Culinary sues over Rio battle

David Strow

Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2000 | 10:47 a.m.

The Culinary Union has taken its battle to organize the Rio hotel-casino in Las Vegas to state court.

In a lawsuit filed in Clark County District Court Monday, the Culinary Union is asking a judge to force the Rio's parent company, Harrah's Entertainment Inc., to honor a "card count" of Rio employees to determine support for Culinary representation. The Rio is seeking to represent 3,000 food servers, chefs, housekeepers and bartenders at the near-Strip property.

Rio officials have attempted to convince employees that union representation is unnecessary. The Rio's sister property on the Strip, Harrah's Las Vegas, does have employees represented by the Culinary.

The union is using the Harrah's Las Vegas collective bargaining agreement as grounds for its push for a card check. In a card check, a union is recognized as the representative of workers if union officials can present signed cards from a majority of the workers calling for unionization. Unlike an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, employees do not have anonymity.

The Culinary says its contract with Harrah's Las Vegas contains language that says employees of properties owned by Harrah's in the Las Vegas area must be considered part of the Harrah's Las Vegas collective bargaining unit, subject to a card check. Moreover, the union argues that Harrah's is required by the agreement to provide the union with the names, addresses and job classifications of all employees "not hired through the union's referral service" -- in the Rio's case, all 3,000 employees the union hopes to represent.

"We have a policy of not commenting on pending lawsuits," Harrah's spokesman Gary Thompson said. "We will abide by the decision the court makes."

Harrah's refused the union's demand in a June 5 letter. In this letter, which was attached to the Culinary lawsuit, Harrah's Associate General Counsel Gerald Einsohn said the Rio wasn't obligated to provide any names to the union, since the union's contract was with Harrah's Las Vegas Inc. -- the Harrah's Entertainment subsidiary that operates Harrah's Las Vegas. The Rio is operated by a separate subsidiary.

Einsohn also said the language calling for an expedited card check was deleted from Harrah's contract with the union, and was no longer applicable.

Arguing that this response violated the union's bargaining agreement, the Culinary is demanding a court order that would force the Rio to arbitrate with the union.

The lawsuit isn't the first time the two parties have clashed in a government forum -- on June 30, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against the Rio, accusing 44 Rio management-level employees of more than 140 labor violations, all allegedly in retaliation against leaders of the organizing campaign.

The Rio denied the charges, and a hearing had been set for October. But before that hearing occurred, the NLRB delayed it until March at the request of both sides.

D. Taylor, Culinary staff director, said the union agreed to a delay because it hopes Harrah's will be able to settle with the NLRB over the next three months. If the complaint proceeds to a formal hearing, "the final verdict might not be for years," Taylor said.

"We are hopeful (Harrah's will settle), because I think that's the right thing to do," Taylor said.