The legal bills have been piling up in Richardson County.
Since 2022, this southeast Nebraska county of fewer than 8,000 people has poured at least $143,000 into fighting a lengthy and contentious legal battle – not with an out-of-state business, or problem property owners.
Richardson County is at odds with its own employees.
For nearly two years, the 16-person county road department has been locked in a union battle with the county they work for, stuck at a bargaining stalemate over a new contract and wage increases.
The union, represented by the Nebraska Association of Public Employees, will on Monday take the matter before the state commission tasked with settling labor disputes like these.
In the nearly two years of stagnant bargaining, union members haven’t had any pay raises. They’ve lost employees, often to jobs that pay more and have better benefits, local union president Bryan Dettmann said.
Meanwhile, other county employees have received raises. And county commissioners gave themselves a 40% raise from $25,151 to $34,624.
Bargaining sessions and a meeting with a federal mediator over the past two years all led to the same conclusion: The county would agree to a wage increase, according to Justin Hubly, executive director of NAPE. But the road workers would have to give up some protections – protections that labor experts consider fundamental union rights.
The chair of the county board and the county clerk both declined to comment on the matter, instead directing questions to an outside Lincoln-based attorney, Jerry Pigsley.
Pigsley, with Woods Aitken LLP, did not return calls or emails from the Flatwater Free Press seeking comment, but did respond to a public records request.
***
When Dettmann first started working for the county in 2008, the roads department was made up of about 35 people. Workers rarely left the job, he said.
“It was a good job to work. It was one of the better jobs around,” Dettmann said.
In the last five years, Dettmann said, people have left in search of better pay and benefits. They leave for jobs in agriculture and maintenance, or to work in factories.
If every job were filled, the union would have 22 members. They’ve dwindled down to 16, Dettmann said.
Monday won’t be the first time the roads union has gone before the Commission of Industrial Relations – the state commission that resolves labor disputes between government agencies and public employees. In 2023, the union alleged the county was engaging in prohibited bargaining practices, after confusion and finger pointing over who was responsible for a holdup in negotiating raises.
In its findings, the commission agreed that some things said by county officials leading up to that hearing were “unwise, unnecessary, and made out of frustration.” It called the county’s handling of union issues “troubling,” and said management should be “trained to not make such statements that may be construed as anti-union.”
“But that does not mean they were in violation of state law,” the commission wrote in its final order. “Communication is often at the heart of these problems, and it is certainly the source of the problem here.”
The commission dismissed the case in November 2023.
As this was all happening, the union and the county were still going back and forth on when to start contract negotiations.
Over the course of two bargaining sessions and one session with a federal mediator, the county had one version of a contract in mind, Hubly said.
They would agree to a wage increase – both parties landed on a roughly $5 per hour increase for union members. The wage increase would not be retroactive, the county demanded. And it wouldn’t take effect until an entire contract was signed and agreed upon.
The county’s ideal contract included removing things like overtime and holiday pay; giving up the right to five days of paid injury leave. It would remove safety precautions, including standard language from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
It would also let the county commissioners be the final decision maker in all grievances – normally, a neutral panel would decide disputes.
The county also wanted the union to waive a key right for public sector unions: The right to turn to the CIR.
“There is one tool in the toolbox under state law for public employees, and that’s to go to the CIR for relief,” Hubly said. Under state law, public employees can’t strike. “They’re taking away our only recourse that we have.”
***
In Nebraska, 16 out of 93 counties have a unionized roads department – that’s about 281 employees, according to a 2021 study by the Nebraska Association of County Officials.
Elaine Menzel, legal counsel for the association, said it’s rare to see counties in labor disputes. She rarely sees those disputes reach the CIR.
Nebraska has rules for public sector unions. State statute lays out the issues employers and unions are required to bargain over, and requires that both parties bargain in good faith.
“This sounds like a textbook case of bad faith bargaining on behalf of the Richardson County Commissioners,” said Jim Begley, director of the William Brennan Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Begley spent 16 years in human resources for the City of Omaha. At UNO, he specializes in labor rights and union education.
“I’ve never heard of an instance of an employer trying to dictate the terms of negotiations to this degree,” he said. “There’s always going to be a back and forth, it’s a negotiation. Neither side gets everything they want. But this is a category unto itself.”
Since March 2022, Richardson County has spent at least $143,000 on attorney fees and a labor consultant, according to County Board meeting minutes. The county’s road and bridge budget, which covers those legal fees, had a $4 million budget in 2023.
“I’m blown away,” said Tony Burkhalter, president of the Nebraska Public Employees Union, which represents some county employees in Nebraska. “As a taxpayer, you never want to see a waste of taxpayer dollars going out the door to argue over ($5 an hour). (The lawyer) doesn’t get paid to resolve them in a day. He gets paid by the hour.”
A $5 an hour raise for 14 employees would equal about $145,600 in a year – just shy of what the county has spent on attorney fees since 2022.
“If there was a financial issue, I would have expected them to say, ‘look, we can’t afford it, here’s why,’” Hubly said. “What they’re doing is saying, ‘we would rather spend the amount of the raises on a lawyer to fight this.’ That’s just stubbornness, and it’s not serving the taxpayers well.”
The county commissioners have approved raises for other employees in the time since the union’s bargaining stalemate started. The county clerk’s salary increased from $57,113 in 2022 to $73,633 in 2024. Clerk’s office staff got about a $5 hourly raise in that same time frame. Clerical workers across county departments got anywhere from a $1.50 to $4 hourly increase.
The commissioners also approved raises for themselves: from $25,151 in 2022 to $35,316 in 2024. That’s a 40% wage increase for a three-person board that meets weekly.
In a phone call, County Commissioner John Caverzagie said the raise was “very justifiable,” but that he wouldn’t comment further until the labor litigation was over with.
In neighboring Nemaha County, a county roughly the same size as 7,689-person Richardson, commissioners are paid $27,162.
“Working with these men throughout this entire dispute, it is the thing that enrages them the most,” Hubly said of the road department workers. “The words that they have used to describe their feelings on this matter aren’t appropriate for publication.”
The Seacrest Greater Nebraska reporter covers issues across the state of Nebraska. It is named in honor of philanthropist Rhonda Seacrest and her late husband James, who proudly led several Nebraska newspapers through Western Publishing for 40 years.
