Culinary offers to make peace with Frontier

Friday, Jan. 30, 1998 | 9:54 a.m.

Reveling in victory, but willing to let bygones be bygones, the Culinary Union today offered an olive branch to the owners of the Frontier hotel-casino.

The peace offering involves the union perhaps sacrificing some of the federal court-ordered sanctions against the Strip resort for unfair labor practices in exchange for hammering out a resolution to end the bitter 4-year strike.

The move comes on the heels of a ruling released Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that the Frontier broke the law when it cut off workers' pension contributions, imposed work rules and spied on union members before the start of the strike.

Richard McCracken, attorney for the nearly 550 striking food and beverage workers of Culinary Local 226, said the total due would be several million dollars.

"It is a definite possibility (the hotel could not survive having to make such a payment)," McCracken said, noting that the appeal's court decision is final pending a possible review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The high court reviews about 110 of the 5,000 cases submitted each year, and this is not the type of case that generally gets reviewed, he said.

The 3-0 ruling also found that the Frontier's appeal of a National Labor Relations Board ruling in the case was meritless and frivolous. The court ordered the hotel to reimburse the NLRB and two labor unions for their legal fees and double their court costs.

The hotel also must restore the pension money and repay workers for losses suffered under the work rules.

McCracken said the court's findings deal with a period in which the hotel's owners, the Elardi family, had in their employ an attorney, who, he said, may have given them bad advice from 1990 until he left in 1994.

"All of what happened during that period is coming home to roost," McCracken said. "But we are willing to work together with the Elardis, who are now in an impossible position, rather than stomp them. We want to help rescue the business."

McCracken said he believes the strikers, some of whom have been on the line for several years, will support the peace offering because "all they have ever wanted is a decent contract comparable to what is being offered at other hotels."

"They realize that to try to extract a pound of flesh, they may be ripping it out of their own bodies, because they will be out there even longer. They want to go back to work."

The appeals court decision comes less than a week after the NLRB ruled against the hotel's pre-strike actions involving the other two unions in the strike.

That ruling also requires the Frontier to restore several million dollars in pensions, health benefits and wages, said Gerald Goldman, lawyer for 85 to 90 unionized employees in a wide range of jobs.

Michael Taylor, attorney for the hotel, declined comment on the court's ruling, saying he had not seen it. He said the hotel probably would ask the NLRB to reconsider last week's decision.

About 500 workers went on strike Sept. 21, 1991, protesting wages and work rules and the lack of a contract. The unions still maintain picket lines round-the-clock despite a lack of progress toward a settlement for two years.

The ruling involved the hotel's actions after June 1989, when its contract with the Culinary and Bartenders unions expired.