UNIONIZING VEGAS, THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

The word UNION dredges up visions of dockworkers and brass-knuckled leg breakers wearing stocking hats, if you're from Chicago like me, it dredges up visions of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union and the winter of 1967. The mayor of Chicago was Richard J.Dailey (the current mayor is his son, Richard M.Dailey) I won't go into my feeling of that pompus piece of crap (yah, I was at the convention in '68 in Grant Park), but let it be said that Richard Dailey thought he, and his band of crooked cops and bribed aldermen, ran the city, until the snowstorm of 1967. When over 18 inches of snow fell in a period of hours on the unsuspecting sleeping city on a Saturday night. On Sunday, mayor Dailey took to the airwaves and told the city not to worry, the snowplows and salt trucks and garbage trucks would be out before the last flake fell, and by Monday morning, the city will be up and running as usual thanks to the mayor and the Democrats.

Of course, Dailey didn't count on his arch enemy, Jimmy Hoffa, and his Teamsters union, who drove the trucks, picked up the garbage, poured the salt, gassed the trucks, changed the tires and tuned the engines on every piece of city equipment, and according to Hoffa on Sunday night, not a truck was moving until his union had a signed contract which had been at the middle of the infamous fight between Hoffa and Dailey. "He might be the mayor, but the Teamsters run the city, and I run the Teamsters." Hoffa said, by Tuesday morning when the city still sat frozen, not a train was running, not a truck was delivering to the grocery stores, not a street was open. By Tuesday night Mayor Dailey signed the contract with the Teamsters and midnight Wednesday morning the Teamsters returned and a snowplow was started on the south side, by 4 am. The streets were cleared and the city was ready to open for business, thousands of Teamsters who stood by for the word to start working had shown the city, and the nation, that an organized union was stronger than any government. Of course Dailey died since then, and in July of 1975, Hoffa had assumed the same temperature as the trunk of his car. But the union went on. But although the union was stronger than the city government, they just weren't ready to take on the city of Las Vegas.

The largest union in the state of Nevada is the Culinary Union. A bunch of non-English speaking hotel porters that gladly pay the dues just to have a job and more important, keep their mouths shut and do what they're told. And that goes for picketing and voting for the union. And how tough were they? Well I still have nightmares of narrowly missing picketers wandering into the street for the three years they picketed the lowly Frontier hotel to no avail. I still remember walking through the picket lines in front of the Horseshoe, and how they'd part the picket line to let you into the casino, someone would call you a scab and when you'd turn around they'd just shut up and get back in line, that's how tough they were. They were more concerned the doughnuts were fresh and the coffee was hot, than worrying about scabs breaking their precious picket line. And what did they get for their efforts? Well the Horseshoe just let them walk around until they quietly whimped away, the Frontier didn't matter since there wasn't anyone to keep out anyways. If you walked by the casino they'd try to hand you their grievances on a piece of paper and tell you not to enter the Frontier, and of course you'd just tell them no thanks, you were just using the sidewalk to walk to the Mirage to see the volcano and didn't even know there was a casino called the Frontier.

Fast forward to January 15th 2001. An article in the Las Vegas Review Journal reads "UNION VOTE BEGINS TODAY FOR CASINO DEALERS." Another dealer handed me the article and I read in astoundment as the article said the dealers at the Monte Carlo were to vote that day to open elections for a union vote. Somewhere, somehow, the Transportation Workers Union slipped into Las Vegas, snuck into the pit at the Monte Carlo and whispered to a dealer to fill out a union voting form, when the dealer was done filling out the form with his shift boss and the casino manager who told him where to put the X, the union quietly snuck out of town with a no vote allowing everything to return to normal, whatever that is in Las Vegas.

In a job of roughly 30,000 workers, every dealer knows a few things... first, you have to audition for the job, regardless of who you know, and since YOU auditioned for THEM, you're coming to them for the job, and it's theirs to give and take at will, and when you complain after being terminated they just tell you Nevada's a right to work state, and even indiscriminate firings are totally legal. The other complaint is low wages. Dealers average $50 a shift, some less, some a little more. That was set in the 80's and hasn't changed since. It's only the tips that offset a poor wage, and out of all the casinos and all the dealers the tips have not gone up in any of the casinos. And they won't since the casinos just hire more dealers since their dealers are making good money, it must mean there's plenty of players, so they justify hiring more dealers which just waters down the tokes and keeps the dealers in the same scale, or worse. The casinos that make good tips, which is $100+ a day, have no complaints, so when the word union is mentioned to them, along with the mention from the bosses that they're fired as soon as they place a yes vote for the union, any ideas are quickly squashed. Another weapon they have is the idea that Steve Wynn proposed for the Bellagio. NO TIPS. The plan was to pay the dealers $23 an hour and refuse any tipping. Sounds pretty good except the dealers at the Bellagio probably make more like $30 an hour on a poor day.

But why would management be worried about unions? Thomas Gallagher, CEO of Park Place which owns Bally's, Paris, Hilton, Flamingo, who wasn't even part of the voting said "We don't feel the unions are necessary, from "our perspective", we provide a great working atmosphere, great pay and benefits." Alan Feldman of the MGM-Mirage corp. that owns the Monte Carlo, along with Mandalay Bay (Circus Circus) corp. was even more paranoid; "Our position has been made VERY CLEAR to our dealers both at New York New York and MGM that we fully understand the concerns that they've expressed. But we are of the impression that a union that represents bus drivers in New York City (Transportation Workers Union) has no ability to address any of the issues that have been raised and that the best way of getting at some of the issues that have been raised is for the dealers and management to work together to find appropriate solutions."

Of course he didn't say the "appropriate solutions" is another word for "you're fired" and the idea of management getting together with the dealers is another way of saying "if I pass one in the hall I'll say hi, if he says hello back, he's fired." Then Feldman said "we've hired a "consultant" to present the managements side to the dealers." In other words, we hired a gooney to tell you guys you were all gonna get fired instead of us telling you directly.

But like I told another dealer, here's a union that represents 110,000 transportation workers nationwide, if that sounds like a lot of people, it would be like the city of Rancho Cucamonga threatening the United States government they wanted to succeed from the union. The dealers represent 30,000 people, almost 25% of their current members, then having bus drivers voting along with Blackjack and Craps dealers on a contract in Las Vegas? HUH???

Was it at all serious? As of the voting on Sunday, less than one out of three dealers voted for a vote. The rest said nothing, most didn't even want to fill out the forms after a phony press release was put in the dealers pit that read "Monte Carlo pits close after union vote" and the dummy story said the management, as a result of a union "YES" vote, immediately closed all table games and replaced the craps, 21,and roulette games with slot machines. The article went on to say all dealers were released from their jobs before any vote could be tallied, and that they would do the same to New York New York, and any other property that voted in the union. When the TWU heard this, they threatened to sue for their intimidation policy as an obstruction of justice. And thus the idea was aborted before a breath was even taken. No dealers I talked to from my casino (also owned by MGM) or any other casino even heard of the union attempting to ask for a vote, let alone heard of a vote actually being taken at any casino.

Where were the union rallies? Where were the union representatives telling the dealers what they even proposed to do? What was the contract? How much of a raise? What kind of benefits? There wasn't even a whisper of the Transportation Workers Union even driving through the state on vacation, let alone asking for a vote. Here we have a business that's predicated on parting you with your money and giving you absolutely nothing in return, here's an entire business that hires people (dealers) to deal the games that should take the money, and yet if you're going to make money as a dealer, your job is just the opposite, to give as much of your owners money away as possible to make as much tips as possible. So management is hiring someone who wants to see them on the verge of losing the business, but not quite, so they can take a chunk of the gambling money as well as a chunk of the casino's money (the money paid to the dealer when a player makes a bet for the dealers and wins) and hopes everyone goes home with money. But logically that can't happen, someone has to win and someone has to lose, and the dealers still have to make a living regardless of the outcome.

If it was 1975 and Hoffa was still around, the mob being kicked out of Las Vegas in the 80's would have seen the potential of getting their foot back in the door had they pushed the Teamsters union on the dealers. Hoffa would have eaten Alan Feldman and Thomas Gallagher for lunch and had the entire town of Las Vegas still eating 50cent shrimp cocktails, drinking dollar drinks, $5 buffets, getting real comps, serious entertainers still here, and best of all NO FREAKIN' KIDS. And if the casinos didn't like it, if they thought they ran the town and wielded all the power in Las Vegas, the union of dealers and hotel workers as part of the Teamsters union, would simply stay home a few days, no cards being delt, no dice being thrown, no machines being fixed or hoppers being filled or most of all, no drinks being served anywhere. And as in 1967, Hoffa would say "The casinos might own the town, but the workers run it." But in a statement released by Alan Feldman after the union was voted down. "Since we have seemed to reach total saturation in the Las Vegas market, we're scrapping plans of expansions in town and concentrating on saturating the New Jersey market." which is another term for " we're not only putting on a hiring freeze as our punishment, but we're probably going to punish you all for even thinking the word "UNION."

Well, I'd love to write more, but I have to go, my break's over and the boss is yelling...

-Ken Pearlman