Thursday, July 19, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.
Say you're MGM Mirage management, and you're in tough negotiations with the Culinary Union over a new contract, a contract that will determine much of your economic fate for the next few years.
And then suddenly a bunch of potential occupants of the White House are on the side of your adversary across the table. Not only do you face potentially making an enemy of the next president, but there's also the threat of a Barack Obama or a John Edwards or a Hillary Clinton marching with workers on the sidewalk outside MGM Grand.
Is that an image you want on CNN?
Are you sleeping well?
This is exactly the prospect facing MGM Mirage executives, with the major presidential candidates having first rallied with Culinary workers this spring, followed by a round of briefings on the contract talks.
Now they're coming to town for more intimate meetings with union members, and always with a promise: We'll march with you.
Last week it was Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and today it's former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Surely New York Sen. Hillary Clinton can't be far behind. All three are assiduously wooing the union, whose endorsement could deliver the Nevada caucus.
The company and the union are dug in on pay and benefits, and especially the rules that will govern union organizing at some new properties.
Now, Culinary leader D. Taylor is using Nevada's newly won early spot on the presidential nomination calendar for leverage, warning MGM management that he will turn to his new powerful friends, who often have a gaggle of national media following them around.
"We're probably going to take you up on the offer you made last time," Taylor told Obama last week, referring to the candidate's promise to march with workers, if need be. "You might need to get that suntan lotion and that hat."
In an interview, Taylor was just as forceful: "No one is looking for more speeches and niceties . If we have a dispute in Las Vegas, and hopefully that's not the case, we're going to call them in to support us, not just in words but in their actions," he said, straining to avoid the word "strike."
For its part, MGM Mirage is brushing it all off as meaningless publicity and a harmful distraction from negotiating sessions. "It would be far more productive of the union's time to schedule main table events with us rather than publicity sessions with the candidates," said Alan Feldman, the company's spokesman.
Feldman urged the union to return to the negotiating table: "The only thing meaningful is to sit down at a main table negotiation and work through the issues that remain. We've done so for more than 70 issues. We want long -term stability and meaningful wage increases, but we can't get a response from the union.
"In my mind, I would say that thinking about who's going to be walking with you on the picket line is a major distraction from providing for our employees," Feldman added. "We're prepared to talk at any time. We can't get the union to schedule anything ." (The union says it's MGM that won't schedule negotiating sessions.) "Maybe they're enjoying their conversations with the candidates ."
Still, the timing of the presidential caucus and its intersection with the contract negotiations must seem almost comically bad to MGM executives. The sudden appearance of presidential juice complicates negotiations for MGM, according to experts in corporate branding and strategic communications.
"Definitely it complicates their negotiations because MGM has to take into account a high degree of publicity with respect to their brand," said Kelly O'Keefe, a professor of marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University and head of his own branding company, O'Keefe Brands.
Although many consumers might be ambivalent about organized labor and the candidates, or even resent them, "Nonetheless, it's exposure in a negative light, and it puts the brand image at risk, and they have to take it into account," O'Keefe said.
MGM need only look at Wal-Mart for a quick lesson in what can happen when labor unions and their allies in the Democratic Party take aim at a company they consider bad for workers.
For a few years, labor-backed groups such as WakeUpWalMart.com, as well as liberal bloggers and Democratic politicians, have been hammering the Arkansas retail behemoth at every turn.
That, along with a barrage of damaging investigative reporting, led BusinessWeek to publish a story last year with the title: "Wal-Mart: A 'Reputation Crisis.' "
According to BusinessWeek, the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that Wal-Mart lost 2 percent to 8 percent of its customers because of the negative press.
The presidential campaigns are intimately aware of efforts to pressure companies to change their behavior. In fact, Edwards recently hired two veterans of WakeUpWalMart.com.
Gerald Baron, president of Baron & Co., a crisis communications firm, noted that MGM is far from Wal-Mart, which has been dogged on a whole range of issues, including allegations of environmental degradation, workplace discrimination and inadequate parking-lot safety .
Still, Baron and O'Keefe said MGM would need to address the dicey presidential angle with care.
O'Keefe offered this warning about public demonstrations: "It's going to get on CNN and Fox News, and it could leave a bad taste in the mouth of the brand."
So try to avoid it, but if it happens, he said, "Prepare for the worst."
And, "Fight, and fight well."
In other words, prepare arguments about the lengths the company has gone to settle the dispute, have data in hand about how well the company has treated its workers and how much it has contributed to the community. Send a bulldog on television to lay it all out, expressing disappointment at the opportunism of the out-of-town politicians and encouraging the union to return to the negotiations.
Baron said a certain relatively small percentage of the population will automatically side with the union, a similar percentage will automatically side against the union and the rest of the public will listen to arguments and make up their own minds.
Given the old maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity, MGM could potentially come out ahead, Baron said, if its spokesmen make a forceful and persuasive argument that the company is in the right.
Pass the popcorn.
archive
