The monthslong standoff between the Clark County School District and the teachers’ union was certainly a spectacle — a spectacle that included an illegal “sickout” among teachers, lawsuits filed on both sides and some questionably timed campaign contributions to boot. 

Now that it is all over and an arbitrator has approved a new contract for the district’s teachers, it’s understandable that everyone involved would begin thinking about ways we might reform collective bargaining in the public sector. 

Clark County Superintendent Jesus Jara told The Las Vegas Sun that he would like to see more transparency for the public in future negotiations. The union, on the other hand, would like to partially repeal a 1969 law that prohibits public sector workers from going on strike, so the next time it organizes a sickout it doesn’t have to worry about getting shot down by a judge. 

Jara might be highly unpopular among teachers, the public and elected officials (all for good reason) but his call for greater transparency makes far more sense than the union’s push to legalize strikes. In fact, the idea that contract negotiations are not already open to the public is almost dumbfounding. 

Nevada’s open meeting law requires government business to be conducted in public view — especially if it relates in any way to setting budgets, allocating funds or approving expenditures. And yet, salary negotiations that determine how the overwhelming bulk of an agency’s money is spent take place completely behind closed doors. 

The result is a process that leaves the public, taxpayers and even workers themselves in the dark and encourages bad faith negotiation among virtually everyone involved. 

Considering that Clark County Education Association Executive Director John Vellardita has accused the district of  “consistently bargain[ing] in bad faith,” one might think the union would be inclined to support Jara’s recent calls for greater public oversight. However, one would be wrong. 

Instead, union leadership is pushing forward with legal action and a petition to allow the sort of rolling sickouts that recently landed the union in court. 

Worker strikes are, of course, a major tool for traditional unions. In the private sector, that tool can be crucial in convincing otherwise obstinate employers to consider certain worker demands. However, in the government sector when workers go on strike, they aren’t merely making life difficult for some corporate board or CEO — they’re inflicting direct harm on the public itself. 

After all, a teacher strike isn’t the same thing as Culinary closing down a casino. A strike among hospitality workers would certainly inconvenience the operators of a resort, but teachers walking off the job forces kids out of classrooms — a result that disproportionately impacts underprivileged families and communities. 

More affluent families with flexible schedules and disposable income, for example, can likely adjust to a few unscheduled days of no school in the event of a teacher strike. However, a single mom who had a shift scheduled and can’t afford someone to help with child care would have her world turned upside down. 

Critically, the union is only asking for teachers to be exempted from the 1969 law, and it’s easy to see why: In other government areas, the consequences of a strike would be disastrous. Police or firefighters refusing to show up, for example, wouldn’t be a mere inconvenience for the public, it could be life threatening. And that’s why strikes have been outlawed in the public sector for the last 55 years. 

Government services — such as fire protection, police and, yes, even education — are so critical for those who depend on them, their continuity shouldn’t be subject to labor disputes. Injuring or disrupting the lives of those who rely on public services is simply not a justifiable negotiation tactic. 

Nor is it particularly effective.  

The union’s recent “rolling sickouts,” for example, clearly didn’t encourage Jara and the school board to acquiesce to union demands. Instead, it merely disrupted the education of children and contributed to the chaos of a monthslong standoff between the union and district officials. And to Jara’s point, the utter lack of transparency in the current process means the public — the very same people impacted by those rolling sickouts — were completely shut out of negotiations. 

However, just because the union is circulating a petition doesn’t mean it’s actually serious about letting teachers legally strike. Much like its 2020 petition to increase the gaming and sales tax rates, the union could be using this petition as leverage to change other laws related to collective bargaining. Indeed, Vellardita said as much in a recent interview with Channel 13 in Las Vegas. 

“Part of the idea around filing this ballot initiative and then presenting it to the 2025 legislative session as well as the executive branch is to see if there is an alternative that we could land on,” he explained.  

It’s probably not the alternative the union has in mind, but taking Jara at his word and opening negotiations up to the public would be a good place to start — unless the school district wasn’t the only one bargaining “in bad faith.” 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.