Union members protest

Randy Miller was one of about 50 local union members marching Thursday to protest the lack of health-care benefits and substandard wages paid by subcontractors working on Carson-Tahoe Hospital's new regional medical center in North Carson City.

"Those guys are working for $8 an hour and they have no health benefits," he said. "If one of their family gets sick, the taxpayer will end up with the bill."

A carpenter, Miller recently moved to Northern Nevada from Hollister, Calif. He still receives union benefits from his California union hall and if it hadn't been for that, he could not have paid for his two sons' dental work, which recently totaled $1,200.

"Thank God for the union," he said. "Without their annuity program, I also wouldn't have been able to purchase our first house. I was able to sell it at profit and buy a new home in Fernley. We moved here because I want my sons to grow up in a gang-free environment."

"The hospital is making the profits, $11 million last year, and the government is subsidizing them," said Pat Falls, a Reno finish carpenter. "This isn't a union issue, it's a labor issue."

The effort was organized by a group called The Carson City Fairness Committee and the march on Carson Street included workers from Douglas County to Fernley, with representatives from a number of trades, including carpenters, painters and tapers.

The demonstrators walked from Winnie Lane to Eighth Avenue and back about mid-day. Horns honked and the men waved. Some carried a casket bearing the slogan "Corporate greed killed Carson's caring hospital."

Many are Carson City taxpayers, said Mike Witt, a spokesman for this effort.

"When workers don't make livable wages they fall back into the system, and the taxpayer ends up paying," he said. "It's not a responsible way of doing business."

Ed Epperson, chief executive officer at Carson-Tahoe, said he agrees with that philosophy, but the demonstrators have their facts wrong.

"These workers have health insurance, and they're being well paid," he said. "We provided the union the necessary information, but they have refused to acknowledge."

He said 90 percent of the dollar value of the current project, between $50 million and $60 million, is going to union contractors.

Witt disavowed any knowledge of a pending court case, but Carson City resident Cecil Hoffman and the Building Trades Council of Northern Nevada are opposing the hospital in First Judicial Court on April 19 over a wage dispute.

Because Carson City acted as an issuing agent for the $95 million in bonds to build the regional medical center, the Trades Council claims contractors and subcontractors participating in its construction should be required to pay workers state-determined prevailing wages.

Should the courts decide the Trades Council is right, Carson-Tahoe will have to pay an additional $1.7 million in wages, Epperson said.

"As a private corporation, Carson-Tahoe Hospital is exempt from the provisions of the Nevada Revised Statutes which require local governments to pay prevailing wages for public works projects," hospital officials said. "No tax dollars or other public funds are being used to finance the project."

Contact Susie Vasquez at svasquez@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.