Grace Leong

Thu, Jun 26, 2003 (10:39 a.m.)

After almost a year of negotiations, the Tropicana hotel-casino and the Culinary Workers Local 226 said Wednesday they settled several unresolved issues that had stymied efforts to reach a new collective bargaining agreement after the previous contract expired on June 1, 2002.

Culinary Local 226, which represents 1,187 workers at the resort including cocktail servers, cooks and waitresses, said the new contract ensures that an agreed upon number of workers will be granted priority hiring status should the Tropicana property be redeveloped.

"If the Tropicana redevelops, then all (1,187) workers will have priority hiring status, which means existing union workers will have the first shot. But that number can rise to 2,000 because new properties typically have more rooms and facilities," Culinary Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said.

"Tropicana has submitted redevelopment plans to the Clark County Planning Commission, and that is scheduled for a hearing on July 16. They may implode the old Tropicana property and build a new and bigger one in its place," Taylor said. "And new Strip resorts typically have about 3,000 rooms."

Lisa Keim, Tropicana's spokeswoman, declined to comment on details of the new contract and whether it will redevelop its 1,878-room property.

"We're still not making any decision on redevelopment until March 2004. We're not sure if we're going to redevelop," she said. "We can't disclose how many workers we will hire if we were to redevelop the Tropicana."

Keim said the Culinary will continue to represent employees in their "traditional job classifications and the new property will hire an agreed upon number of Culinary food and beverage employees."

"Our agreement as to wages, benefits and insurance is comparable to other Strip properties' agreements with the Culinary," she said. "The Tropicana has been voluntarily paying the increase in health care and pension benefits for our (1,187) Culinary employees since the contract expired in (June) 2002, at a cost of over $1 million."

Keim said the union also agreed that the Tropicana, if it's redeveloped, will have the right to include food and beverage outlets operated by third parties with their own employees.

To protect its membership, the Culinary has been fighting, sometimes unsuccessfully, to keep Strip casinos including New York-New York, from including in their properties third party-owned restaurant tenants where workers typically aren't represented by the union.

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