Las Vegas union planning to demonstrate against Harrah’s

By Liz Benston (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2004 | 10:41 a.m.

The Culinary Union in Las Vegas plans to dispatch several hundred workers to the corporate headquarters of Harrah's Entertainment Inc. Thursday morning as part of a demonstration aimed at pressuring the company to negotiate with striking workers with a sister union in Atlantic City.

Union leaders said demonstrators will engage in "civil disobedience" if necessary to get Harrah's executives to sign a pledge promising that the company won't hire replacement workers in Atlantic City during an ongoing strike.

"That's where the decisions are made on this strike," Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said Tuesday. Taylor claimed "decision-makers" for the casinos "have not been at the bargaining table in Atlantic City."

Harrah's spokesman Gary Thompson said the company "is not interested in signing anything but a contract with the union."

"The fact is that we never threatened to hire replacement workers, and we've never threatened to bust the union," he said.

The Culinary Union also is planning a series of meetings with Atlantic City strikers at Las Vegas properties owned by Harrah's and Caesars Entertainment Inc. as well as Aztar Corp.'s Tropicana and Colony Capital's Las Vegas Hilton.

About 10,000 workers with Local 54 of the parent union, UNITE HERE, walked off their jobs at those companies Oct. 1. They are demanding higher wages and free heath care coverage in addition to a three-year contract that would expire alongside three-year contracts at Las Vegas and Detroit casinos. The seven Atlantic City casinos, which now have five-year contracts with the union, claim they have met the union's other demands but have refused to budge on the three-year contract.

The Culinary Union took out full-page ads in the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review-Journal Tuesday claiming that the future Harrah's-Caesars combination would create a dominant company that could ultimately roll back benefits that gaming workers have gained in Las Vegas over the years.

"One has only to look to Mississippi -- a nonunion market dominated by Harrah's/Caesars -- to understand the chilling future that these companies would like to impose on our communities," the ad reads. "In Mississippi, casino workers are paid less than half of Las Vegas workers, lack basic health benefits and have no job protection or a guaranteed work week."

At a news conference Tuesday, Taylor accused Las Vegas casino giants of lying to the public about meeting union demands on basics such as wages and health benefits.

"When you're married to somebody there's a tradeoff there," he said. "(The casinos) are acting like an abusive spouse."

"Their fight is our fight," added Socorro Guillen, a snack bar worker at Bally's in Las Vegas. "We have no guarantee that in three years they can't do the same thing here to us."

The tough talk reflects a rapidly deteriorating relationship between UNITE HERE and Las Vegas casino giants that have so far maintained a cooperative and even friendly relationship with the union over the years.

Both sides are accusing the other of a nationwide power grab at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

"We've had 25 years of labor peace and we'd like to have 250 more years," Thompson said. "It's not (Harrah's) that is refusing to negotiate in good faith."

Thompson said UNITE HERE's tactics in Atlantic City are part of a nationwide strike effort in about a dozen cities involving major hotel chains outside the gaming industry.

"They want to have the power to shut down (the hotel industry) at the same time," Thompson said. "We don't want to see what happened on 9/11 happen again because of outrageous union demands and irresponsible leadership."

Representatives of Caesars Entertainment declined to comment, and officials at Aztar Corp. could not be reached.

The seven casinos in Atlantic City are running a joint ad today that says the casino owners will be negotiating with the union as a group. The ad doesn't discuss any of the proposals presented by the companies.

But ads from the Tropicana resort in Atlantic City that ran last week accused UNITE HERE of "selling out" union workers by taking an inferior deal from the Trump casino company.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts signed a deal with Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union last week. The Borgata and Sands resorts also are unaffected by the strike.

"The truth is that the Las Vegas union bosses came to Atlantic City and told Local 54 how to sell out its members," the ad reads. "By taking the Trump deal, UNITE HERE left your money on the table instead of putting it in your pocket -- all to get its three-year contract."

Thompson said the ads are accurate. Harrah's offered to give union members an 11 percent wage increase over five years while the Trump deal included no wage increases save for a smaller cash bonus of $520 per year, he said. Harrah's also offered to continue free health care coverage for workers for the next five years compared to a three-year contract term under the Trump deal, he said. The Trump contract also includes reduced contributions to a severance fund for union workers while Harrah's offered to increase existing contributions, he added.

Taylor called the information in the ads a "personal attack" against union leadership and a distortion of the truth.

"Their conduct is despicable and we feel betrayed," he said. "They keep on lying."

Thompson said the union is "showing desperation" because "members would vote for the Harrah's proposal if they got the chance."

"It's sad that the union leaders see fit to mislead their members here in Las Vegas, the same way they are misleading and lying to them in Atlantic City," he said.