Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board adds collective bargaining agreements to its website

The State of Nevada Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board (EMRB) today announced that more than 200 current collective bargaining agreements negotiated between Nevada local governments and their respective employee unions have been uploaded to their website.

Each fall, every union representing local government employees is required by law to file a copy of its current collective bargaining agreements with the EMRB. According to Commissioner Bruce Snyder, who took office in November 2013, the agency for years had simply filed them away in a cabinet. “Now, however, they are available to anyone at any time, thus allowing the public and anyone wishing to conduct research full access to every provision of every contract.”

Board Secretary Marisu Romualdez Abellar, who did the work of uploading the documents, stated, “The documents are categorized by type of local government, such as school districts, cities, counties and special districts, so that you can find similar types of collective bargaining agreements next to each other.” The collective bargaining agreements may be found via a link on the agency’s website, emrb.nv.gov.

The Governor recently signed into law SB 158, which increases transparency in collective bargaining by requiring a local government to post on its website certain information at least three days before the local government votes on any new or amended collective bargaining agreement. The information includes the text of the proposed agreement as well as any supporting materials such as the fiscal impact of the agreement. Commissioner Snyder stated, “Placing the existing agreements on our website supplements this goal of making collective bargaining more transparent to the public year round.”

About the EMRB

The EMRB, a division of the Department of Business and Industry, is the state agency involved in the process of collective bargaining and labor relations for local government employers, local government employees and employee organizations or unions. The goal of the EMRB is to foster the collective bargaining process, to provide support those involved in the process, and to resolves dispute between local governments, employee organizations, and individual employees as they arise.

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