New good will at New Frontier

Michael J. Mishak

Tuesday, July 10, 2007 | 6:56 a.m.

New Frontier owner Phil Ruffin has changed his mind.

After rejecting workers' requests for severance pay last month, Ruffin announced Monday that he would indeed award separation packages to as many as 850 employees, union and nonunion alike, who stay until the faded, mid-Strip casino closes Sunday .

"We're happy to do it, and the people who have been here a long time will be very happy," Ruffin told the Sun in a brief interview Monday.

He was right.

"I love my Culinary," Mary Dean Burns, a uniform attendant who worked at the casino for 35 years, said in an interview Monday.

Terry Lemley, a cocktail waitress for 20 years, said: "I think he's setting an example for the whole city to follow. I'm very happy and I'm dancing and I'm ecstatic."

Ruffin estimated the deal will cost more than $1 million, or about one-tenth of 1 percent of the sale price. The Kansas industrialist sold the property for $1.2 billion, the most expensive land sale in Las Vegas history. He bought the New Frontier nine years ago for $165 million.

Workers with 20 or more years of service will receive $8,000, with payments declining on a sliding scale to $300 for those employed less than a year.

The deal is similar to one Boyd Gaming Group Chairman Bill Boyd gave his workers after the Stardust was closed to make room for the $4.8 billion Echelon Las Vegas development. Stardust employees with 20 or more years of service received $10,000, with the amounts diminishing to $1,000 for the more recent hires.

The New Frontier's new owners, a group of New York real estate investors, plan to demolish the property to make way for a replica of that city's storied Plaza Hotel.

Ruffin said Monday that he always intended to award severance pay. Last month, as the Sun prepared a story about the plight of the soon-to-be-jobless employees, Ruffin said in an interview that he had fulfilled the terms of the union contracts, which do not include severance clauses. He rejected the severance requests of four unions representing New Frontier workers.

Furthermore, Ruffin said he awarded back pay to workers when he took ownership of the New Frontier in 1998, after a six-year labor strike, and made the casino's payroll by siphoning profits from his other businesses for the first few years of his tenure.

For their part, labor leaders were mum about how both sides had come to an agreement.

"There were discussions held and we resolved the issues," said D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, which represents more than 400 employees at the property. "I felt very confident that based on Mr. Ruffin's work over the years with his workers and with us that we could resolve it."

Still, there was more to Ruffin's reversal than a simple change of heart.

Mike Nelson, director of human resources for the New Frontier, said Ruffin changed his mind about awarding severance after a meeting in Las Vegas late last month with John Wilhelm, co-president of Unite Here, the Culinary's parent union.

Wilhelm played a key role in the New Frontier sale talks in 1997 and, along with Taylor, had overseen the local's rebuilding effort for much of the previous decade. Wilhelm was traveling Monday and unavailable for comment.

Labor relations experts interviewed by the Sun last month said the union had little remaining leverage because Ruffin was a lone operator who was expected to leave the Las Vegas casino market. On Monday, however, Ruffin said he was exploring future business ventures here. Before the severance deal, the New Frontier hosted a job fair for employees and was working with the state to provide additional training for other careers.

The severance agreement was signed late Friday and workers were notified soon thereafter.

"I'm going to pay my rent up, and pay my lights up, so I can keep my head up until I can get a job," said Burns, the uniform attendant.

She said she believes her boss was influenced by the Sun's story examining the morality involved in Ruffin's original decision not to grant severance pay. "I think he probably read all those things in the paper, or his lawyer took it to him and showed it to him."

Lydia Joffrion, a cashier for 17 years, said Ruffin "has always been kind to me. He always said hi to me, stopped and talked with me, and introduced me to whoever he was with. He has never been at any time the type of man to look down on anyone."

For the Culinary, the Frontier workers stand as a defining symbol of union solidarity.

A bit of history:

Ruffin's purchase of the Frontier for $165 million in October 1997 purged the Strip resort of its anti-union owners, the Elardi family, and allowed local and national labor leaders to claim victory in the country's longest-running strike.

Ruffin promised to sign a collective bargaining agreement and hire back about 550 Frontier workers at union wages.

The six-year strike attracted the attention of prominent national figures and served as a rallying cry for the American labor movement. Among those who had walked the picket line on the Strip in support of the workers were AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

At a union rally in Las Vegas after the Frontier sale was announced, Wilhelm called the epic labor dispute "the greatest strike of the 20th century." He told the strikers that their perseverance had upheld the standard of living for working men and women in Las Vegas and across the country "for generations to come."

Four months later, Ruffin stayed true to his word. After receiving his gaming license, he signed a five-year contract with the Culinary Union, allowing the resort's workers to return to the refurbished New Frontier. At the grand reopening, Ruffin, along with Jackson, led a throng of former strikers and their supporters around the casino floor.

"Anybody with balls enough to stay out there on a deal like this, we want as our employees," Ruffin told them.

Besides closing a chapter in the Culinary's history, the severance deal underscores a critical part of the union's negotiations with MGM Mirage and other Strip operators, Taylor said.

Last month the Culinary reached a settlement with Harrah's Entertainment that includes salary continuation for workers if a property closes during the course of the five-year contract. "Any casino that's over a certain amount of years is a target to get blown up, Taylor said. "That's why we want this negotiated in the MGM Mirage contract."

Sun reporters Jeff German and Brendan Buhler contributed to this report.