Monday, June 24, 2002 | 10:56 a.m.
Boyd Gaming, in the final stages of a contract agreement with the Culinary Union, plans to work this week at the union's request to broker an overall settlement downtown prior to Sunday's strike deadline.
"We're looking to help the union with our downtown colleagues," Boyd spokesman Rob Stillwell said this past Sunday, following an hour-long bargaining session with the union.
The company has been negotiating on behalf of its three union casinos, the Stardust on the Strip and the Fremont and Main Street Station downtown.
Stillwell would not comment further on the company's role in talks this week with the other downtown casinos.
And union leaders could not be reached for comment.
But sources close to the negotiations said the union has asked top Boyd Gaming executives, including Chairman William Boyd, to persuade the other casinos to accept the informal deal the union has reached with the company.
The Boyd agreement reportedly will involve unspecified economic concessions on the union's part not given to major Strip properties.
"We're very optimistic that we will reach a resolution," Stillwell said. "We're down to the final stages."
Union leaders put off today's bargaining session with the other downtown casinos -- Binion's Horseshoe, Four Queens, El Cortez, Las Vegas Club, Union Plaza and Western -- to give Boyd Gaming a chance to pitch its expected deal.
Talks with those properties, which have about 3,600 union workers, now are scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Boyd officials plan to meet with the union on Friday to put the finishing touches on their agreement.
Attorney Greg Kamer, who has been engaging in a battle of rhetoric with the union on behalf of the other downtown casinos, sounded optimistic after hearing about the Boyd developments over the weekend.
"I'd be surprised if we had a strike at this point," Kamer said. "The lines of communication are open downtown. We're all speaking to one another. We all realize that we have the same objective, and that is to keep a strike off of Fremont Street."
Union leaders last week ripped into Kamer's counter-offer and said the downtown hotels need to get more serious about wanting to reach an agreement before Sunday's strike deadline.
The offer proposes switching union employees from the union medical plan to company health insurance and giving the hotels freedom to subcontract out union jobs, reduce work shifts to as little as four hours and hire an unlimited number of part-time employees.
Kamer said the downtown hotels threw out these suggestions because they can't afford to sign the Strip contract that has given the majority of the union's 50,000 members their largest increase ever in wages and benefits.
Negotiations appear to be set up this week with the hopes of obtaining agreements downtown prior to 3 p.m. Friday, when the union plans to picket all unsettled casinos for 33 hours straight heading into strike deadline.
An estimated 12,000 union members turned out in two shifts this past Friday for a massive rally on Fremont Street to call attention to the downtown talks.
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