LV resort fined for treatment of workers

Grace Leong

Friday, April 6, 2001 | 10:24 a.m.

The Las Vegas Strip's Excalibur hotel-casino will pay more than $50,000 in civil penalties and backpay to 22 of its hotel and casino workers to settle charges of workplace discrimination, the government said.

In an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC), the Excalibur agreed to pay a $20,000 fine and will provide about $30,000 in back pay to the 22 workers who were fired or suspended because they were unable to comply with the Excalibur's immigrant document production requirements.

John Trasvina, OSC's special counsel, said this was a "quick settlement," and that some of the 22 workers have either been reinstated by the hotel-casino or had found employment elsewhere.

The Justice Department said the OSC initiated investigations of the charges after a Bosnian refugee alleged in a complaint filed with the OSC on Aug. 23 that the Excalibur fired him when he could not produce a new INS work authorization card, even though he had already produced an INS Form I-94 (a departure/arrival document) stamped "employment authorized," which is "legally sufficient" to prove continuing work eligibility.

The OSC found that when Excalibur re-verified employment eligibility, the company would not accept documents other than INS-issued cards. Federal law requires employers to fulfill employment eligibility verification and re-verification requirements by accepting documents that appear genuine and that come from a list of legally acceptable documents.

Federal law prohibits employers from demanding specific documents or requiring additional ones when re-verifying the employment eligibility of their employees.

"What we found was that employers were unnecessarily requesting specific documents that were not required under the law, and illegally denying people the right to continued employment," he said. "The OSC will educate other area employers about how to comply with the law, because Las Vegas has the nation's fastest growing immigrant population."

"This is a significant problem because of the changing demographics of the country," Trasvina said. "With such a large increase in the Hispanic and Asian-American population, you'll have employers who aren't familiar with immigration laws and documents. We have a lot of such cases coming up in Nevada, Georgia and Iowa where there are newly emerging minority communities."

The Excalibur has corrected its policy to comply with federal law, the Justice Department said.

But John Marz, spokesman for Mandalay Resort Group, which owns the Excalibur, disputed the allegations. "That was more a technical error than anything else. A foreign worker has to have two forms of identification; a photo ID card and another form that shows he is authorized to work."

"But an employee identification card can satisfy both these requirements. But because his employee identification card had expired, we didn't accept it. The INS also made a mistake by first telling us we shouldn't accept the expired card, and based on that information, we made a determination that was technically wrong. We were later told that as long as there was a photo ID card, we could accept it."