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twitterUnion’s plan: Win dealers’ gratitude, then their votes
Saturday, March 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- No win-win for Wynn, former dealer (2-27-2008)
- The Card Dealer (11-19-2007)
- Dealers sour on Caesars (11-1-2007)
Beyond the Sun
After winning the right to represent casino dealers at two major Strip resorts last year, the Transport Workers Union of America is taking its organizing effort to the next level.
The union, which is working to bolster a fledgling gaming division here, plans to announce Monday that it is launching a public campaign urging card players to tip their dealers.
The campaign will feature a Web site, billboards, and print and Internet advertising. Models wearing “video vests” featuring blackjack pointers will be posted in front of targeted casinos as well.
On its face, the campaign serves to educate the public and curry favor with dealers, whom the union is trying to organize up and down the Strip.
“People come to Las Vegas and have no idea these dealers work off tips,” said Joseph Carbon, director of the international union’s gaming division. “People are winning thousands of dollars and just walking away. I think there has to be an avenue for someone to speak for dealers on these issues.”
Perhaps more important, though, the campaign turns up the heat on casino operators as the union slogs its way through negotiations at Wynn Las Vegas and prepares to open talks with Caesars Palace management. TWU International President James Little will be on hand for Monday’s announcement. Little’s chief deputy, Harry Lombardo, is the union’s lead negotiator in the Wynn talks.
For the Transport Workers, organizing the dealers is a shot at redemption.
In 2001 the union tried to organize dealers at 11 casinos. It won elections at three properties, but ended up with just one signed contract, widely considered ineffectual, at the New Frontier, which was imploded last year.
When Wynn Las Vegas introduced a controversial tip-sharing program in 2006, the union saw another opening. Dealers contacted TWU International, which sent organizers to Las Vegas. The union, using the Web to organize under management’s radar, won an election in May to represent about 650 dealers.
Emboldened dealers at Caesars then gathered majority support for the union and won a representation election in December. Negotiations begin Tuesday.
Upon discovery by casino operators, however, the organizing efforts have met fierce resistance.
Harrah’s Entertainment, which owns Caesars, launched its own Web site to counter the Transport Workers campaign in the days before the union election. The site contained several pages of information on the union’s troubles, from declining membership to allegations of corruption.
Management at other Harrah’s properties, including the Flamingo, Harrah’s and Paris Las Vegas, has since held closed-door mandatory meetings for employees urging them not to join the union.
The Transport Workers, organizing under the “Las Vegas Dealers Local 721” label, are targeting MGM Mirage as well, launching two Web sites aimed at dealers working at two of the company’s properties, the Mirage and Mandalay Bay. But the company bolstered its standing with its dealers last week when it announced pay raises at its 10 Strip casinos.
MGM Mirage has said the decision was unrelated to the union’s organizing efforts. The raises, it says, were needed to level the playing field among dealers at various properties and to reward longtime employees by lifting a salary cap.
Still, MGM Mirage has made it clear it’s not welcoming the union.
“Management prizes a direct relationship with employees, and dealers have a very special place in that system,” said Alan Feldman, MGM Mirage spokesman. “If you start putting a third party in the midst of that, especially a third party that has no understanding of this industry, it interferes with that relationship.”
Little countered, saying the union has learned its lessons from the last time around and is building a local for Las Vegas dealers, run by Las Vegas dealers.
Discussion: 15 comments so far…
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Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
Management prizes a direct relationship with *individual* employees is more like it.
Let's see, dealers at Wynn make about $100,000 a year but they need video vests telling visitors to tip them. Talk about greedy!!! Maybe the teachers union needs to put tip jars at the airport...
Isn’t it amazing how many brain dead people continue to repeat the WynnLV $100,000 dealer propaganda line, published by WynnLV in Aug 2006? Since then, WynnLV unilaterally confiscated 15% of its dealers’ tip incomes, thus that figure is no longer, if it ever was, valid. Fact is, the Wynn dealers are guaranteed and paid $6.33 per hour. The remainder of their incomes, whatever the figure, is not guaranteed and is given them by customers for service received.
If the union can increase a dealer’s income by making the public aware that dealers work for tips, all dealers will benefit not only the “$100,000 a year Wynn dealers”.
$100,000 ?? Why in the world do people believe that figure? Paperprincess shouldnt believe everything she reads put out by stevewynn. If that were true, this town would be overrun with everybody to get those dealer jobs that pay sooo much.
Unions. Remember them? The people that brought us weekends...
It's not my statement, I saw it somewhere else.
For your information, I didn't read that figure in anything put out by Steve Wynn but was told that by at least 2 Wynn table games employees. I realize you are trying to hide that because you want sympathy for your cause and it's hard to get sympathy from the average worker who probably has 10 times the education you have and is making WAY less. But if I'm wrong about the amount, why don't you tell us how much it actually is???
paperprincess, Wynn dealers worked 10 hours a day 6 and 7 days a week. No casino in Vegas makes $100.000 a year (this was Mr.Wynns story.) Dealers are skilled workers, that work holidays and long hours, with uncontrollable abusive people who have been drinking, and no management backup. I also feel teachers should be paid more, and will vote for any politician that supports education. However this is Gov. supported education that is not for profit. The casinos are profitable billion dollar world wide corporations.
Wynn is a publicly traded company, I assume dealer tip distributions have to be reported quarterly in their legal filings. I've never read a Wynn dealer respond directly to that. I've always heard that dealers pool all tips equally, yet asign shifts based on seniority, i.e. senior dealers get Monday-Friday 8 to 5, yet get an equal cut of Friday and Saturday night money. Is this correct?
"Wynn dealers worked 10 hours a day 6 and 7 days a week."
That is a bigger lie than that they don't make anywhere close to $100K/yr!
"I've always heard that dealers pool all tips equally, yet asign shifts based on seniority, i.e. senior dealers get Monday-Friday 8 to 5, yet get an equal cut of Friday and Saturday night money. Is this correct?"
Tips are generally pooled between all dealers for each day. And the hours are usually something like 4am to noon, noon to 8pm, 8pm to 4am. Isn't it odd that they always deny making good money but will never say how much they do make? What are they hiding from?
No dealers in Vegas have Sat or Sun off. Dealers have to work the day to be paid for it. This is A.C. procedure, that you're talking of. Also no dealer works 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The day shift is 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. However, even 10 years into a job, I have to work overtime on holidays and big convention weekends. When a new casino opens, it is expected that a dealer will work the first year 6 and 7 days a week. In answer to your question, the casino does not have to report dealers tips in their quarterly filings. Dealers pay taxes on the tips, and have their own account.
Dealers will only make slightly over min. wage, no overtime or holiday pay at most houses. Dealers live off of tips. Each casino varies on the amount of tips they receive.
"Dealers live off of tips."
Nobody is begrudging you your tips but why all the secrecy about how much they are?? And back to the original story, why the need to advertise for tips? Aren't you making enough? And is it only dealers who have to work 6 and 7 days when a hotel opens? If it's so bad with long hours, overtime and not enough tips, why don't you do something else after 10 years of such mistreatment?
I was not responding to you, I was responding to JLOKC, and his question.
Why all the secrecy about how much Wynn dealers make? If it's not $100K, how much is it? People are so quick to denounce that figure but they won't say how much it really is...why?
Could someone please explain why dealer make so much in tips? Are Americans that eager to throw their money at uneducated people that do little more then throw cards at them? Casinos go through great lengths to make shore that dealers have no say in the outcome of theses games of chance. I hear dealers bitch and complain everyday that some uy hits big and stiffs them. If they lose arethey going to reach in that toke box and give anything back to them. Not a chance. Floor supervisors provide every bit as much customer service as a dealer if not more (i notice that you do not quote the part of the law that defines what a tipped employee is). But that is as far as it should go, dealers and floor people work together and in the case of Wynn it is insane that someone can make anywhere in the ballpark of $100,000 a year heck even $80,000 and be supervised by someone making half that. Yes the casinos should pony up some money but so should the dealers.