It’s been called off. The Culinary and the last holdout, the Golden Gate, reached terms last Sunday morning. In fact, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "Despite the headlines and saber rattling, the leadership of Culinary Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 wasn’t going to force union members to walk-off [sic] their jobs at properties that hadn’t finalized new contracts by 5 a.m. Sunday."
How come? "Deals were in place and needed only tweaks to fit individual hotel-casino properties." Culinary boss D. Taylor was evidently feeling so sanguine that he allegedly took the weekend off from negotiating. "It was all a dog and pony show," writes the R-J’s Howard Stutz. "Downtown was never the issue." In other words, the Culinary is looking beyond Glitter Gulch and toward another rumble with non-union Station Casinos and to Strip holdout The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
Longtime and acrimonious foes, the Culinary and Station ironically aren’t that far apart in their stances. The Culinary Union wants unionization via a card-check process. Station says it would be perfectly happy with a union election – provided it was overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (as is customary in Atlantic City). As for the Cosmopolitan, its impending sale to private-equity fund Blackstone Group could ease the way for a union pact. Outgoing owner Deutsche Bank simply wants to be rid of the $3.9 billion millstone round its neck. Station, judging by history, will be a tougher nut to crack. "We will make sure that other casino workers in Las Vegas who aspire to the same union standard of living will be able to join our union family soon," darkly warned Culinary Secretary-General Geoconda Arguello-Kline."
One facet of the deal which makes it attractive to all parties is that the "five-year" pact expires in four years. One year of its terms will be made retroactive to June 1, 2013, when the last collective-bargaining agreement ran out.
We can’t recall any time in recent history that Culinary members rejected a contract offer that had union leadership’s backing. "I think it’s a pretty good chance [that it will be ratified]," says Culinary spokeswoman Bethany Khan, "since their coworkers were part of the negotiating committee." If management was on one side of the table, it might face a bartender, a housekeeper and a cocktail waitress on the other.
We can’t guarantee that the final vote will be a slam dunk and, at this point, it hasn’t been scheduled. "It has happened," says University of Nevada-Las Vegas history professor Michael Green. "Remember the name Ben Schmoutey? He succeeded Elmer ‘Al’ Bramlet. Sometime in the late 1970s/early 1980s, they voted down a contract that essentially let management do whatever it wanted." According to James P. Kraft’s Vegas at Odds: Labor Conflict in a Leisure Economy, 1960-1985: "Schmoutey's support within the Culinary declined precipitously as a result of his conduct during the 1980 collective bargaining negotiations with the Nevada Resort Association (NRA). Union members rejected the first agreement that Schmoutey made because it granted too many concessions to employers, including a freeze on employer contributions to union health and welfare funds and new limitations on workers' right to honor picket lines."
But we’re pretty confident it will this deal will be accepted, especially since the downtown casinos agreed to terms similar to their big Strip brethren, whose contracts have already been ratified.
