Castaways sues Culinary Union to block meetings

Grace Leong

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001 | 10:48 a.m.

The Culinary Union and the Castaways hotel-casino in Las Vegas are in a dispute over efforts by the Culinary to talk to union members about their workloads, which the union says are up dramatically since layoffs at the property.

The Castaways on Tuesday sued to stop two local chapters of the Culinary from "commandeering" the hotel-casino's employee dining room to hold what it called "large, loud and disruptive" mass union meetings, including one planned for today.

The Culinary says it's holding the meetings to talk to workers about how their workloads have increased since layoffs at the property.

Castaways, on the Boulder Highway near downtown, sued Culinary locals 165 and 226 in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, alleging they violated a "no-strike" provision in the collective bargaining agreement between the casino hotel and the Culinary.

The Castaways claims Culinary representative Mark Zartarian, who isn't a Castaways employee, repeatedly ignored Castaways' requests to stop holding meetings "regarding issues that only concern Culinary union members" at the Castaways' lunchroom.

The suit, which said the dining room is open to both union and non-union employees but can only accommodate 58 people at any one time, said Zartarian held large meetings there on Nov. 7 and threatened to hold a meeting in the same room today that could involve more than 220 porters, housekeeping and kitchen employees.

Castaways said the meeting would cause "substantial disruption to the ongoing business activity of (Castaways) and will prevent other company employees who do not belong to the union from being able to utilize (Castaways') dining room."

But Zartarian, who said there are about 500 Culinary members in Castaways' food and beverage, housekeeping and porters departments, disputed the allegations.

He said the collective bargaining agreement "guarantees the rights of union representatives to have access to union workers on non-work time in non-public areas."

"In-house security had me arrested this morning and Metro gave me a citation when I tried to meet the workers this morning to discuss issues about their workload since the mass layoffs," he said. "There wasn't going to be a rally, or chanting or clapping. I don't know why the company is so threatened about me speaking to workers about union issues."

"The union isn't agitating on Castaways' property. All we want is to talk to workers about their issues with workload now. Since the citywide massive layoffs, the workload of our members has been cranked way up," he said. "About 19 porters were laid off from Castaways. That means less people on the floor. And while we understand that the company has to lay off people, we have a problem with them boosting workload to unfair levels."

He said some 75 Culinary workers at Castaways were laid off.

"Some union porters, who have had a similar work load for years and years, now they are telling me their assignment is so large they can't get the job done well, and they fear getting disciplined, plus they are not getting additional compensation too," Zartarian said. "'For example, in the past, a porter may clean four bathrooms, now they're asked to do six bathrooms and the casino floor."