Culinary offers to cut hours

David Strow

Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001 | 10:43 a.m.

In Nevada

Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt created a "Tourism Stability Task Force," saying she wants it to "confront and counteract the far-reaching, drastic economic impacts of the Sept. 11 attack."

Las Vegas' largest union will ask members to accept reduced work hours for the next two months in an effort to get laid-off casino employees back to work.

D. Taylor, staff director of the Culinary Union, said the concept is coming from the union, not from Las Vegas casinos. Culinary members will be asked to support the temporary reductions in meetings Friday. If members support the idea, the Culinary would take the proposal to individual properties.

"The idea is to share the work for a short time to get more of our people back to work," Taylor said. "We're recommending it on a short-term basis, because we want to get more of our people back to work right now.

Many members have volunteered to take reduced hours, Taylor said, but could not because current bargaining agreements with the Culinary Union do not permit such reductions in hours.

The Culinary has 50,000 members in Las Vegas; Taylor estimated 20 percent to 25 percent have been affected so far by layoffs. Union General President John Wilhelm has estimated that one-third to one-half of the Culinary's national membership has been laid off in the past several weeks.

Under the proposal, the casinos would have the ability to reduce the hours of full-time workers through mid-November. The temporary reductions would end sooner if Las Vegas' occupancy rate rose above 80 percent for two consecutive weeks.

"There's a lot of distrust that companies are trying to take advantage of this (with layoffs)," Taylor said. "If they don't (accept the proposal), I think they'll have a tremendous problem with their own employees and the union."

But three of the Strip's largest operators are open to the idea.

"We're willing to work cooperatively with the union to explore all creative ideas that could help us bring back our workforce," said Debbie Munch, spokeswoman of Park Place Entertainment Corp. "We're willing to explore all details of their proposal."

"We have the same objective as the Culinary; we want this situation to affect as few people as possible," said Alan Feldman, spokesman with MGM MIRAGE. "Anything that is going to reduce the impact of the current situation on any number of employees is going to be welcome."

"We have a good relationship with the Culinary Union, and if they can come up with something that makes sense and could work, we would absolutely be willing to listen," said John Marz, senior vice president of marketing for Mandalay Resort Group.

Many non-union employees working in the gaming industry have already had their hours reduced in an effort to control layoffs. And at least one union, the Carpenters Union, has already agreed to let several properties temporarily reduce their members' hours.

"I don't want my members laid off. It doesn't make any sense," said Bill Harris, business representative and organizer with Carpenters Local 1780. "People can live on 32 hours. But you can't live on zero."

As a result, the several hundred union members working in hotel maintenance have been largely unaffected by layoffs, Harris said. However, he said hundreds of other members have been put out of work because of suspensions of construction projects along the Strip -- something that can't be prevented by reductions of work weeks.

Taylor said the 100 staff employees of the Culinary in Las Vegas have agreed to take a 20 percent pay cut as long as the reduced hours are in effect. He called on gaming industry managers and executives to accept similar, temporary pay reductions.

"If we're going to ask our members to do work sharing, we have to take some leadership on that," Taylor said. "I don't think you can ask people to make sacrifices unless you yourself are willing to make sacrifices."

But Feldman said there's a problem with that idea -- management has been cut back by layoffs as well, and those managers that remain are being forced to drastically longer hours.

"This is a time when you call upon your managers to give their all, to come up with creative ways to steer these companies to safe ground," Feldman said. "If I thought cutting executive pay would put more people on airplanes, or increase occupancy, I don't think there's any question we'd do that in a heartbeat."