Wynn Las Vegas dealers have, in fact, signed a contract with the resort and, yes, it took years – almost four, to be exact. However, casino dealers in Atlantic City have been more successful because they have the backing of the United Auto Workers. In Las Vegas, dealers are repped by the considerably lesser Transport Workers Union. In 2001, it made a run at unionizing dealers along the Strip, winning three elections at older properties but only reaching a contract at the now-demolished New Frontier.
Undaunted, the TWU returned in 2007, spurred by anger over Steve Wynn’s decision to withhold tip money from dealers and redistribute it among pit bosses. In a May 12, 2007 ballot, 63% of Wynn’s approximately 700 dealers voted in favor of TWU representation.
The following December, dealers at Caesars Palace – riled by what they perceived as management hostility – also voted to unionize under the TWU banner. This time, 67% of dealers sided with the union. Talks with management began in early January 2008. Harrah’s Entertainment, however, was concerned that unionization might spread to its other properties. Dealers at the Flamingo Las Vegas were frog-marched into meetings where the casino’s then-president Don Marrandino allegedly threatened their much-prized "tokes." "They are pretty much are saying if we unionize," a dice dealer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal we are going to lose and they are going to do the same thing they did at Wynn and take our tips." Similar confrontations occurred at Harrah’s Las Vegas and Paris-Las Vegas.
By contrast, MGM Mirage implemented wage increases for its dealers in February 2008. The raises were by as much as $1.42 an hour (22%), plus annual cost-of-living adjustments. Dealers make minimum wage ($7.75/hour), hence the importance placed on tips. "Our dealer rates were all over the board," said company President Jim Murren, who downplayed the wage hikes as a standardization of varying pay scales at differing MGM casinos.
Whilst taking credit for the raises, TWU officials derided them as "an empty sack." The union, however, has not moved against any MGM property to date.
It did, however, file with the National Labor Relations Board for a union vote at The Rio, the second (and so far, last) Harrah’s property it would attempt to unionize. Dealers at The Rio feared a sale of the casino, which has often been rumored, as well as cost-cutting on the heels of new ownership’s financially catastrophic, $25 billion leveraged buyout. But, in a mid-July 2008 ballot, the TWU came up short. Only 41% of dealers supported the union. Then-Rio President Marilyn Winn (now with Wynn Resorts) was credited with swaying the vote by taking a hands-off position regarding the tip pool.
Talks between the TWU and both Wynn LV and Caesars remained at a stalemate for most of the next two years. Last November, the TWU caved and held a vote on a contract offer from Wynn Resorts that had been sitting on the table since November 2009. Although accepting management’s terms meant conceding every major point of contention – ceding the right to participate in the counting of tips, for instance – Wynn dealers voted "aye" by a margin of four to one.
Wynn threw the TWU a few bones, setting up an arbitration process for dealers who’d been slapped with infraction notices by pit bosses. A TWU official rationalized the accord as "building a relationship." They’ll have a good, long while to do it: The TWU is locked into its Wynn contract until 2020.
It took almost another year for Caesars management to put a contract in front of its dealers. Emboldened by Wynn’s success, it called for employees to share their tips with management, described by the company as "cost-effective way to supplement employees’ earnings." (Harrah’s did not dare make such a demand of UAW-backed dealers at Caesars Atlantic City, who won an 18% raise.) Caesars’ Las Vegas dealers practically threw the pact in management’s face, voting in late March 2011 to reject it 305-2. Caesars and the TWU went back to the drawing board last month.
With talks now entering their fourth year, we asked attorney Howard Cole, of the firm of Lewis & Rocha, about the prospects for arbitration. There are none, he said. The TWU and Harrah’s can bring in mediators from the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service, but that agency can’t impose anything on the warring parties.
Rank-and-file employees can’t force either the union or management into mediation, either, although other remedies are available – with difficulty. Dealers could file a charge with the NLRB, could contend that management isn’t negotiating in good faith or even accuse it of "surface bargaining" (i.e., calling meetings at unreasonable times). Also, if a union hasn’t produced results a year after being voted in, employees could call another election to decertify the union, kicking it out, in effect.
Cole warns of another downside to protracted labor wrangling. While the union and management are trying to hash a deal out, wages and benefits are frozen at pre-negotiation levels. Given such disincentives, it says a great deal about how motivated casino dealers at Caesars and Wynn are to have stuck by the TWU through such long and, no doubt, discouraging circumstances.
Jeffrey Waddoups, a professor of economics at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, adds the following information on collective bargaining …
"Good-faith bargaining is a legal term which means that parties will meet and negotiate with each other at reasonable times and places and will display willingness to reach agreement. It also means that the parties will respect the role of the other party as representatives and will not try to bargain directly with principals for whom the representatives act, or will not engage in behavior to undermine the bargaining process. Good faith bargaining, however, does not require the parties reach an agreement. So on particularly thorny issues, bargaining can last for extended periods of time and still meet the legal meaning of 'good faith bargaining.'
"Although current labor law that governs the private sector does not require binding arbitration of first contracts, the Employee Free Choice Act, a labor law reform bill that has the support of many Democrats on the Hill and most likely the support of President Obama if it reached his desk, would provide for binding arbitration of first contracts. [emphasis added] This would only apply to situations where workers had just voted to unionize. It would seem to be a reasonable change to labor law because roughly 50% of the time, workers who vote to have a union collectively bargain for them are frustrated in their unionization attempts because a first contract cannot be obtained."
