Metzenbaum: Slate clean on Frontier

Thursday, Sept. 25, 1997 | 10:55 a.m.

Former Sen. Howard Metzenbaum says he hopes a special AFL-CIO committee he heads will be able to resolve the six-year Frontier hotel-casino strike.

The 80-year-old Ohio Democrat tops a list of prominent Americans, including former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, chosen to investigate alleged wrongdoing by the Frontier during the nation's longest-running labor dispute.

"We would hope that in some way we will bring about a settlement of the strike," Metzenbaum said Wednesday from Washington.

Metzenbaum, chairman of the Consumer Federation of America, a Washington-based advocacy group that represents 50 million people across the United States, said he knows little about the bitter Frontier labor dispute.

"My slate is 100 percent clear," he said. "I start off knowing there has been a long strike."

Metzenbaum, who retired from the Senate in 1994 with a reputation as one of its more liberal members, pledged to conduct fair hearings in Washington and Las Vegas on behalf of the nation's largest labor organization.

He said he will try to persuade Frontier owner Margaret Elardi and her sons, Tom and John, to participate.

"I would hope in some way to bring the Elardis into the process in a friendly and cooperative way," he said.

Metzenbaum insisted the panel will operate independently, though he acknowledged he doesn't know yet how the investigation will be funded. He suggested he might seek private donations.

In announcing the creation of the committee Wednesday, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, the No. 2 man in the 13 million-member labor group, said he still is searching for additional panel members.

Others who already have committed are former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio, California Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante, Detroit City Council President Mary Ann Mahaffey, NAACP President Kweisi MFume and Monsignor George Higgins of the Catholic University of America.

Trumka urged the panel to investigate alleged "law-breaking" by the Frontier and said he expected the investigation would raise "serious questions" about Nevada's casino regulatory system.

Trumka, among the top labor bosses who have walked the picket line during the strike, has been critical of Nevada's Gaming Control Board for not taking disciplinary action against the Frontier.

A series of SUN stories last year disclosed that Frontier officials allegedly spied and played dirty tricks on Culinary Union strikers.

The Control Board reportedly has drawn up a complaint seeking revocation of the Frontier's license and is expected to make a decision soon on whether to file it. The FBI also is conducting an investigation.

Frontier lawyer Richard Wright said Wednesday he is confident the AFL-CIO committee will find that the Elardi family has done nothing wrong.

The AFL-CIO wants the panel to deliver its findings to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which was set up by Congress to study gaming over the next two years.

Control Board Chairman Bill Bible and international Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer John Wilhelm serve on that nine-member committee.

Nevada's two Democratic senators, meanwhile, have mixed feelings about the AFL-CIO panel.

"I'm very disappointed that an outside group had to come to address the situation and that it wasn't resolved on a state level," Sen. Harry Reid said. "I have urged a resolution to this in the past on the state level, and this is exactly what I was worried would happen."

Sen. Richard Bryan said he believes the labor committee could be helpful in resolving the strike.

"Clearly, the people on this committee are people of stature," Bryan said. "I'm very supportive of their efforts to bring this strike to closure."

Bryan added: "It's time that this boil be lanced. It has festered too long, and too many people have been hurt as a consequence."

The creation of the committee has raised the spirits of the strikers.

"It's strengthened the resolve of everyone to have the continued support of the labor movement to see this thing to its end," said Joe Daugherty, the Culinary Union's strike coordinator at the Frontier.

Daugherty and a half-dozen strikers traveled to Pittsburgh for the AFL-CIO's biennial convention this week to be on hand when Trumka named the committee's members.

Not everyone shares Daugherty's view.

Charles Muth, a Republican consultant and communications director for the Nevada GOP, called the AFL-CIO committee a "kangaroo court" stacked with "liberal, Democratic has-beens."

"It's the union's cheap theatrics and over-heated rhetoric that is most harmful to gaming and our economy," Muth said. "The AFL-CIO's new kangaroo court is just one more in a long line of self-serving public relations schemes that do nothing to further a resolution of this dispute."