Teamsters target Mandalay Bay

David Strow

Monday, Oct. 25, 1999 | 11:38 a.m.

In the public eye the Strip is viewed as friendly ground for unions. And one of the friendliest has been Mandalay Resort Group, formerly Circus Circus Enterprises Inc.

But organizers at two local unions attempting to organize on the Strip say things aren't as they seem. These unions -- the Teamsters and Operating Engineers -- say they're fought heavily every step of the way along Las Vegas Boulevard. Now their most contentious battle is being waged at Mandalay Bay -- flagship resort of Mandalay Resort Group.

"We're seeing a very vicious anti-union campaign, in which all stops have been removed on the part of the employer," said Mike Magnani, secretary-treasurer for Teamsters Local 995. "We will not quit until we have that unit organized. If it means we have to take some kind of economic action, we'll do that. But we will do what's necessary to organize those people."

Mandalay Resort Group says the Teamsters are exaggerating.

"We have historically had a great relationship with the Teamster union," said Mandalay Resort Group spokeswoman Sarah Ralston. "It's disappointing that some individuals with that group (the Teamsters) have chosen to take a matter that is really up to the employees outside of the company. In the end it's the employees who will decide what to do."

The Operating Engineers recently won the right to represent 60 workers at the resort, winning a National Labor Relations Board election in June. The Teamsters have been battling to organize about 400 Mandalay Bay workers since this summer, including valet parkers, front desk clerks, reservations clerks, warehouse workers and laborers.

Officials at the unions say they usually run into a ferocious campaign when they attempt to organize a new property, and are virtually always forced to go to an election overseen by the NLRB -- a stark contrast to the card check procedure considered standard by the Culinary Union.

"They're all going to have an anti-union campaign ... all the companies will fight us," said Ray Isner, organizer for Teamsters Local 995. "We were hoping that we could have a campaign on the issues, not on terrorism, and that's what we're getting from the properties.

"They'll have a card check for 4,000 Culinary employees, and an election for seven Teamsters."

"The general public hears (Strip casinos) are union friendly, but when they're willing to pay that kind of money (to consultants) to keep certain unions out, it makes you wonder," said Mike Russell, business representative at Operating Engineers Local 501.

But Ralston said Mandalay Bay doesn't plan to break with card check tradition with the Teamsters, and said the resort will hold an election as soon as the Teamsters present election cards signed by more than 30 percent of the employees affected.

"It's rare that an issue like this would even get contentious, because the unions understand and the employer understands that employees have a free will in this matter, and they will vote their conscience in this matter," Ralston said. "Unions that operate that way, and employers that operate that way, typically don't have problems.

"It is atypical for us to have an issue with the Teamsters union."

Growing in strength

Along the Strip and downtown, Culinary is the undisputed union leader, with some 45,000 members in 44 hotel-casinos in Las Vegas.

But numerous properties on and off the Strip do not have Culinary contracts. They include: The Venetian, Imperial Palace, all four Station Casinos properties, the Rio, Hard Rock, Fiesta, Orleans, Gold Coast, Santa Fe, Resort at Summerlin and Sam's Town.

By comparison, the Teamsters have 4,000 members, while the Operating Engineers have 1,500.

Only three newer resorts -- Excalibur, Luxor and Paris Las Vegas -- have Teamster contracts. The union has been growing substantially in the past several years, however, boosting its membership in Las Vegas by 30 percent in two years. Many of those gains have been at local rental car chains.

D. Taylor, staff director at Culinary Local 226, said his union's breakthrough along the Strip came in 1989, when Steve Wynn began building the Mirage.

"It's hard to believe now, but at the time, the Mirage was the first new property in 30 years on the Strip, and our No. 1 priority was to make sure that was organized," Taylor said.

While negotiating with Mirage, the Culinary pushed for, and won, a key concession from the company. Rather than taking the matter to an NLRB election, Mirage agreed to recognize the union if a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted union representation.

Culinary used the Mirage organization as a springboard for expansion, making the card check standard practice on the Strip.

By comparison, the Teamsters say they're rarely granted card checks. One property that did grant the union that right was Paris Las Vegas, the Teamsters' newest property.

Along the Strip, relations between the Culinary and many large resorts are warm. Alan Feldman, spokesman for Mirage Resorts Inc., said the Culinary wins allies by working in concert with the resorts.

"They say, 'We will bring value to your company with this relationship, and we'll work together,"' Feldman said. "The preamble to their contract states, 'We come to this contract as partners, with united objectives.'

"Our relationship with the Culinary Union evolved over time, and in the course of that evolution, we've forged a real partnership."

At a time when warm relations between the Culinary and Wynn were being forged, relations with the Teamsters and Operating Engineers were badly damaged. In the mid-1980s, the two unions walked out on the Golden Nugget, then Wynn's flagship property.

"There is usually some frustration with any strike, but there was an exceptional amount of frustration with that strike," Magnani said. "I'm not sure who was to blame or not blame."

Today, neither union has a contract in any property owned by Mirage Resorts.

"Their position is, we did them wrong, and we're paying for it," Russell said. "That's probably the thing that made (Wynn) unhappy. There isn't any other union in any of his other properties. The only one in there is the Culinary."

Feldman said he wasn't familiar with the 1980s strike, and couldn't comment on whether it permanently poisoned relations between the two unions and Mirage.

"I can tell you that a strike would certainly be high on the things that would hurt a relationship," Feldman said. "Our point of view is that if you have differences, you sit at the table and work them out. Refusing to do your work is not the way to build a relationship."

He added, however, that no recent effort has been made by either union to organize at the Mirage properties. The Teamsters plan to change that.

"One day, we'll be visiting the Wynn properties again," Magnani said.

War on the Strip

The Teamsters claim they run into resistance whenever they attempt to organize at new properties, but the effort at Mandalay Bay is proving unusually contentious.

Parent company Mandalay Resort Group has Teamster contracts at Circus Circus, Excalibur and Luxor, and both sides say they've had good relations for decades.

Despite this, the union accuses Mandalay's flagship resort of conducting a heavy campaign for the past two months designed to keep its employees from voting for union representation.

Isner claims Mandalay Bay employees are being compelled to attend two to three-hour meetings regularly, where company officials attempt to convince them that representation isn't necessary. Both the Teamsters and Operating Engineers claim employees are told that popular supervisors will be fired if employees vote for representation.

"There's a tremendous amount of intimidation," Isner said. "Employees will call me crying, wanting their cards (calling for union representation) back. Eventually, a lot of that anti-union stuff starts getting to the employees."

Magnani even claimed that some employees, upon turning on their computers in the morning, were greeted with a blinking message: "No union."

"Employees there have told us pure horror stories as to what they've been through," Magnani said. "That makes them come looking for us even harder."

Ralston said she was not aware of allegations made by the Teamsters relating to individual employees.

"But we are a long-time union employer in this state, with no need to approach a situation like this in a way that would be anything less than professional," she said.

That doesn't mean Mandalay Bay is neutral in the matter.

Ralston acknowledged that the resort's employees are attending human resources meetings to address the union organizing issue, but said that these meetings occur on the company's time, not the employees'.

"The company has a responsibility to make sure that in the situation where employees will be expected to compare and contrast wage and benefit packages, they are fully aware of where they stand, vis a vis where an alternative proposal might be," Ralston said. "In the case of some of the employee classes you're referring to, it's pretty clear that the employees are given superior wages and comparable benefits to what's being offered (by the Teamsters)."

These kinds of meetings are not unusual during an organizing campaign. Often, properties will bring in outside consultants to help sway employees against unions. Labor Department records show that one such consulting company in Boulder City netted $300,000 in fees from Excalibur, $300,000 from Luxor, $500,000 from MGM Grand and $625,000 from the Rio over the past two years. It isn't known if Mandalay Bay has hired any consultants in its current efforts.

Even Mirage, with its pro-union image, has employed such consultants in the past, according to company officials. In 1992 and 1993, Mirage embarked on a campaign to convince its stage hands against representation, Feldman said.

"The work rules they were insisting on would really put our shows at risk," Feldman said. "We believed the union offered nothing in terms of wages and benefits ... they offered less than what we offered."

Isner's heard it before.

"If the hotels could pay the employees less in benefits and wages than they do now, why don't they bring them down here and sign them up?" Isner said. "If we're so bad, why don't they sign them up? The only way companies can win is with fear and intimidation."

Isner claimed companies resist the Teamsters because of the rich benefits Teamster contracts carry.

"Teamsters have the best pension plan on the Strip, by far," Isner said. "We have a Cadillac medical plan that is superior to any other medical plan on the Strip, at no cost to the employee.

"We come with a great pension plan, a great medical plan and, we feel, great representation. For whatever reason, the companies fight that very vigorously."

Taylor insisted that the Culinary isn't immune from company resistance. The union is still carrying on a high-profile war against the Venetian, and runs into stiff resistance when it tries to move into off-Strip properties.

"We have enormous battles any time we go into non-union properties," Taylor said. "Each and every company will fight you."

Marty Levitt, a former company labor consultant now working as a union advisor, said the issue is not money, but power, because the cost of waging the campaign far exceeds what a company would surrender through a union contract.

"Most employers realize that if they go head-to-head with the Culinary, it's going to be disruptive," Levitt said. "When they can take on these smaller unions ... here's where they can say, 'We'll fight you, we're not going to let these little guys get the same luxury of employee rights that the Culinary gets.'

"I was a union buster for 20 years, and it wasn't about bottom line or profit. It was about obsession for control."

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