Thursday, Jan. 10, 2002 | 10:59 a.m.
Under the watch of John Wilhelm, the Culinary Union forged a warm relationship with many Strip casinos and their executives during the boom years of the 1990s.
Now, with thousands of Culinary members still out of work as the Sept. 11 slowdown lingers, Wilhelm believes that relationship is facing its greatest test. On May 31 the Culinary's five-year contracts with all Strip hotels will expire. Some 40,000 workers are covered under those contracts.
"I have always said that the real test of the positive labor-management relationship that the Culinary Union has developed with most employers would be when times got bad," Wilhelm said. "The negotiations this spring will be the test of whether the positive labor-management relationship has real depth to it."
Wilhelm, the president of the international union, didn't hide his displeasure with the recent wave of layoffs, saying employee confidence in their employers had been hurt as a result.
"The whole thing (layoffs) could have been handled considerably better, but on the other hand, there's no precedent for this," Wilhelm said. "How the negotiations are handled will go a long way toward either reinforcing the notion that we're not all in this together, or reinforcing the notion that existed before 9/11 that we are all in this together."
One particular disagreement between the union and the employers deals with how employees are recalled to work. The casinos have largely called back employees based on revenue and cash flow, Wilhelm said. But since work load in based on occupancy, employee recalls should be based on it, he said.
"Most of the people who lead these companies are terrific people on an individual basis, but I think Wall Street reinforces an extremely short term perspective, and that's always dangerous," Wilhelm said. "I think there's a price being paid in customer service, and there's a long-term cost in that. What keeps people coming back is good service."
Wilhelm said he expects there will be pressure on the Culinary to make concessions to the casinos, but he's not prepared to give up ground. In fact, Wilhelm said the Culinary will be seeking improvements of its own, such as protection and improvement of worker benefits, wage hikes and improvement of working conditions for union members asked to do additional work since layoffs began.
"There is no reason (for the union) to make concessions," Wilhelm said. "This industry has the ability to get immediate economic relief by laying people off. Our members ... have already paid an economic price, and they're still paying it."
Should gaming companies take a tough stance on trying to force concessions, Wilhelm suggested the union could withdraw political support for a number of key measures for the casino industry, such as Culinary's support for an effort to broaden Nevada's tax structure. Broadening the tax base reduces pressure to raise the gaming tax.
"I like to think the fundamental value of the relationship we've built here (between the union and casino companies) will override any adventuristic impulses by the employers," Wilhelm said.
Tough talk by the union in the waning months of its contracts doesn't surprise Bill Thompson, a professor of public administration at UNLV.
"He's got a job to do, and he can't be making concessions three or four months before (negotiations begin)," Thompson said. "The economy might improve noticeably by then, and if that's the case, and a concession now would not be in his interest. If (the economy hasn't improved), that's what the bargaining tables are all about.
"I think he would be realistic, but now, there's nothing to suggest he'd accept cutbacks."
But Thompson felt the union would be hurting itself by withdrawing support for the tax measure.
"It's in the self-interest of the union to have a very strong casino industry, and I don't know why they'd change their position on that one," Thompson said. "A punitive tax on the casino industry would hurt them."
Thompson believes the union isn't blameless in the recent wave of layoffs. He argued the union had hurt its position by failing to go on the offensive as soon as layoffs began.
"The union should have been blowing the whistle almost immediately," Thompson said. "It almost seemed like they let them do what they pleased. At the beginning, the unions were really silent."
Thompson also criticized the Culinary for staging protests at the non-organized Palms hotel-casino shortly after it opened, given the fact it created around 2,500 jobs.
"They weakened their hand by attacking people who are hiring at the moment," Thompson said.
The Greenspun family, owner of the Las Vegas Sun, holds a minority ownership stake in the Palms.
Expansion remains a key component of the Culinary's long-term strategy in Las Vegas. Unless the union can establish itself at a majority of properties in a market, Wilhelm feels union properties will be at a competitive disadvantage to their non-union counterparts.
That theory made the Strip and downtown Las Vegas targets for the union's organizing efforts in past decades, and the Culinary's gained a strong foothold in both areas. But locals' casinos, such as those operated by Station Casinos Inc. and Coast Resorts, must eventually become targets of organizing efforts, Wilhelm said.
"Quite frankly, we never saw the expansion of neighborhood casinos coming to this extent, and we need to address that," Wilhelm said. "They compete with downtown, and to a lesser extent, the Strip. We will get into that this decade. Where and when, I can't tell you."
Casino dealers could have been another possible area of expansion for the union. Pro-union dealers had been searching, but found no takers among established Las Vegas unions. The Transport Workers Union eventually decided to take on the campaign, and is now negotiating with the Tropicana, Stratosphere and New Frontier for its first contracts.
Though the Culinary is the most powerful union on the Strip, it must focus on organizing hotel and hospitality workers, not dealers, Wilhelm said.
"We have a jurisdiction we understand extremely well," Wilhelm said. "Until every last person (in the Culinary's traditional workforce) who wants to be represented is organized, we don't have any business doing anything else."
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