Board to hold Mirage union vote

Grace Leong

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 10:56 a.m.

The National Labor Relations Board will hold an election on Thursday of 18 Mirage carpenters and upholsterers at the hotel-casino after the national board overturned a decision by a regional official denying their first election request.

The regional director of the NLRB on Jan. 4, 2001, denied an election request by the Carpenters Union for The Mirage carpenters and upholsters to form a bargaining unit. The regional director found the two groups "didn't constitute functionally distinct groups with common interests separate and apart from other engineering employees and didn't represent a traditional craft unit entitled to separate representation."

But the union appealed the regional director's ruling to the NLRB's national office in Washington, D.C., which found by a majority vote on Nov. 20 that the "petitioned-for combined unit of carpenters and upholsters is an appropriate unit for bargaining."

"Traditionally, we represent just carpenters, upholsterers and locksmiths in hotel-maintenance. The engineers are represented by the Operating Engineers union," Lenny Taylor, a Carpenters Union organizer, said.

The union represents 200 carpenters, upholsterers and locksmiths in 23 hotel-casinos in Southern Nevada. The union also represents six carpenters and three upholsterers at the Golden Nugget but doesn't represent workers at any other MGM MIRAGE properties.

The union, which said it has been trying to organize MGM MIRAGE's carpenters since October 1999, said it had filed numerous unfair labor practice charges against the hotel-casino operator including a latest one on Jan. 27 on behalf of David Kowal, a Mirage carpenter.

The union said Kowal, a union supporter, was terminated on Jan. 5 allegedly because he stole "cardboard boxes that were headed for the Dumpster."

MGM MIRAGE could not be reached for comment on the union's allegations.