| Total Reported Union Members | 117,867 |
| Assets | $ 68,582,190 |
| Receipts | $ 77,538,511 |
| Disbursements | $ 71,467,873 |
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 Non-Unionized  Unionized
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86% 14% |
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Historical Percentage of Workforce Unionized
Government Employee Unions
Each year, public sector unions cost Nevada residents millions of dollars by driving state budgets well beyond responsible spending.
| Government Employees | 100,408 |
| Percent Unionized | 28.2 % |
| Average Government Employee Salary | $ 47,549 |
Your Tax Dollars At Work
The Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation reported in June 2006 that “Government” is the single highest-paying job classification statewide, a distinction that’s even more pronounced around Carson City, Las Vegas, and Reno. Putting some dollar signs on that fact, the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote in 2003:
[T]he average Nevadan, whose annual earnings are $32,199, earns $24,249 less per year than the average employee of the city of Las Vegas, $17,979 less than the average Clark County government worker and $10,519 less than the average state employee.
These state statistics don’t include public employees’ typically bloated benefits, either. State employees are entitled to pensions as high as 90 percent of their highest three-year average salary, along with generous lifetime health insurance subsidies. Coupled with a “30-and-out” program that allows employees to retire with pension and health benefits in their early fifties, it’s no wonder that, as the Review-Journal reported in January 2006, “Nevada's unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities could approach $9 billion over the coming decades, a figure three times this year's state budget.” Based on this estimate, these benefits to state government retirees will cost every Nevada household upwards of $10,300 -- on top of taxes they’ve already paid.
How Did It Come to This?
Nevada’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) was set up in 1947, when public employees were forbidden from participating in Social Security. As originally intended, PERS received half of its funding from the state, and the other half from employees -- much like Social Security. However, the Review-Journal reported on March 20, 2005, “many local unions have negotiated contracts in which taxpayers pay most or all of that amount.”
Writing in November 2003, Steven Miller of the Nevada Policy Research Institute illustrated the typical way in which Nevada’s government employee unions have carved out such lavish jobs for themselves:
In last September’s primaries Local 1107 of the Service Employees International Union endorsed Myrna Williams and Mark James for the Clark County Commission.
“As a union representing more than 12,000 members you can be sure our votes made a difference,” boasted local 1107 after the primary. “When we vote together, we win.”
This April Williams and James, both now on the commission, returned the favor—passing into law a more-than-30-percent salary increase for county workers over the next four years.
Between the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections, public-sector labor unions spent almost $2 million on statewide and local races, according to the Institute on Money in State Politics. Having friends in high places certainly doesn’t hurt, either. Three of Nevada’s most powerful legislators -- Richard Perkins, Chris Giunchigliani, and Bernie Anderson -- are all former top executives of government employee unions in Nevada.
Nevada’s government employee unions explicitly work to increase taxes, too. As the Review-Journal reported in January 2003, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, which includes five labor unions as members, “wants a 5 percent tax on business profits and a 6.8 percent tax on the investment income of people who earn more than $100,000 per year.”
In the quest to protect hefty pay raises and the tax hikes to fund them, Nevada’s unions have taken some controversial measures. In what the May 18, 2006 Review-Journal described as “the first known effort in Nevada to target a ballot initiative signature-gathering campaign at the point where signatures are gathered,” employees of a union-backed coalition were sent out to offset those people gathering signatures to put a budget-restraint initiative on the ballot.
Public-sector unions in Nevada have hinted at a willingness to break the law to secure their lavish compensation packages. As KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reported on May 14, 2003, the Clark County Education Association sent out a survey to its members asking what they would be willing to do to get more money. The survey included two strike options -- either of which, “if put into motion, would actually violate state law,” according to KLAS. In Nevada, as in most states, public school teachers are legally forbidden from striking.
Some public-employee union leaders are willing to break the law for personal enrichment, too. On May 17, 2002, the former treasurer of the American Postal Workers Union’s Las Vegas local and its state association pled guilty in federal court to embezzlement, having stolen more than $200,000 over four years. According to an October 28, 1997 report by City News Service, the former president and the former treasurer of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union Local 303, which includes both Nevada and Southern California mail handlers, were sent to prison for collectively stealing more than $93,000 in members’ dues money.
Right To Work
Nevada is a 'right to work' state. Employees in a unionized workplace cannot be forced to pay "agency fees" to the union if they refuse to be union members.
Major Unions in Nevada
