Judge restricts Frontier pickets

Bill Gang

Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998 | 11:14 a.m.

After courtroom bickering over the pickets at the Frontier Hotel began to sound more like schoolyard squabbles than legal arguments, District Judge Myron Leavitt limited the strikers' playground.

The judge modified his injunction in the 15-month-old Culinary Union strike to prohibit pickets from any activities in the driveways leading to the Strip resort.

At the same time, Leavitt declined to take away the sticks the pickets use to carry their signs but which Frontier officials complained are actually weapons or tools of destruction.

The strike issue landed in court again as Frontier attorneys sought to restrict the pickets' activities. Frontier attorney Steven Cohen produced a security videotape showing strikers destroying lights and "listening devices' at the edge of hotel property and wielding the sticks like clubs in name calling stand-offs with security guards.

Union attorney Richard McCracken countered that the incidents shown actually were provoked by Frontier employees but those parts were carefully edited from the video.

Even Frontier Hotel partowner Thomas Elardi admitted goading pickets and union officials in front of his embattled resort.

Under questioning by union attorney Tom Pitaro, Elardi said that he takes "any opportunity ... to bust their chops" while arguing over the bitter dispute, which he claims has escalated in recent weeks.

But while Elardi was asking Leavitt to slap the union with a contempt of court citation, the judge repeated his earlier statement that "the court is not going to act as a policeman in this case."

He said that while "frustration doesn't justify criminal activity," Metro Police is the proper agency for the hotel to call if there is illegal activ ity.

Cohen, however, complained that a recent cutback in Metro's presence at the hotel because of budgetary problems has contributed to the increase in incidents that brought the case back to court

He said the blocking of driveways by pickets -

graphically depicted in the videotape - wasn't as much of a problem until Metro discontinued its full-time patrols at the Frontier.

It was the blockading that eventually got to the judge, despite McCracken's excuse that the violation of the judge's original court order was only the fault of a few and would not occur again.

Cohen countered that McCracken has used the same justification in the past.

"The one thing that's not being done is your order being enforced," he told the judge. "Put some teeth in your order. Show the union your order means something."

"Blocking is the exception, not the rule," Pitaro said.

But Leavitt said the pickets "don't seem to understand they are not to do that.

"Apparently they are willfully blocking the entrances," the judge said before altering his order to prohibit any union activity in the driveways.

Although the video showed pickets clogging the entrances and directing would-be customers away from the property, Elardi said the situation peaked last weekend when one striker leaped onto the hood of a patron's car and covered the windshield with a picket sign.

McCracken tried to dissuade Leavitt's order by vowing that disobedient pickets would be kicked off the strike line and lose their union benefits.

But McCracken stopped short of committing to such a course of action against the pickets who were shown on the videotape ripping up plants, smashing lights and sprinklers and tossing trash into the hotel parking lot.

In the end, the judge changed one of the rules and indicated the parties should go back to the hotel and play nice.