Nevada Looks To Unions To Close Budget Gaps
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Unlike his GOP counterparts in other states, Nevada's new Republican governor Brian Sandoval is not taking a hard stance against public employee unions. He is looking to state workers to help balance Nevada's budget, but he's not going after their collective bargaining rights.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Nevada also has big budget issues. And Nevada's new Republican governor says the answer is cutting salaries of state workers. Public employees are unionized in that state and oppose the cuts. Here's Brandon Rittiman of member station KUNR.
BRANDON RITTIMAN: Nevada's state budget shortfall is a little over a billion dollars, according to the governor. In his State Of The State address, Brian Sandoval took just a short moment toward the end of his speech to talk about how unions could help make up the gap.
BRIAN SANDOVAL: Collective bargaining must be reformed if we are to change the course on which we find ourselves.
RITTIMAN: But when he talks reform, he doesn't mean the same thing you hear from other governors. First of all, rank and file state workers, even though they do have unions in Nevada, don't have collective bargaining rights. That means the state can simply cut their pay and benefits. And that's exactly what Governor Sandoval did in his budget.
SANDOVAL: Salaries will be reduced by five percent.
RITTIMAN: Vishnu Subramaniam is with the state workers' union.
VISHNU SUBRAMANIUM: If state workers had collective bargaining right now, we would be partners in the process and we would be able to sit down and negotiate over, and even provide better suggestions and be an active partner in the types of cuts, consolidations that we can have.
RITTIMAN: So if state workers don't have collective bargaining, why would the governor even mention it? Well, because negotiations play a big role here.
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RITTIMAN: Unidentified Man: Who can identify some of the things that this writer does well?
RITTIMAN: Dana Galvin heads the local teacher's union.
DANA GALVIN: We're not going to go the way of Wisconsin.
RITTIMAN: Galvin thinks teachers are safer because the Nevada legislature's controlled by Democrats who are pro-union. Sandoval wants teachers to take a five percent pay cut - the same as state workers. So unions either agree to that or Galvin says they'd face layoffs and larger class sizes.
GALVIN: What I would prefer, of course is, that nobody lose their job, but I don't know if that's going to happen. And that's the scariest part for me.
RITTIMAN: Sandoval's fellow republicans in the Nevada legislature have an appetite for reform. Senate minority leader Mike McGinness doesn't have a problem with collective bargaining. He has a problem with how it's done: in secret.
MIKE MCGINNESS: We don't want to take away, you know, workers' rights, totally, but just open it up, let everybody see how it's done.
RITTIMAN: Fred Lokken teaches political science at Truckee Meadows Community College. He says other states are using collective bargaining as the opening gambit for that bigger issue.
FRED LOKKEN: They're trying to get to the point where Nevada already is. They want to move their states to the point of right-to-work. And so Nevada, frankly, as many Western states, has been there for a number of years. And we're just not in the fight.
RITTIMAN: For NPR News, I'm Brandon Rittiman in Reno.
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