The Frontier strike, which was settled when the casino changed hands in early 1998, was an ordeal that stretched back to 1991. Twenty years ago, however, Mafia domination of the Strip was becoming a distant memory. Boyd Gaming was already long in possession of the Stardust (scene of some of the worst Mob skims) and Steve Wynn’s junk-bond-financed Mirage was already two years old.
If anything, the Mob’s absence from the Strip may have helped the dispute to fester as long as it did. The Culinary Union was founded in 1938 and by 1975 had grown to 27,000 members. According to PBS’ "Las Vegas: An Unconventional History," "Although the union's interests had often been compromised by the relationships between union leaders and Syndicate members, casino owners recognized the importance of keeping the union members happy for the sake of assuring the smooth operation of their establishments." Union pension funds also had provided handy, respectable fronts for Mob acquisitions of Vegas casinos.
The new, corporate casino owners – whose mantra was "maximizing shareholder value" – placed a lower priority on good labor relations. This led to a paralyzing 16-day strike in 1976, from which the Culinary emerged victorious, and another in 1984.
Pockets of resistance, however, remained. Margaret Elardi and her family purchased the Frontier and set a confrontational course of action. According to AFSCME historian Gerald W. McEntee, "Margaret Elardi and her two sons, Tom and John, set out to bust the union by cutting health benefits and pension plans, setting wages far below other union hotels and ignoring basic grievance procedures." This provoked an overwhelming (464-7) strike vote on Sept. 19, 1991, and a 550-employee walkout two days later. The Elardi family proclaimed, "[I]f the union wants to make war in the state of Nevada, the Elardis will make them wish they never started the war."
Over the course of the next 2,325 days, neither side budged. "There were rallies and arrests, violence and political posturing, propaganda campaigns, lawsuits, accusations of spying, cross-country marches, license threats, indictments and impasses," wrote the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Warren Bates. The Elardis even turned a deaf ear to then-Gov. Bob Miller when he initially attempted to intervene, calling the labor war "a blight on the image of Nevada." (Both labor and management subsequently met, to no avail, with a Miller-appointed mediator.) Not even a federal court ruling against the Elardi family could make them back down – although the threat of National Labor Relations Board sanctions was rumored to have accelerated Mrs. Elardi’s exit from the Frontier.
Already the strike had thwarted her expansion plans for the property, labor strife having apparently scared off financiers. The Elardis, grind-joint operators, had few public supporters (Jack Binion was one) and at least one prominent enemy. Bill Bennett, owner of the Sahara, was long known for a proactive attitude in dealing with his workforce. To show his opposition to the Elardis, he fed striking Frontier workers three square meals a day. As he put it, "Las Vegas has enough of an image problem without the Frontier making it worse."
In the meantime, the Culinary had inked contracts with 32 other Strip casinos and even organized the workforce at MGM Grand, which had tried to operate as a non-union property -- one of several initial miscalculations there. A strike at the Barbary Coast had been resolved to labor’s satisfaction. During this era, top executives like Phil Satre of Harrah’s Entertainment, Wynn and Bill Boyd would make a conspicuous point of maintaining conciliatory relations with the Culinary Union.
Today, the only holdout on the Strip, Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson, has managed to keep the Culinary at bay by providing wages and benefits that rival (at least) those of unionized workers. Had the Elardis been half as smart as Adelson, who knows how differently the history of the Strip might have gone.
