Casino firm progressing in industry diversity drive

Kevin Ferguson

Monday, Aug. 13, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

When the local president of the NAACP criticized Las Vegas-based casino operator MGM Grand Inc. for not hiring enough minority contractors last year, Gene Collins' comments were "taken to heart."

"That served as a wake-up call," MGM MIRAGE Vice Chairman Danny Wade said Friday at a Las Vegas convention on diversity in the gambling industry.

At the end of a Collins speech last year before gaming regulators considering the merger of MGM Grand and Mirage Resorts Inc., MGM Grand Chairman and Chief Executive Terrance Lanni put Wade in charge of the casino giant's diversity program.

"(Since then), we have stumbled and made mistakes, but I promise we are making progress and doing what we can to diversify our employment and to help others do the same," Wade said.

Prior to November, about 1.5 percent of MGM MIRAGE's purchasing dollars went to companies owned by women or minorities, Wade said.

Between November and June 1, that percentage jumped to 10.9 percent, involving the purchasing of $380 million worth of products. Also, the company had spent about $11.5 million of its $53 million construction budget with women-, minority-, and disadvantaged-business enterprises, Wade said.

In the past 18 months, other casino operators have also been criticized by minority groups for failing to contract with more minority-owned businesses and for failing to promote more minorities to executive positions.

Gloria Herbert, associate publisher of trade magazine Black Meetings & Tourism, said there were less than 30 blacks who held the general manager position among the 30,000 U.S. hotels recently surveyed by her magazine.

Gary Loster, mayor of Saginaw, Mich., a predominantly black community, said he'd like to see these diversity conferences go away.

"I wish we didn't have to have these meetings," Loster said. "We need certain people to admit things are wrong, but they have to mean it."

He said he's been in meetings with casino executives -- he wouldn't say from which companies -- discussing diversity issues, and the executives appeared to be humoring him.

"Their talk was all fluff," he said.

Loster accused the executives of lying about the racial demographics of their payrolls. (MGM MIRAGE was not one of these companies, he said.)

"We need people who can look at these employment records and see that you are doing what you say you are doing," Loster said.

Wade, who was the only Las Vegas casino executive on Friday's panel, was praised by Loster for improvements the company has made in hiring women and minorities in the past 12 months.

MGM MIRAGE has 48,000 employees and about 50 percent are minorities, Wade said.

Wade was unable to give a specific number of how many minorities are part of the company's management staff, but said MGM MIRAGE has established a training program to help identify those -- among its minority workers -- who have aspirations to reach the executive ranks.

Wade said MGM MIRAGE teaches its employees that there's no room for racism within the company.

"Our ultimate goal is to educate all of our employees, going back to the parents and down to their children," Wade said. "What we need to do is make sure our children do not have the biases that some of our parents have, and then these (diversity) meetings can go away."