Speakers address 6-year-old Frontier strike

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 1997 | 9:12 a.m.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., renewed his cry Monday for hearings before Nevada's gaming regulators, saying if allegations are true, the hotel should be subject to penalties including having its gaming license revoked. That won him hearty applause from the 225 labor leaders meeting at the Tropicana.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenny Guinn vowed that if the strike isn't settled and he is elected in 1998, his No. 1 priority will be to personally help resolve it.

Afterward he denied his comments were criticism of Gov. Bob Miller, who asked a national arbitrator to help settle the strike. The negotiator was unsuccessful.

Guinn said he wouldn't go as far as Reid, calling for gaming hearings and penalties if the allegations are true.

Reid, a former Gaming Commission chairman, said the air needs to be cleared about allegations raised by the union.

"How can you put human excrement in picketers' food? How can you wiretap employees? How can you doctor evidence? It doesn't seem to me that we want gaming licensees doing that," Reid said.

"It would seem to me that if it was untrue, the Frontier people should be clamoring for hearings," he said.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, a Democratic contender for governor, said she couldn't speak publicly about her role in efforts to settle the strike because of attorney-client privilege. Her office represents the gaming regulators.

But she said Guinn's comments to personally involve himself in the strike negotiations were "a slap in the face to Bob Miller."

"Don't you think that Governor Miller would try everything he could to settle the strike?" she said, asking what Guinn could do that would be different than Miller.

Guinn said he wasn't privy to what steps Miller and gaming regulators have taken to resolve the strike, but he believed his 30 years of experience dealing with labor and management issues helps him see both sides.

Guinn reluctantly disclosed afterward he has accepted campaign funds from the Elardi family, owners of the Frontier.

Even Democratic House Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri used his time before labor leaders to urge them to keep up the fight.

"You are winning this thing for the unions of America, not just unions in Las Vegas," he said.