Mediator Spotlight:

Las Vegas has become "an oasis in the desert" for FMCS activity. Much of this has been headed up by Commissioner Lavonne Ritter who relocated from Orange County, CA to Las Vegas, NV in April 1996.

Since that move, Commissioner Ritter has been involved in many dispute mediation cases as well as providing preventive mediation and facilitation of labor-management committees and partnership teams for a variety of customers.

One project in which Ritter plays a key role is the Southern Nevada Labor Alliance, a partnership involving Bechtel Nevada Corporation and the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council. The partnership is patterned after the National Labor Alliance established by the Bechtel Construction Company and the Building and Construction Trades, AFL-CIO in 1992. Commissioner Ritter trained and facilitated several Continuous Improvement Committees to successful conclusion of their goals during the first 8 months of 1996. The parties have recently engaged in Interest-Based Bargaining training to assist them in their upcoming negotiations of some 30 project labor agreements in construction, as well as Maintenance & Operations.

Significant indications of the Alliance’s successes are a decline in grievances from an average of 100 per year to just one in 1996; the development of several new training programs for workers; a decrease in the number of recordable work-related injuries and illnesses from about 15 per 200,000 job hour to 3 per 200,000 job hours in 1996.

"Since Bechtel took over the contract with the Department of Energy to manage the Nevada Test Site and its related locations, a sea change in labor relations philosophy has taken place between the Building Trades and the employer," says Ritter. "Bechtel’s approach to unions as "value added" at their worksites represents a dramatic change for labor relations in Southern Nevada."

Other parties in the region are also pursuing cooperative approaches in their collective bargaining relationships. To mention a few: CSR and Teamsters Local 631 have embarked on a successful partnership; Anderson Dairy and Teamsters Local 14 have successfully pursued a labor-management incentive committee approach to savings; Hoover Dam (Bureau of Reclamation) and their AFGE local has continued to pursue and improve their ongoing partnership; Metropolitan Police Department and its Associations are using the Interest-Based Bargaining process in their negotiations; and many other parties have opted to pursue grievance mediation as a pre-arbitration step in their grievance procedures. FMCS activity in dispute mediation cases has grown significantly as well in the last year.

Commissioner Ritter has been with FMCS for nine years. Prior to joining the Service, she spent nine years as a private sector management advocate in the collective-bargaining/human resources arena and 13 years as a union advocate in the public sector. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Relations and Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco.

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Last modified: February 19, 1998