(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – If you’ve followed the painfully drawn-out negotiations between Clark County and its firefighter union over the past year, you’ve no doubt learned much about the power that public-employee unions can exert over local governments in the Silver State.
Local governments’ collective bargaining process is governed by Chapter 288 of the Nevada Revised Statutes, a set of laws which labor unions pushed through the state legislature 40 years ago. Among the major provisions of the chapter is a concept known as “binding arbitration,” which awards unions massive leverage in contract negotiations. Through binding arbitration, or even the threat of it, unions are able to force local governments — as agents for you and other taxpayers — to give government unions compensation packages that far surpass those in the private sector.
Basic economics teaches that, in a free market, wages are primarily a function of productivity. Workers with special knowledge and training, for example, are able to use more advanced capital equipment such as robotics or computer programs to increase their output per hour. Naturally, a firm that produces more is able to sell more, earning higher returns. This, in turn, increases the firm’s demand for labor, which drives up wage rates.
Occasionally, however, a firm’s workers may decide to unionize and seek to coerce management into paying wages that are above the level justified by productivity — which means: above the market-clearing price for labor. Wages at such a level place the firm at a competitive disadvantage because, at the higher wage rates, the firm’s level of production per dollar of labor input declines. Therefore, in competitive industries, unionization — to the extent that it pushes wages above the market-clearing price — tends to drive firms out of business.
Because of this tendency, union influence is generally only prevalent in noncompetitive or monopolistic industries — such as government or industries that are offered some form of governmental protection.
Inside a unionized government, wages often have no relationship to productivity levels and are frequently held far above the market-clearing price for labor. Local governments in Nevada demonstrate this phenomenon well. With a current unemployment rate above 14 percent, the state has a large supply of available labor. Yet, local governments in the Silver State offer salaries that are, on average, 30 percent ahead of those in the private sector, according to the state budget director.
In a competitive industry, numbers like this would almost surely lead to firm closure. Government, however, has something private firms do not — the power to tax. This power allows public-employee unions, through their bargaining power, to stealthily, but forcibly, seize ever greater sums of wealth from the bank accounts of private citizens.
The only protection that private citizens have from the predation of public-employee unions is the ability of government administrators to control the increase in labor costs. The binding arbitration provisions of NRS 288 were specifically engineered to torpedo this protection.
Because nearly all local governments in Nevada pay wages exceeding the market-clearing price for labor, administrators typically benchmark their offers to the wages paid by neighboring jurisdictions as a method of controlling labor costs. However, the existence of binding arbitration allows unions to refute the initial offer and demand arbitration, where they insist on ever-higher salaries.
This allows local unions to play off each other by continuously elevating the benchmark. Indeed, even the threat of binding arbitration can be enough to compel administrators to grant across-the-board salary increases.
Making matters more egregious, the entire bargaining process is hidden from public view. Negotiations are not subject to the state’s open-meetings law and take place behind closed doors. As a result, the taxpaying public is kept almost completely in the dark regarding how public-employee unions are preying upon them.
Nevada’s state budget director recently said that local government salary levels are “not sustainable” and that, to avoid large tax increases, “you would have to open up the collective bargain statutes and make some changes.”
Indeed. It’s time for lawmakers to stand up for taxpayers and shut down the union racket.
(Geoffrey Lawrence is a fiscal policy analyst at the Nevada Policy Research Institute. For more information visit http://npri.org/. This article first appeared in the September 2010 edition of Nevada Business.)
http://transparentnevada.com/salaries/all/?page=1#results
The above link is all the common man in the State of Nevada needs to know in order to figure out that the tax payers are being screwed by the Unions, and their top secret collective bargaining with the state and local municipalities. Gibbons is pushing an initiative right now to open up these secret labor negotiations to the public, go on his website and join up by signing it, then get all of your friends and neighbors to do the same.
The right of Assembly and by extension the right to organize and strike shouldn’t be abridged by the government either!
If you want to take away collective bargaining and binding arbitration then give state employees their right to strike back.
Show the public how the negotiations are carried out then. The taxpayer does not have the opportunity to see how their tax-dollars are spent until after the labor negotiations are finished. My second point would be that; now that wages and benefits are skewed towards the public sector employees why even have unions? Weren’t Unions started to protect the poor worker from their evil employers? The state has to comply to all labor laws, it is not exempt from labor regulations. Do you think that state and local government workers would be victimized by the government if they did not belong to unions? The answer to that question is NO. Give it up, the time of the unions is over and the public is starting to wake and see how they have truly been screwed by big labor.
AS an I.B.E.W. L.U.357 Electrician, whom has endured a long train of abuse at the Hands of Terrorcrats at the Administrative level of the Local, I can, from experience, speak to “controversies at Law, abounding, that fly in the face of : Card Check, or special union considerations, to witt:
357 has crafted a Hostile Work Place, for the purpose of crafting an atmosphere conducive to Conversion of Established Beneficial Conditions, to VIOLATIONS: to invoke confiscatory fines to enrich the coffers and sustain the installed by conspiracy of Fraud by; artifice scheme and device to Maintain their Positions of RULE over the FEW, by Tyranny of the Majority, to Pay their $alaries.
The Rulers have applied: CLASS discriminatory confiscations, under mere guise of: SPECIAL DUES by mere schemes of TRICKERY of Colorable Arts of LAW, to Change the meaning of common terms, to especially convienient mis-colorizations of: “Furloughed”, “Non working NON-PAYING status” transmuted to: Furloughed WORKING status, to EXTORT MUCH NEEDED UN-Employment Benefits under the “Guise” of WORKING DUES, sans proviso of essential nexus requisitive of the Obligatory Extractions created by Fraud.
They have “DEEMED” persons retained, at SPECIFIC REQUEST of Employers (all be it Union Contractors), to excercise the: Right to Work complicit, Rights to maintain employment, that the Contractor determines; Meritoriously Beneficial and Profitable to the employer’s operation, and then Controverted the Employer’s Right to be retained to a: mere PRETENSE to Extort by: speciously onerous FINES extracted from the employee.
The Union has broken down long established, accepted Conditions, Conducive to increased Convienience, Competition and Productivity.
On the heels of the City Center Completion and pursuant Layoffs, at end of JOB; the Union, took explicit advantage of the Finacial Irresponsibility of some Workers, against OTHER individuls, subsisting on mere meager portions of what the Recently Unemployed had earned yearly, on the Previously Lucrative project! Creating a climate of Financial Panic allowing an oppurtunity to: ALTER LONG STANDING, HISTORICALLY accepted “BOOK practices to GRANT SPECIAL ACCESS, to one Class of Employee; to the Virtual Financial DESTRUCTION of another: LESS Favored Minority Class to insure the effective RECIPROCATIVE SUPPORT: of the UN-Employed Majority’s VOTE, to subvert the will and very LIVES of the minority class, and maintain “Their” Stanglehold on CONTROL of the LOCAL! (a very CLEVER, though deviously deceitful, manipulation of circumstances)
The “CULTURE of CORRUPTION” embodied by the assent of the “Chicago Mob” to the District of Criminals and the White House, is spreading like a CANCER throughout the NATION, affecting all aspects of LIFE, GOVERMENTS and Labor Organizations.
These Public School, UN-Educated by design,( as Stupid Slaves, are much easier to Control, than those Educated) are apparently unaware of the AGENDA dragging them unkowingly,(Like the coarse of the LEMMINGS) to the DESTRUCTION of the Constitutional REPUBLIC, by installation of all: 10 PLANKS, of the “Communist Manifesto” of the BANKSTERS; NEW WORLD ORDER of SLAVERY, by mere DUPING of the asserted: “Ignorant Masses” of: WE THE PEOPLE by the TYRANNY of OPPRESSIONS by the MAJORITY thru Democratic PROCESS, over the GOD given RIGHTS to the FEW Sovereign Children of YAHUWAH, possesive by Grants from GOD/ YA ,of the Freedom to CHOOSE for one’s SELF, or suffer to be RULED by mere MEN, thus subject to the Perverse Nature of Man (Fredrick Batiat:”The LAW”) to subjugate by Slavery, his fellow Man
This is most assuredly a Battle: between Good and EVIL as predicted eons ago.
The “SHABAZZ” Voting Obstruction of JUSTICE speaks volumes of enlightenment, to reasons “NOT”, to DESTROY the Timeless SAFE traditions of the “SECRET BALLOT” in America and NOT yield, to Special Interest entitlements Desiged to empower Criminal Elements to have Ready Access to their Descenters!
May YAHUWAH forever watchover, protect , secure and insure Freedom and Liberty of Free Unfettered; Private, fearless Choice in America! AHmen
Last word on the Unions. Now the citizens of the United States know where all of the illegal Mafia organizations went; “Union upper management”. Where else in the country can you forcibly extort money from people to further a corrupt agenda except for in a legitimate union organization.
Nuff Said