Wynn to open with union

Monday, April 5, 2004 | 11:08 a.m.

Las Vegas Strip casino-resort developer Steve Wynn expects his Wynn Las Vegas will open next April with union maids, food-service workers and porters.

Wynn's companies have long enjoyed a positive relationship with the Culinary Union, and the developer said he expects that to continue when the megaresort opens.

"The chances of us being nonunion are very slim," Wynn said last week. "We have complete confidence that (Culinary Secretary-Treasurer) D. Taylor and John Wilhelm (national president of the Culinary's parent union) can come up with a deal that can let us be competitive and hire a great work force."

Wynn declined to say what his human resources executives would negotiate with the Culinary, except to say that his top mission is to make sure Wynn Las Vegas opens with the city's best group of employees.

His Golden Nugget, The Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio properties all had Culinary contracts before he agreed to the sale of Mirage Resorts, and Wynn said it will be a competitive advantage to sign a union contract at Wynn Las Vegas.

"If you want the best workers, you have to be with the union," Wynn said.

"(The Venetian owner) Sheldon (Adelson) showed you can open a place nonunion, and do well," Wynn said. "Sheldon doesn't pay below union wage, but he thinks he gets freedom from union work rules."

Adelson keeps a nonunion workforce because he wants total control over his employees, Wynn said. That's an understandable goal, but not as important to Wynn as attracting the absolute top employees.

Wynn said the control he'd get by refusing to accept the Culinary's standard card-check neutrality demand and instead forcing a National Labor Relations Board-supervised secret ballot election wouldn't make up for the negative message opening nonunion would send.

"I'm not looking to be nonunion, like Sheldon was," Wynn said.

"The question is, 'Where are the best employees?,' " Wynn said. "Is the union a handicap, a burden?"

On the contrary, Wynn said being nonunion would be a significant disadvantage.

"Do you think the best housekeepers in the city are going to leave their jobs if they know we're nonunion?," Wynn asked rhetorically. "No, they won't. If we want to attract the best workers, the ones who can provide the customer service we're counting on, it makes sense to get the Culinary's help."

Adelson was not available for comment on Wynn's remarks.

The Culinary's Taylor said this morning that he agrees that a deal is likely.

"I'd concur with Mr. Wynn," Taylor said. "I'm extremely confident we'll figure out a card-check neutrality agreement."

Not surprisingly, Taylor said Wynn is right when he says he needs to have a union deal to attract the best workers, that prospective employees aren't going to leave union jobs to work at a nonunion hotel.

"No question, the workers we have are the best in the country," Taylor said.

The most recent round of Culinary contracts, negotiated with the big Strip operators in 2002, gave workers a $3.235 hourly increase in wages and benefits over the five year deal, with most of the bump going to defray rising health care costs.

By 2007, the final year of the contract, Strip properties will pay an average of $17.405 per hour in wages and benefits.

When Adelson opened The Venetian in 1999 without a Culinary contract, the local union made a massive effort to disrupt the property's initial operations, including picketing and pressuring politicians not to attend functions at the resort.

Culinary efforts have largely tapered off in the almost five years since The Venetian opened, as the union's organizing focus shifted south toward the also-nonunion Aladdin, facing a bankruptcy sale to a group fronted by Planet Hollywood International Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Earl.

Earl has declined to comment on the union's drive to pressure his ownership group to grant the union's card check neutrality demand and allow the union to represent Aladdin workers, but has promised that the resort's workers would keep their jobs.

Wynn Resorts now employs about 300 workers in Las Vegas, and about 15 in Macau.

Wynn Las Vegas will ramp up to 8,000 workers by early April 2005, about three weeks before the property's scheduled April 28, 2005 opening date, Wynn said. About half of those workers would be represented by the Culinary Union.

He anticipates the Wynn Las Vegas employment screening process will consider a field of 120,000 applicants, with a massive human resources ramp-up preceeding interviews with prospective workers in June and July.

Interviews, drug-testing and background tests will narrow the field of applicants, with senior supervisors making the final calls on the composition of the teams they want to open with, Wynn said.