Downtown deal reached

Monday, July 1, 2002 | 11 a.m.

The Culinary Union early this morning averted an overall strike downtown, reaching tentative five-year contract agreements with 10 of 12 hotels after a marathon collective bargaining session.

After an 11th-hour round of negotiations that began Sunday afternoon, only one downtown hotel, the Golden Gate, was still holding out this morning and facing a possible walkout among its 165 union employees.

Another hotel, the Western, one of four downtown properties owned by Jackie Gaughan, announced during the negotiations that it was closing its doors in 60 days and eliminating about 90 union jobs.

The union froze its midnight Sunday strike deadline for 6 1/2 hours while negotiating with the 10 casinos that reached deals. Binion's Horseshoe and the Castaways on Boulder Highway, which had been taking the hardest line during the talks, were the last to settle.

"I'm so glad it's over," Horseshoe owner Becky Behnen said minutes after reaching her agreement with the union at 6:30 a.m. "I get to go home and go to bed."

During the 17 1/2-hour bargaining session that began at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Culinary Union hall, the union also negotiated deals with Boyd Gaming's Fremont and Main Street Station, Fitzgeralds, Four Queens, El Cortez, Plaza, Las Vegas Club and Jerry's Nugget in North Las Vegas.

Until Sunday lawyers for several of the hard-liners had engaged the union in a battle of rhetoric, as the talks moved along at a slow pace for about a month. Those hotels, led by the Horseshoe and Castaways, contended they couldn't afford the large increases the union wanted in wages and benefits. The union also pressed the hotels for the same increases in health care contributions as those given earlier to Strip workers.

In the end, however, union leaders said the deal was the richest struck for downtown properties. While contract details were not immediately available, officials said the agreement protects union members' free health care and gives a pay raise that is smaller than the one negotiated on the Strip.

Boyd Gaming Chairman Bill Boyd played an instrumental role in helping the union broker an overall settlement downtown. So did the labor friendly Coast Resorts owner Michael Gaughan, who participated in the talks with his father's four downtown properties.

John Wilhelm, the union's international president and chief negotiator, said his downtown members are "thrilled" with the 10 agreements, which though lesser than those reached on the Strip, give downtown union employees their largest increases in wages and benefits ever.

"It's the largest increase in the history of downtown at a time when downtown is in the worst business condition it has ever been in," Wilhelm said. "These employers deserve an enormous amount of credit. What they have done is bet on their future, and that's an extraordinary thing in a situation where downtown is in serious trouble."

The negotiating committees at all of the properties are enthusiastically endorsing the agreement, which is expected to be ratified by rank and file union members this week, Wilhelm said.

The union, Wilhelm said, now is looking forward to working with the downtown casinos to build up business on Fremont Street.

It also plans to intensify efforts to organize the Venetian, the Palms and the neighborhood resorts owned by Station Casinos, he said.

"We now have a five year period where we can turn our attention to organizing," Wilhelm said. "I think we're in great shape to do that."

Wilhelm would not discuss the specifics of the downtown agreement, but he said it gives the downtown workers the same free health care benefits as those on the Strip. Recently signed contracts with 22 Strip resorts and the Golden Nugget downtown, the richest for those properties, call for an increase of 65 cents an hour in medical benefits for each employee in the first year.

"We can say with absolute confidence that the health and welfare benefits of the downtown employees will be protected," Wilhelm said. "The employers for whom we've settled also have dropped all of the difficult takeaway demands that they have made, things like short shifts, undermining of the guaranteed work week and subcontracting of our work."

But Wilhelm acknowledged that the downtown deal gives union members on Fremont Street smaller pay raises than Strip workers in the second, third, fourth and fifth years of the contract. As in the Strip deal, all of the increases in the first year of the contract go toward health and pension benefits.

Wilhelm would not talk about the differences in wage increases, but sources close to the negotiations said it comes out to about $1 less an hour for each downtown union member over the length of the five-year contract. The Strip deal gives employees an increase of nearly $3.24 an hour in wages and benefits over five years.

The union made additional concessions for the Horseshoe and Castaways, allowing both properties to defer the wage increases for up to 11 months in each of the last four years of the contract, Wilhelm said.

Union leaders this morning were trying to contact the Golden Gate to see whether it was willing to accept the deal it gave the Horseshoe and Castaways.

"I hope the Golden Gate will follow suit, but I'm not optimistic," Wilhelm said. "I'd be very surprised if we don't strike, but that's a decision the Golden Gate negotiating committee has to make.

"If they have to go on strike, we're going to back them to the hilt. It's a veteran group and a great group of employees."

Golden Gate owner Mark Brandenburg could not be reached for comment.

Wilhelm described the decision to close the Western as a "sad" development in the sometimes contentious negotiations.

"Michael Gaughan said there was no concession that could be made to save it," Wilhelm explained. "It just isn't a viable business."

Gaughan promised to do everything possible to place the Western employees at the families other casinos, Wilhelm said.

In a twist of irony, meanwhile, several union banquet workers picketed outside the union hall to protest the new contract, as union leaders were ironing out the last of their agreements with the downtown casinos.

Union leaders, however, downplayed the action, saying 99 percent of all of union members support the agreements.