Local union shows support for Atlantic City strike

By Liz Benston (contact)

Monday, Oct. 11, 2004 | 10:47 a.m.

The Culinary Union in Las Vegas plans to continue a leafleting campaign that began over the weekend on the Strip to alert tourists of a major strike in Atlantic City involving a sister union.

"We're going to continue that every weekend," Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said today from Atlantic City, where he is helping to organize the strike effort. Taylor also said the union is flying out Atlantic City strikers to Las Vegas to help spread the news about the protest.

About 150 Culinary Union workers on Saturday passed out leaflets to visitors notifying them about the Atlantic City strike and urging tourists not to patronize the casinos on strike. The leaflet encourages visitors to stay only at other casinos in Atlantic City that have signed contracts, including the Borgata, Trump casinos and the Sands.

Union members handed out about 15,000 leaflets in front of eight casinos affiliated with the striking properties, Culinary Union Research Director Maya Holmes said. The eight casinos included the Tropicana, casinos owned by Harrah's and Caesars as well as the Las Vegas Hilton, which Caesars sold to Colony Capital in June.

The leaflet isn't intended to disrupt business at any of the companies' Las Vegas hotels and is only meant to notify visitors about the Atlantic City strike, Taylor said.

Harrah's spokesman David Strow said the leaflets didn't disrupt business at the company's Harrah's and Rio casinos over the weekend. Officials at Aztar Corp., which owns the Tropicana properties in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and Caesars could not be reached by press time.

Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and Caesars Entertainment Inc. say they are continuing to fly out managers and other employees from company casinos nationwide to help perform manual labor in Atlantic City amid a major strike.

Harrah's has so far flown out about 400 managers on planes chartered from Las Vegas and Chicago as well as on the company's corporate jet. All of the managers have volunteered to leave their regular jobs and are cleaning bathrooms, making beds, parking cars and doing all the other tasks required to run a 24-hour casino, Strow said.

Some managers have been pulling 16-hour shifts over the past week and even top executives such as Harrah's Chief Executive Gary Loveman, Chief Operating Officer Tim Wilmott and Senior Vice President of Human Resources Jerry Boone have been drafted to perform menial tasks such as serve drinks, he said.

Caesars also has flown out managers as well as rank-and-file employees to help work in the company's Bally's, Caesars and Las Vegas Hilton properties in Atlantic City. Those workers have so far come from other properties besides those in Las Vegas, Caesars spokesman Robert Stewart said Friday.

Neither Harrah's nor Caesars say they have brought in replacement workers since about 10,000 hotel and restaurant workers at five Atlantic City casinos walked off the job Oct. 1, demanding better wages and health care coverage as well as a five-year contract. The strike affects Bally's, Caesars, Hilton, Harrah's, Showboat, Resorts and Tropicana properties in Atlantic City.

The workers now have a five-year contract but are demanding a three-year contract in order to bring them in line with three-year contracts in Las Vegas and Detroit. Union representatives say they want more bargaining clout at a time when company mergers are creating fewer but more powerful companies.

Talks have lately broken down between the casinos and Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union in Atlantic City, which is affiliated with the Culinary Union in Las Vegas.

About 100 union supporters were arrested Friday in an organized protest in which strikers blocked city streets. No negotiations with the casinos are planned yet this week, Taylor said.

"The companies have made it clear they are trying to replace our workers and tear the union apart," he said.

Taylor also questioned the companies' claim about replacement workers, saying some casinos also are hiring temporary help in addition to drafting company managers and other workers within the company.

"We think it's good that managers do the work our workers do every day," he said. "It makes them appreciate us a bit more."

Harrah's and Caesars representatives in Las Vegas said their companies have met all of the union's demands except for the five-year contract.

"We are not willing to budge on that point," Strow said. "We believe we have presented an offer that we believe employees -- if they are allowed to vote on it -- would accept."

"The only way the numbers will work is if there's a five-year contract," Stewart added.

Taylor said the five-year contract isn't the only sticking point.

"They haven't been honest about meeting our economic demands at all," he said.