Tuesday, July 2, 2002 | 10:55 a.m.
The owner of the Golden Gate, whose property is the first Las Vegas hotel hit with a strike since 1998, said Monday he wants to meet with the Culinary Union to resolve the downtown labor dispute.
"We cannot afford what has been described as the richest contract in downtown history," Mark Brandenburg said. "I would like very much to meet with them and work out a contract that makes sense for them and protects the jobs of Culinary workers, as well as our nonunion workers."
Brandenburg, an attorney whose family has operated the 106-room downtown hotel for several decades, said the union has created a "ticking time bomb" for his property, which employes 380 people among them about 165 union workers.
"We are just so different from the other properties," he said, as he watched about 150 union members, carrying "on strike" signs picket outside his casino. "We're so much smaller."
Union leaders -- who set up picket lines around the Golden Gate on Fremont Street about 5:55 p.m. after contracts talks faltered earlier in the day -- said they were willing to meet Brandenburg. But they weren't optimistic his attitude toward reaching a settlement would change.
The union, they said, currently is in arbitration over Brandenburg's refusal to pay its members the last 40-cent wage increase of the expired collective bargaining agreement with the casino.
John Wilhelm, the union's international president, and D. Taylor, its local secretary-treasurer, said they were disappointed that the Golden Gate did not take a contract similar to the one Binion's Horseshoe and the Castaways accepted Monday morning.
"We designed that proposal in collaboration with the Horseshoe and the Castaways in order to give those properties an opportunity to survive," Wilhelm said. "The Golden Gate not only rejected it, but made no counteroffer of any kind whatsoever.
"The Golden Gate's financial challenges certainly are no greater than those of the Horseshoe or the Castaways."
Added Taylor: "I thought that we gave a way for some of the downtown properties that were having a tough go to achieve the objective of free health and welfare and our pension and still remain very viable. Everybody else saw the light of that except the Golden Gate."
The Golden Gate, widely known for its 99-cent shrimp cocktail, is the only holdout among 35 casinos on the Strip and downtown that have participated in the negotiating process with the union since April. Another downtown casino, the Western, owned by gaming pioneer Jackie Gaughan, did not sign a contract because it announced it was closing its doors in two months.
But late Monday, Gaughan's son, Coast Resorts owner Michael Gaughan, telephoned union leaders to say his father wanted to explore the possibility of keeping the hotel open. The Gaughans scheduled a 2 p.m. meeting today with union leaders.
The union also is holding meetings today to ratify new five-year agreements reached over the weekend with nine casinos, mostly from downtown. Workers from the Horseshoe, Castaways, Fremont, Main Street Station, Las Vegas Club, El Cortez, Plaza, Four Queens and Fitzgeralds were scheduled to vote at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. at the Stardust's convention pavilion.
The contract reached with the casinos calls for them to pay a total increase of $2.20 an hour in wages and benefits for each employee over five years, which is about $1 less than the nearly $3.24-an-hour increase at 22 major Strip resorts.
All of the downtown hotels agreed to pay the same increase of 68 cents, as outlined in the Strip agreement, for the union's health and pension funds the first year of the contract to guarantee free medical coverage for all union members.
The Horseshoe and the Castaways, in a poorer financial shape than the other properties, are being allowed to defer the increases for up to 11 months in each year of the contract.
Brandenburg, who said he hasn't been taking a salary for some time to help keep the Golden Gate afloat, explained that he doesn't even have enough money to back-load the contract.
"I made that mistake the last two contracts," he said. "I signed contracts with the hope that business would improve down the road. I explained to the union that I need to deal with the business realities -- not what we hope will happen in a year or two."
Brandenburg said he was surprised at how quickly the union decided to walk out.
"We had our first negotiations Saturday night, and here we are Monday, less than 48 hours later, with a strike. I've never heard of anything quite like that happening.
"We're going to do everything we can to ride this out."
Brandenburg closed his Bay City Diner when the strike hit because all of his employees running the kitchen that shift walked out at 6 p.m. His bar was manned by supervisors.
"We'll be out here for the duration, said Earnest Harden, dressed in his white chef's uniform, as he walked the picket line. "We'll be out here until they sign a contract. We have thousands of members behind us. We refuse to give up."
Gino Imondi, a striking porter walking with a crutch, said he was fighting for his health insurance.
"I've got bone spurs on my feet, and I can't afford major medical coverage," he said. "I'll stay out here forever."
Wilhelm said he doubted whether the Golden Gate could survive a strike for a long period of time in the way that the operators of the Frontier did.
"The ownership of the Golden Gate does not have the deep pockets of the Elardi family at the Frontier," Wilhelm said.
The Frontier strike lasted more than six years, from September 1991 until January 1998.
"It's unfortunate, given the challenges downtown, that there's going to be any disruption down there," Wilhelm said. "The saving grace is that the Golden Gate is a small property at one end of the street, and so we'll do our absolute best to try to limit the impact on any of the surrounding properties."
Taylor, among the first to carry picket signs Monday night, said the union's stand against the Golden Gate would be "sign, sell or shut down."
Pickets are being paid $200 a week by the union to walk the line. They walk the line five days a week for four hours a day.
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