mayor exploring other ideas
Goodman, who indicated last week that the city might be able to save money by privatizing some city jobs, also hinted he might have some other ideas up his sleeve.
"I'm exploring certain remedies that have not really been fully discussed. But I don't want to go into any details at this point in time other than to say that I will be meeting with other government officials from other government entities," Goodman said.
He said he has spoken with Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, "and he's on the same page I'm on. We'll be meeting probably sometime within the next two weeks."
Goodman was asked what he thought of the full-page ad in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday that told readers that the North Las Vegas union made a substantial salary concession offer to the City Council. The ad includes a black-and-white photo of a firefighter spraying water on a burning four-story building. That city is expecting to layoff 16 firefighters.
Goodman said he didn't see the correlation between the concession offers and battling a fire.
"Let's assume a fire person was going to make a concession of 8 percent. What does that have to do with the response time? Nothing," he said. "They just make less money. I don't see the argument. But that's something I'll discuss with North Las Vegas officials in coming weeks, as well."
Goodman, told by a reporter that some parents were upset by the extreme sports program being cut, said he was sorry, but some programs had to be axed. The program cuts hinge on what kinds of concessions the unions make, he said.
"If the employees stayed flat -- that means no COLA (cost of living allowance), no steps, no longevity and agree to an 8 percent cut, we would be able to keep all the programs, keep all the employees, at least for another year," he said.
"We're not getting that kind of response, so we have no choice," he said. "We let employees go and you have to cut back on programs."
Goodman said he has heard that Los Angeles is considering going to a three-day work week for its city hall employees. And he said he also heard that seven fire stations are being closed in Reno as a result of bad economic times.
"These are real things," he said. "A lot of people are acting as though they're not real and we're not going to do anything about it. I promise you from my perspective, and I'm one vote, that I'm going to vote to do something about it."
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The Firefighters will give back the 8% but Oscar wont guarantee anymore layoffs in writing. Lets get all the truth out...
It does no good to fire and re-hire until the State law that requires local governments to accept collective bargaining is repealed. THERE is the real problem.
If the employees get cut then all the rest will make up their workload resulting in more productivity. A win win situation. Let's hope the unions hold out and employees get fired.
Why would the Mayor guarantee no more layoffs to anyone when no one knows what tomorrow brings in revenue. Anyone asking for a guarantee for tomorrow is just out of it.
Oscar can no more guarantee that there won't be any more layoffs than he can predict the future economic climate... You expect him to put in writing that he won't lay off anyone in the future?
How about putting non-essential projects on hold, such as the Mob Musuem and a new City Hall. If those things are done, I'm sure all of the unions would be more willing to make concessions. It wouldn't be surprising if the unions make their salary/benefits concessions and then the City revises their financials and discover more money for their pet "capital improvement" projects.
It is also very interesting, in this pro-union town, that all of the other unions (culinary, carpenters, etc) are sitting noticeably silent while their fellow unions are taking a true beating and are working hard to stop the union busting tactics taking place. It is unfortunate that they do not realize that if the union busting continues to take place and the anti-union legislation passes in the next session, they will be up next and will have to deal with a smear campaign and vicious behavior initiated by their employer.
The Oscar wants the same amount of work for less pay ignoring the contract. If you were hired (contracted)to paint someone's whole house for x amount of dollars and after painting the exterior they said "we still want you to paint the inside but now we want to pay you less than we agreed upon" you would cry foul. The contract says the Oscar can layoff in this type of economic situation -- then lay off. That is not what he wants. The truth is not being told. There were numerous offers presented to The Oscar that are being ignored. When the Union rejects the upcoming onerous offer which is no offer at all then the Oscar will place blame on the CONTRACTED worker saying "We did all we could, the evil Union Worker had no compassion for his fellow workers" when he wants to cut the wage all along. Then you will see the Oscar initiate an opening up of the contract, which will end up going to arbitration, which will end up in a wage cut anyway. Just watch.
The fire fighters are the main problem in the state. Start with the greedy lazy corrupt fire fighters and we can balance the budget.
Another Dog and Pony show by the Gin Drinking Mayor. Threats, Threats, and more Threats to the workers of the city. The show is getting old. Threats, layoffs, concessions, with no promises that there won't be more layoffs, threats, concessions, gin drinking, and stupidity on the Mayor's part.
Sad
I hope that Oscar lays off all of the firefighter slackers. Make it private. I'll bet that they will want to negotiate then. Why don't they tie up an engine company to do a boot drive.
I watched the gin-swillin' mayor at the last council meeting; I don't think Oscar is going to get diddly from ANYBODY the way he throws his substantial weight around and threatens people. Nasty fellow, that Oscar.
Why all the sweat over 141 jobs. It's obvious the city is over staffed and over stuffed. Start cutting the staff.
But lets fund the Mob Museum and the Mayor's personal drivers.
We see the same union corruption here in Michigan. The city of Detroit is on the verge of going bankrupt because it catered to the unions for way to long when times were good and now that times are very very bad the unions won't give back to the system that gave them so so much. They seem to have a sense of entitlement to these ridiculous wages had would rather see the city go belly up than do the right thing and give up a small piece of their enormous pie.
Las Vegas is on the same path unless more people see the light and help their follow citizens out.
May God have mercy on your very troubled city.