Culinary to present new offer

Wednesday, June 26, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

The Culinary Union, with a looming strike deadline, planned today to present a new scaled-back version of its Strip contract to several downtown casinos that have taken a hard line in the negotiations.

The proposal calls for the hotels -- Binion's Horseshoe, Four Queens, El Cortez, Las Vegas Club, Union Plaza and Western -- to make the same increases in contributions over five years to the union's health and welfare fund, Culinary Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said this morning.

But Taylor said the offer gives concessions on wage increases the second through fifth years of the contract.

This is the similar to the deal the union offered to Boyd Gaming at its three union properties, Stardust, Fremont and Main Street Station, on Friday and Fitzgeralds on Tuesday, Taylor said.

Mike Kelly, chief operating officer for Majestic Investor Holdings, which owns Fitzgeralds, said the new proposal for the other downtown hotels apparently is the result of 10 hours of discussions with his company on Tuesday.

Kelly said his company is close to agreeing to a Fitzgeralds contract that has the basic Strip provisions, but requires different ways to fund the increases in health benefits and wages.

Taylor said the proposal calls for an increase of 68 cents an hour per employee to the union's health fund the first year to guarantee free medical coverage for downtown union members.

But in each of the next four years, wage increases to employees after money is allocated to the health fund would be staggered into payments every six months instead of all at once, Taylor said.

Additionally, tipped employees would get half of the wage increases as non-tipped workers to save the downtown hotels money, he said.

"We're using all of the different tools we have used in past collective bargaining agreements downtown," Taylor said. "We're using Boyd Gaming and others to reach a global settlement downtown, and we're trying to do it without the glare of the press."

Both Taylor and Kelly said progress was made in Tuesday's Fitzgeralds talks and that all of the language issues revolving around job security have been settled.

Both sides plan to meet again within 48 hours, as the Sunday strike deadline approaches.

"When we made our proposal, we couched it in a way that that Fitzgeralds will will lead downtown and not necessarily be the follower," Kelly said.

Union leaders have bargaining sessions today and Thursday with the other downtown hotels.

About 2,000 members of the American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees plan to rally downtown on the union's behalf tonight to draw attention to the downtown contract talks.