Raises at issue as Teamsters strike

Alana Roberts

Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2004 | 10:35 a.m.

About 3,200 convention industry workers aligned with Teamsters Local 631 have been on strike since Saturday evening after rejecting two contract proposals that did not meet the workers' health care and wage demands.

The contract proposal from GES Exposition Services and Freeman Decorating was rejected by 98 percent of the workers, while 97 percent voted against a separate contract from exhibitor-appointed contractors.

The workers began picketing at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Expo and Convention Center and at various company locations throughout the Las Vegas Valley.

Ed Burke, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 631, said that there are no planned talks between the companies and the union.

The members have worked since the end of June without a new contract and have worked under the previous contract ever since.

Last week, many workers called in sick from work breaking down MAGIC Marketplace at the Las Vegas Convention Center, at the Sands Expo Center, at a Freeman Decorating loading dock and from driving GES trucks, Burke said Saturday before the vote.

Some of the workers returned to work Friday, and work breaking down the MAGIC Marketplace under GES Exposition Services continued, as did the building of the VISION Expo at the Sands Expo Center under Freeman Decorating, the companies said in a joint statement Friday. The companies' statement verified that some of the workers did leave work early on Thursday "due to declared illness." Other unions involved in work in the convention industry are the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and to some extent the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Carpenters Union. Nonunion workers also work on the conventions.

"Both Freeman and GES are fully prepared to meet their commitments to their clients and to service the exhibitors that participate in Las Vegas conventions," the companies said in the statement.

On Monday, the companies issued another statement that said Freeman and GES were told during the negotiations that they would be given 24 hours' notice by the union if the workers intended to go on strike and the companies are "very disappointed" that the union failed to provide notice.

Burke said the companies abandoned an earlier proposal to increase the number of hours members are required to work to be eligible for health care coverage from 86 to 173 a month. However, he said the union still disagrees with raise proposals from the companies and with a provision that would require journeymen to pay for extra training to be taken on their own time.

"I've never in 32 years in the union seen an employer make a proposal that the employees pay for training and do it off the clock," Burke said.

A journeyman makes $21.86 an hour, however Burke said the members often don't work full time. The firms are proposing an hourly raise of 90 cents in the first year of the three-year contract and are proposing hourly raises of 80 cents in the two subsequent years. However, Burke said, much of those raises would be used to pay for health and welfare benefits and pensions, and what's left would go to a raise. He said in the first year, 71 cents of the 90 cents an hour raise would go to health and welfare.

"That would leave 19 cents to go to the other things," Burke said.

The union also wants the companies to abandon a clause that would allow them to use nonunion workers while union workers aren't working.

GES and Freeman said in Monday's statement that their compensation offer was an increase of nearly 3 percent over the three-year period, which is higher than the average U.S. hourly wage increase of 2.3 percent, and that it would be up to the union to decide what percentage is designated for wages versus benefits.