Gaming’s positives for economy listed

Gary Thompson

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 1998 | 11:39 a.m.

Las Vegans gave a mixed but generally upbeat picture of gaming's contribution to Southern Nevada's job market Tuesday.

Newly elected state Sen. Maggie Carlton presented a stirring defense of the casino industry and drew hearty applause from several hundred Culinary Union members attending a National Gambling Impact Study Commission meeting here.

So did Culinary Research Director Courtney Alexander, who offered compelling statistics indicating Southern Nevada union members fare far better than their non-union counterparts working in the hotel-casino industry elsewhere.

Even perennial casino critic Sen. Joe Neal delivered a surprisingly mild rebuke to the gaming industry and said he wasn't opposed to it, although he does want it barred from participating in the political process.

Neal kicked off the hour-long session, one of several the federal panel is conducting during its two-day series of hearings in Las Vegas, with a charge that casinos have created "an atmosphere of arrogance" by exercising political influence.

In a thinly veiled slap at one of his favorite targets -- the $300 million art collection at Mirage Resorts' Bellagio -- Neal criticized the "deification of the Strip with Gauguins and Monets and all that art stuff."

He raised eyebrows with the claim that he's "never seen blacks working in hotels in the 44 years I've worked here" and said casinos should allocate 1 percent of their gross profits to social projects.

Alexander said 36 percent of the Culinary Union's members are white, 35 percent Hispanic, 16 percent black and 13 percent Asian.

She said Culinary members working in Nevada earn an average wage of $9.14 an hour, 42 percent higher than the $6.45 average paid to similar hotel and restaurant workers in the rest of the United States.

With higher union membership, Strip wage rates average $11.64 an hour and those of neighborhood casinos are $9.65 an hour, Alexander said.

Nevada union workers also receive better health and pension benefits than non-union members, she added.

Alexander noted a UNLV study released Tuesday indicates that, including direct and indirect employment impact, gaming is responsible for employing more than 60 percent of Nevada's total workforce.

Carlton said her family's move to Nevada from Missouri has "allowed us to achieve a middle-class dream .. in one of the few places in the country where a waitress can afford a house."

She said that before getting a job at Mirage's Treasure Island resort, she'd worked as a waitress "for minimum wage or less. And no matter how hard we worked, we could never have attained this standard of living" if it weren't for the gaming industry.

"This is a city where opportunity is still abundant," she said. "But there'd be no opportunity in Las Vegas without gaming. The difference between dead-end jobs and good jobs like my own is the union."

Community activist Otis Harris said he lives in a minority community "that has never benefited from gambling in Las Vegas."

He criticized the spending of tens of millions of dollars in public funds in downtown Las Vegas "for the benefit of the gaming industry, while nearby areas look like Mississippi in the 1940s."

"I'm also frustrated because I can see our industry going to other states ... and we're going to start losing jobs," he said.

Father William Kenney, who worked as a keno writer and cage cashier at the Horseshoe before becoming a Catholic priest, said, "Las Vegas is just like any other city in the Southwest U.S. It's as unfair to judge all of Las Vegas by the Strip as it is to judge New Orleans by Bourbon Street."

He said the 24-hour nature of Southern Nevada's leading industry opens up more jobs at competitive wages, contributing to one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

"Las Vegas was a great place in which to grow up and an even greater place today because it offers more opportunities," Kenney said.