Union gets cash boost

David Clayton

Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998 | 12:02 p.m.

First published on March 18, 1992.

With the $8 million pledged today by the president of their international union, the 542 strikers picketing the Frontier Hotel can hold out for three more years, a local union official says.

"By that time, the Elardis will be belly up," said Scott MacKenzie, political coordinator of Culinary Union Local 226. He was referring to Margaret Elardi and her son, Tom, who own and manage the Frontier.

The money was pledged today after Ed Hanley, president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, praised the measures taken by the union local to cut costs in order to keep the strike going.

Heading into its seventh month, the strike has depleted the local's funds but not its determination, MacKenzie said. Strikers, who are paid $200 a week if they put in 30 hours of picketing, are paying higher union dues and union officials have taken 10 percent pay cuts, MacKenzie said.

"The Elardis' strategy right from the start was to wait us out, starve us into submission," MacKenzie said. "We tightened our belt and the international union rewarded our determination."

MacKenzie said the Elardis had predicted March 1 as the day by which the local union would go bust.

"But our message is, we are alive and well and stronger than ever," MacKenzie said.

The $8 million will go into the local union's strike fund, where it will be used primarily to continue the picketers' salaries. The pledge means the union can now begin putting the dues it collects into savings, instead of converting them, at a deficit pace, into picketers' paychecks.

Counting simply the $8 million, the strike could easily continue for 18 months, MacKenzie said. But counting the indirect benefit of saved dues, the pledge guarantees the strike could last up to three years, he said.

The money will be used strictly for prolonging the strike, and not for raises for picketers or union officials, MacKenzie said.

Strikers are seeking parity in relationship with other hotels on the Strip in the areas of salaries, benefits and working conditions.