Dirty sheets, towels a bargaining chip

Michael J. Mishak

Friday, Oct. 12, 2007 | 7:25 a.m.

A labor strike against a Strip resort is always serious business, but there's another threat unfolding that could prove even more disruptive - a possible Culinary Union strike against the industrial laundry that washes, dries, presses and folds 85 percent of the sheets, towels and napkins used by Las Vegas tourists.

The union has been negotiating with Mission Industries for more than a year, as its 1,600 workers scattered across five plants continue to work under a November contract extension.

Talks have focused on health and safety issues, with the two sides close to an agreement on other items such as seniority rights and a guaranteed workweek, said Kevin Kline, the Culinary's lead negotiator in the Mission talks. But with the union and the laundry at loggerheads on health care coverage since August, the Culinary took its campaign public this week - in a decidedly eye-catching way.

The union designed an ad featuring a naked man, covering his crotch with a newspaper, accompanied by the headline: "Got Towel? Vegas casino laundry workers strike?"

The ad is appearing on taxicabs and roving billboards on the Strip, and is being distributed by hand to pedestrians.

"If this negotiation goes sour, it will have more of an effect than a strike at any individual casino," Kline said. "There will be no linen, no towels, no pillow cases on the Las Vegas Strip."

A call to Mission's lead negotiator was not returned Thursday.

Mission provides sheets and towels for hotel rooms, tablecloths and napkins at restaurants and dry cleaning services for uniforms. The company services the Strip, downtown Las Vegas and locals casinos.

The slow pace of the talks and the battle over health care is largely because both parties are meeting at the bargaining table for the first time. In 2004 the Culinary took over responsibilities for laundry workers in town when its parent organization, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, merged with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, which had negotiated the previous contract that expired in November.

The Culinary wants Mission to adopt its health care plan, the union's biggest - and most expensive - benefit. As a standard condition of their contracts, Culinary members and their families pay no health care premiums. The Mission workers' current contract includes health care but does not cover members' spouses and includes coverage caps, Kline said.

The Culinary hopes its high-profile ad campaign will pressure the company into a settlement. Although the union has not notified Mission of a contract-extension cancellation, Kline said its next bargaining session Wednesday would be crucial.

"The negotiations are taking place in the street now," Kline said. "We've made it clear that we're ready to get this done and we're taking the message to their customers."