Study on low Miss. wages could boost union drive

Grace Leong

Thursday, Aug. 29, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

Hotel employment more than tripled in Mississippi during the 1990s, making Mississippi the nation's leader in the rate of new hotel job growth, according to a study released today by the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute.

Nevada was the only state to surpass Mississippi in the total number of new hotel jobs created during the 1990s, according to the study. In Nevada, 88,350 new hotel jobs were created, representing an increase of nearly 69 percent between 1989 and 2000. Nationwide, hotel employment grew 16 percent.

While Nevada and Mississippi accounted for nearly 45 percent of the 260,000 new hotel jobs created during the 1990s, the report found a huge difference in hotel wages in the two states.

The report found that union workers nationwide fare much better than non-union workers in the hotel industry. In 2000, hotel workers represented by unions earned a median hourly wage of $10, $1.50 more than non-union workers' median wage of $8.50 per hour.

The report pointed to union representation in Nevada as one factor likely contributing to the wage difference. Nevada accounts for nearly a third of all union hotel workers nationwide while few, if any, hotel workers belong to unions in Mississippi.

Hotel workers received an average wage of more than $28,000 a year without tips in Nevada compared to about $20,000 a year in Mississippi -- a 40 percent difference.

Nancy Mills, the union institute's executive director, said the study isn't aimed at prompting unions to organize more aggressively in Mississippi casinos.

"This study isn't aimed at doing anything other than stating the facts. But I wouldn't be surprised if it makes non-union hotel workers in Mississippi a little angry to find out that their union counterparts are earning more than they are," she said.

"This study has other significant implications," Mills said. "Significant dollars are being invested in enticing and developing hotel jobs in communities. But it's important for public policy makers to consider what quality of jobs is being produced by these investments."

Martin Levitt, an organized labor consultant and founder of the Justice for Labor Foundation in Las Vegas, said the study could be used as ammunition by unions like the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International to organize more aggressively in Mississippi casinos. HERE is known in Las Vegas as the Culinary Union.

"HERE is already actively organizing in Mississippi, but because the South has historically been a haven for union busting, organizing is more difficult there," he said.

"The hotel industry in the South has a tendency to look for as low-educated a workforce as possible. The less educated their employees, the less likely they'll be to support unions," Levitt said. "The hotels are so obsessive with maintaining control that they carefully screen employees in terms of union sympathies much more so than out here or in the East."

"For example, it's illegal for employers in Nevada to ask prospective employees if they support unions," he said. "In the South, the employers practice borderline unlawful screening. They indicate from the start that they are non-union and prefer to stay that way, and if the interviewee should say something in favor of unions, that person won't be hired."

The study found that hotel employment in Mississippi increased over the last decade from 7,900 to more than 35,500 jobs -- a 350 percent increase. Many of the new jobs are the result of new casinos built along the Mississippi Gulf Coast as well as in Tunica County in northwestern Mississippi.

Unlike Mississippi, Nevada has experienced rapid growth in hotel jobs for more than two decades and currently employs 216,500 hotel workers -- the most of any state. Both states have seen a decline in hotel jobs since March of last year as a result of the recession and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Unions represent close to 12 percent of all U.S. hotel workers.

archive