Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- Grocers hear pitch opposing card check (2-6-2009)
- Card-check bill waitin’ on Al Franken (2-5-2009)
- Card check battle takes center stage at Capitol (1-31-2009)
- Big union reels as card-check fight looms (1-29-2009)
- Reid: Vote on card check bill, a labor priority, likely in summer (1-27-2009)
- Leaders of Culinary parent union embroiled in nasty lawsuit (1-27-2009)
- Card check issue stalls panel’s vote on nominee (1-23-2009)
- Left relieved by Obama’s words on card check (1-17-2009)
- Mum about card check, a key issue for labor (1-10-2009)
Nevada Sen. John Ensign revised Las Vegas labor history this week when talking on a cable television public affairs show about the dangers of the card-check bill pending in Congress.
Ensign said MGM Grand employees held a secret ballot election more than a decade ago in which they rejected the Culinary Union’s attempt to organize. Later, after the Culinary cut a deal with management, the union strong-armed workers into organizing even though 70 percent of them had voted “no” in the election, he said.
The story, Ensign said, is an example of “how powerful getting rid of the secret ballot is, and how much intimidation and how fast it can happen.”
In fact, no election was ever held at the MGM Grand, according to the National Labor Relations Board, thus the Culinary cannot also be accused of muscling workers to change their votes. From the outset, the union requested a card check, but the company refused. MGM demanded a secret ballot election, setting off a years-long organizing battle, which the union ultimately won in 1997.
Ensign could not be reached for comment.
The comments came last month during a taping of “Eye on Washington with Marilee Joyce” on Las Vegas ONE. The show aired this week.
“You have 70 percent of employees vote against the union and all of a sudden you have the right to a secret ballot taken away and instantly the union is able to come in,” Ensign said. “That doesn’t tell you what people really want in their workplace.”
Ensign’s remarks track closely with the words of his fellow Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has launched a multimillion-dollar campaign painting the bill as anti-democratic. “It’s un-American,” Ensign said. “People have been choosing not to be members of unions. And they shouldn’t have intimidation in the workplace just to falsely prop up union membership rolls so union bosses can have more dues to spend on political campaigns.”
On Wednesday, as union leaders staged a rally of hundreds on Capitol Hill, delivering what they said were 1.5 million signatures in support of card check, more than 50 members of the National Association of Manufacturers met with lawmakers to lobby against the bill.
Meanwhile, Republican senators have held up the nomination of Obama’s pick for labor secretary, Rep. Hilda Solis, after she declined to fully explain her position on the bill, saying she had yet to discuss the legislation with Obama, even though she had voted for it in Congress.
The stakes are high for both sides.
In the interview, Ensign called card check a “do-or-die” issue for Republicans. He said the bill’s passage would condemn his party to minority status for decades.
The legislation would make it easier for workers to organize. Unions could gain recognition as soon as a majority of workers signed cards, instead of winning a secret-ballot election, a process that labor has long derided as favoring employers. Labor advocates say companies use mandatory informational meetings, among other tools, to threaten and intimidate workers in the run-up to an election.
If anything, the MGM Grand story highlights labor’s arguments.
As policy, the Culinary organizes exclusively through card checks, in part because of its experience with the Santa Fe resort in 1993. Believing it had majority support and the cooperation of the owner, the union ran a conventional organizing campaign and won an election to represent the resort’s workers. The owners disputed the result and dragged out the appeals and bargaining process until 1999, when the property was sold to Station Casinos. Station then dismissed the workers in a wholesale firing.
In fact, by the time the MGM Grand opened in December 1993, the Culinary had set a card-check precedent on the Strip. Four years earlier, it won the right from casino mogul Steve Wynn at the Mirage and incorporated a succession clause into its contracts with operators, subjecting each new resort to immediate card check. Among the operators who signed such agreements was Mike Ensign, the senator’s father, who ran Mandalay Resort Group. The irony isn’t lost on Culinary leader D. Taylor, who dismissed Sen. Ensign’s remarks as “complete fiction.”
“His father was party to many card checks, and we commended him for it,” Taylor said. “We never had a problem.”
MGM, however, was a fierce opponent, opening nonunion and demanding that the union go through the election process if it wanted recognition. The union refused, instead picketing the property and running a public-relations campaign. It also conducted opposition research on members of the parent company’s board of directors. The union created bad publicity for the directors, who often sat on other corporate boards. The union attacked those other companies as well. Soon enough, sitting on the MGM board became more trouble than it was worth, and MGM was forced to deal.
According to federal labor board documents, the Culinary won nearly 53 percent support in its card check. As contract negotiations dragged on, though, more than half the bargaining unit (about 1,900 out of 3,100 employees) signed a petition for an election to decertify the union, saying they had been cut out of the process. The federal labor board, however, dismissed the petition, and workers ratified their first contract in 1997.
If you want half-truths, shaded truths and unbalanced one-sided "news stories" then the Sun is the place to get that feed to you on a daily basis.
What the writer left out are the union tactics that forced MGM to reconized the card-check "election" years old.
Unions are the only entities on the planet that I know of that on purpose try to destroy companies and jobs.
That is what they did to the MGM for years. They caused MGM to lose casino business opportunties via political muscle across the nation and that resulted in a lot fewer jobs being created.
Currently, if an owner agrees to a card-check "election" then it can happen.
Under the new proposed law, the union does not need the owner to agree to card-check "election".
The union even does not to notify the owner that they are getting union card signatures.
They do not even have to notify all the employees.
So if 101 out of 200 employees sign union cards then the union is certified without the owners or 99 employees finding out that an "election" was going on in the first place.
Also under the new law, if the union wins the "election" and proposed a contract then the owner and union has to agree to terms within 90 days. After that then a 3rd party will "split the baby" and force terms on the owner.
All that sounds more like comrade USSR than freedom democratic USA.
Card check is a very anti-business bill and an anti-job bill. Companies will be out-sourcing jobs and moving off-shore to escape the gulag of card-check.
"Unions are the only entities on the planet that I know of that on purpose try to destroy companies and jobs."
Once again your ineptitude is exposed by what's missing. When you make a ridiculous statement like this, you leave out the notion that they would even have a reason to do what you just said.
No matter which side you may be on Jim, if you want to be taken seriously by people who think empirically, you're going to have to stop employing inflammatory rhetoric to serve as the validity of your points.
By the way, by waging war, we become another entity on the planet that destroys companies and jobs. Not surprised you missed that though. I know how much you like to think of the other side as boogeymen instead of angry human beings who might actually have a reason to be upset with us.
As I have stated before, nance would be very happpy for more people to be working. He just wants them working for $1.00 per hour. Argue all you want for the "owner is allways right" tact. Fact is that you sound like a comrade than the other way around. Get a clue.
Once upon a time, during the industrialization phase in the US, unions were good. Today they are destroying companies and jobs. Look at the stinking UAW mess in Detroit. Unions are whiners.
Get rid of them.
So the union organized by arranging pickets at a non union company. They intimidated and kept people away from a competing business to their union represented companies until the employees were forced to join regardless of their desires. Democracy in action.
I have worked through a Union here in Vegas since 1990. Before that, since 1976, I worked non-union and for an 8 year span I had my own business. Unions rule. You'll find out that the people who usually complain about unions are the people who have never had a job with Union representation. The pay, the medical, the retirement plan,are a few of the important perks one can recieve through a Union.
Senator Ensign and the Republican Party are prime examples of ones who will use scare tactics and lies to destroy what thousands of American citizens see as a decent way of life. Nothing is perfect, but, Unions Jobs have a lot more going for them than non-union jobs. Some ignorant( or should I say stupid) people want the public to look at Unions as the worst way to work. You never see a union member saying " I wish I could work non-union". To these people who constantly want to dis the Unions, I have one thing to say, jealousy must be a hard emotion to control.
Unions, once ingrained in a work structure, artificially increase costs, and reduce competiveness of a firm, or increase the tax burdens on citizens if it is a public services based union.
Unions create inefficient and ineffective work models, and weaken the united states in every corner, in every city, and as a nation.
As a nation we can no longer afford unions, and we need to to expel them from all business models. Union organized employees never learn to represent themselves in the work place at the individual level, they never gain the personal tools to forge their own way in business or the workplace--they rely on a worker bureacracy to fend for them. In the end everybody is the long term loser.
So Houston, what you are saying is that good wages, health care, etc. does not benefit the working person? That in order for a citizen to get a job he must accept lower wages and no benefits for himself and his family? That the employer should reap all the rewards when the employee has put forth the effort to make the company he works for a success? I guess slave labor is okay also. How about undocumented aliens working in our country illegally taking jobs away from citizens who right now are screaming for work. I guess thats okay also. Our economic problem stems from all the middleclass jobs that have been outsourced to other countries the last eight years. You lose your working base and you lose job opportunities for our citizens. Now with all the unemployed Americans we have and the citizen who has had to accept a job at a lower wage, no medical insurance, etc., we cannot afford life as we used to know it. I guess thats okay too as long as it's good for the employer.
So let's look at the all American Business's that have outsourced. It cost them less to make their product now but of course they won't lower their prices to The American public. No greed whatsoever. So America can't buy like we used to. The stock markets in Asia and Europe are taking hits coinciding and reflecting with how our American Stock Exchange and economy is performing. The world economy in the past has done better when we had a strong economy and we could afford to spend and dream. As smart as these CEO's who have outsourced American jobs and these businesses who are using illegals instead of Americans think they are, they weren't smart enough to predict the ripple effect that would take place after thousands of Americans lost their jobs. I guess laying the blame on the Unions is the right thing to do, it probably takes a little pressure of the Corporates.
If you want half-truths, shaded truths and unbalanced one-sided listen to Ensign and this jnance32 joker. Unions made Vegas what it is (was?) today. Known as the last Detroit, it was the only city in the US where someone with a high school education could find work and join the middle class. Unions are one of the major reasons why the city grew at such a tremendous rate beginning in the mid-1980s. And they remain relevant today, despite the rhetoric of anti-tax, pro-business, anti-middle class politicians like Ensign. Do they need to change? Sure, in a global market unions face increasing challenges including businesses who wish to become competitive on the backs of their employees. You want to turn into the Detroit of today, kill the unions. If you want to salvage Nevada's economy hire union.
OMG!!!!!
When did an union open one single casino?????
I must have been asleep on that one.
Unions do not create jobs. Investors and risk takers start the businesses and create jobs.
Nance again your mouth opens and all that comes out has been caca. Union construction workers build the casinos so they can open and give Americans good union jobs that offer good pay and benefits. Have you graduated High School yet? All you seem to do is quote republican oriented websites.Put your feet on the ground and start making sense. I know you like to argue and bicker, but please make some sense.
OH.......I see.
The unions actually dished out the money paid their own salaries and purchased their own material with their own cash.
Uhhhh....I do not think so.
I think this proves the obvious.
The unions do not exist unless the investor and owners take risk and spend the money to create jobs.
Those evil dam owners.....how dare they create jobs.
Nance no one said the unions invested their money. The unions provide skilled craftsmen who create dreams.I will ask you again have you graduated High School yet? Maybe a class in economics would be of some help to you, and about those evil dam(?)owners, if they didn't create jobs they wouldn't get their dreams built. Kinda like one hand feeds the other.
When faced with an out of control greed-head U.S. corporate structure, I take unions anytime. The free market means free to the rich while the rest of us pay royalties.
Perhaps you should be the one to study economics.
Union can not exist without the owners and invester putting out the money.
Also there are tons of construction companies that are not unionized and some have been used to build casinos.
Fewer people, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the labor force are choosing to become members of unions in the private sector. The only growth area for union membership is the government - the only sector of the economy that faces no competition.
Unions are great - but only to their members. The net effect of unions, historically, has been to put low-skilled labor out of work and force consumers to pay more. In the long run the effect has been to artificially keep poverty higher than what it otherwise would be and purchasing power lower than what it otherwise would be.
On balance, unions do more harm for society than good.
jfnance32 It is amazing this nit wit is a wealth of knowledge about everything under the sun when in fact he ia an unaccomplished fool. Most of the basic things that the American worker takes for granted is due to unions and the rights,privileges and benefits they fought to win. I seriously doubt if nancy works he is probably living off of his parents and still living in thier home. Anyone who has read many of nancy's posts is aware he is not right in the head and has spent to much time listening to Rush.
John Ensign is known in Washinton as a fool and goof ball who spends most of his time playing golf. Thanks John for the wonderful job you did with the NRC in getting Republicans elected during the last election and that was your main assignment.
John is a underaccomplished idiot who has not worked a day in his life. By the way when a business the Ensigns own is in trouble it mysteriously burns own. Now that trumps any check off plan I know of.
On a personal note,When I was hurt in a construction accident three years ago,I was 53 it is sure nice to have that $1,683.oo a month for the rest of my life.Also the money they invested for me $48.000.00 And lets not forget medical insurance at a very reasonable price.The moral of the story,If you want to work for less wages,have little or no health care,little or no retirement pension work non union.