Firefighters sue Clark County over law barring supervisors from joining union

By Steve Green

Monday, April 16, 2012 | 12:56 p.m.

A dispute between the Clark County firefighters union and the county has boiled over into a lawsuit.

Firefighters Local 1908 filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas complaining that recently, the county has tried to exclude battalion chiefs from union membership by trying to engage them in ''consultations about the county’s position in negotiations with Local 1908 concerning Local 1908’s rank-and-file bargaining unit.''

Union attorneys say this is a departure from past practice in which the battalion chiefs weren't consulted about labor negotiaitons, even though the chiefs assign work to Fire Department employees and supervise them.

''The county is seeking to assign fire battalion chiefs these new duties in an effort to exclude fire battalion chiefs from Local 1908 membership,'' the suit alleges. ''But even if the county’s motives were somehow pure, the fire battalion chiefs are still being placed now in an untenable situation constituting irreparable harm to them and Local 1908: if fire battalion chiefs cooperate with the county’s efforts, they risk losing their right to union membership, their bargaining rights and their jobs due to their union sympathy.

"If they refuse to cooperate, they risk being disciplined for insubordination or suffering other adverse career consequences," the suit says.

While the suit was filed against the county, union attorneys say in the complaint it's aimed at challenging the constitutionality of a new state law, Senate Bill 98, which they say was passed last year and bans certain supervisory employees from belonging to "employee organizations.''

This law violates the supervisors' rights under the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit charges.

"No compelling state interest exists to bar supervisory employees from joining the private organization of their choosing,'' charges the suit, which was filed by veteran labor attorneys at the Las Vegas law firm McCracken Stemerman & Holsberry.

The county manager's office said in a statement Monday that "we have not reached any conclusions" as to whether the battalion chiefs are supervisors under the new law.

Otherwise, the county said it had no other immediate comment on the lawsuit.

The suit is just the latest dustup between the firefighters and the county. Most recently, Commissioner Steve Sisolak questioned off-duty firefighters’ use of county fire trucks as they raised money for charity. This followed a crackdown on sick leave abuse by certain firefighters.