Stagehands try to unionize, get unexpected drama

Michael J. Mishak, Las Vegas Sun

Saturday, June 30, 2007 | 7:29 a.m.

Paul Bordenkircher and his 15 co-workers were stuck.

They wanted more money and better benefits for their work as stagehands at three Boyd Gaming casinos. They decided to join a union.

The organizing, led by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 720, started quietly. Workers held secret meetings, signed pledge cards and soon filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board.

That's when life got tough.

For six weeks leading up to the scheduled election, the workers were buffeted by claims from both sides - the union and the hired gun, Mark Garrity, who Boyd brought in as a proud "union buster."

They could lose their jobs.

No, that's an idle threat.

They would likely get raises if they didn't join.

That's a bluff.

The workers called the labor board for guidance, which helped - a little.

Soon, Bordenkircher and the others realized that although they were but a meager band of 16, to Boyd Gaming and to the union, they represented a precedent that could spread through the Orleans, Sun Coast and Gold Coast properties.

The stakes had become bigger than they had imagined. As stagehand Chris Minkema put it: "It's like being in the middle of a spitting contest and we're tired of getting wet."

Boyd didn't waste any time. About a week after employees filed their petition with the labor board, the stagehands found themselves sitting in the basement training unit room at the Orleans.

Staring back was Garrity, the high-priced, well-known and self-described "union buster" and "junkyard dog."

Dressed in a button-up shirt and blue jeans and sporting a ponytail, Garrity told the group he had been paid a princely sum by Boyd to sink their organizing drive, according to employees at the meeting. A bonus awaits him, he said, if workers pull their petition from the labor board.

Oh, and then there's his trip to Cabo San Lucas , Mexico, regardless of what happens with the election, he said.

"I thought it was odd he was so brazenly open about it," Minkema said. Why the bravado?

Garrity assured the workers he was no novice.

According to financial reports filed with the Labor Department, Garrity's consulting company, Balance Inc., received more than $1.6 million for running anti-union campaigns on behalf of Boyd Gaming, MGM Mirage and Mikohn Gaming in 2002, the last year of available data.

In fact, employees said he boasted of his record as a "persuader," saying he was directly responsible for either busting or decertifying 182 unions nationwide over the past two decades.

"He kept calling us 183," Bordenkircher said.

The Sun made repeated attempts to speak with Boyd Gaming and Garrity this week, but was not successful. The only response was a brief statement from Boyd spokesman Rob Stillwell:

"We explained to our employees that it was an important vote and it was their decision to make."

He added: "We have a long history of great employee relations over a long period of time."

Stagehands who opposed the union declined to comment for this story.

The first meeting with Garrity was one of eight mandatory sessions the company would call over the next month. Under U.S. labor law, an employer has the right to hold so-called captive audiences during an organizing drive, provided that the employees are paid for their time.

It's during these meetings , unions and labor advocates say, that employees can be threatened and intimidated.

Business, on the other hand, cites labor law barring such behavior and sees the sessions as a chance to exercise its free speech. Businesses also say the meetings level the playing field because the union can meet with employees off premises and after hours.

And those union meetings can match Garrity in rhetoric. Rob Rovere, an IATSE Local 720 organizer involved with the Boyd stagehands ' effort, said the multiple employer sessions - twice a week for a month - amount to "corporate jihad" against workers.

"It's the Stockholm syndrome," Rovere said. "The company hopes the prisoners start to identify with their captors."

In the following weeks, the pressure built slowly, employees said. At first, Garrity portrayed himself as an ally, a concerned friend. He gave them handouts and case studies and showed them charts. He brought in workers to give testimonials about how they had decertified their unions.

"His pitch was to show us how bad our lives would end up," Minkema said.

On top of that, workers started getting visits from high-level executives during their shifts in the casino showrooms.

Handshakes and gratitude, employees said. "These are people we've never met before, and suddenly they're our friends," Bordenkircher said.

With time running out, Garrity turned up the heat, employees said.

One week before the election, he told the group that Boyd could close their unit under the guise of restructuring and outsource their jobs, if the union won.

The statement sent a chill through the room, Bordenkircher said. And, in a scene that had become familiar in recent weeks, union supporters made a mad dash to the union hall to vet the claim.

Labor leaders said it was an idle and probably unlawful threat. But the National Labor Relations Board told them that Garrity's comment was not clear-cut. Although the law protects workers from retaliatory firings and requires the company to recognize the union after a successful election, a company can make layoffs, a labor board representative told them.

As the weeks passed, the workers found they weren't just wary of Boyd. IATSE Local 720 had its own infamously storied past.

In 2002, the local's parent union revoked its charter over alleged financial misconduct and for what it referred to in a lawsuit as a "complete breakdown in the democratic process." The union was run by outside trustees for more than two years before it was returned to local control.

And now Garrity was telling the stagehands that the union was under federal investigation and that its pension fund was underfunded, employees said.

"You can't seem to get a straight story from either side," Bordenkircher said.

In interviews, workers expressed frustration about a process that bars both sides from being in the same room with them. They also took issue with parts of the labor law that prohibit employers from discussing future benefits. Although intended to prevent coercion, the law limited substantive discussion of employee issues, they said.

The tension and conflicting claims eventually split what several workers described as a tight-knit group.

Even stagehands such as Chris Martini, a solid union supporter, started having doubts. "I was scared," he said.

Then, four days before the election came a corporate memo, guaranteeing overtime compensation for stagehands who work more than eights hours in a single shift. The memo surprised workers. Overtime pay had been a major reason for their organization drive.

But Garrity then warned that the policy could be frozen and not take effect if the union won the election because the company would be required to start collective bargaining. Overtime would become a subject of negotiations, taking effect only after a contract was signed.

Later that week, Garrity seized on the language of the group's election petition. Because the document identified the group as "showroom technicians," workers interviewed by the Sun said he told them that a union contract would restrict their abilities to work anywhere outside showrooms in the three resorts.

Translation: job cuts. "That scared the crap out of people," Martini said.

Finally, the day before the election, Bill Boyd, the company's chairman and chief executive, made a last-minute personal appeal to workers, not unlike the one casino mogul Steve Wynn made last month as he tried to dissuade dealers at Wynn Las Vegas from organizing. (Garrity also ran the company campaign there.)

Reading from a statement, Boyd told the group the company had dropped the ball and pleaded for a second chance, according to employees at the meeting.

Also, he recounted the poor track record of organized labor in his company. Since Boyd Gaming set up shop in Las Vegas, its employees have decertified 10 unions. As a result, working conditions improved in each case, he said.

"Don't put somebody between us," he said, according to employees at the meeting.

The election was Thursday night. Employees filed into the same basement room at the Orleans where they had met with Garrity.

Workers marked ballots and then dropped them into a simple box, as management and union observers - including Garrity - looked on.

It was all over in a matter of minutes. When the votes were counted, the union won, 10-6.

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