Kudos to the Clark County bargaining team for holding the line in what proved to be one of the most challenging bargaining cycles in decades.

For many years, PROTEC17 has bargained our main contract as part of a coalition with OPEIU Local 11, LiUNA Lo-cal 335, and AFSCME Local 307. This time, there was strong disagreement within the coalition regarding the employer’s reduc-tion in annual wage increases. The coalition hung together until a Last-Best-Final offer was made by Clark County. At that time, all unions within the coalition took the offer to members. OPEIU and LiUNA members voted to accept the offer and conclude bargaining, while PROTEC17 and AFSCME members rejected the offer and proceeded independently to mediation.

Members of the bargaining team spent significant amounts of time providing hard data and compelling personal accounts of the increased cost of living in Clark County. When encouraged by the City Manager to look for gains that didn’t require Council authorization, they continued to develop alternative proposals to eek out improvements for members. Ultimately, that hard work paid off in a retention bonus that is landing in member paychecks this summer, with a second payment in December.

Members of the Bargaining Team included Cary Armstrong and Sarah Smith for the Engineers and Katie Carle and Ben Ransonet for the Appraisers. PROTEC17 member Alex van Ditner provided a tremendous amount of data and research, and also served as an alternate. Thank you to these members for their dedication to fighting for their co-workers.