Ever since the Las Vegas Business Press was made subordinate to the business desk of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the latter had ‘dibs’ on any of the former’s stories it coveted — or so it was explained to me at the time. (I didn’t care to stick around to see this in effect and, thankfully, was spared that experience.)
All of which is prologue to wondering why the bigger paper passed on (or missed) the opportunity to snatch up a Valerie Miller story about a class action suit leveled against Station Casinos. Three ex-Station employees are suing the locals giant, accusing it of shortchanging them in various ways and intimidating employees from filing overtime claims in general.
As Miller points out, the suit falls into a gray area of Nevada law, the “rounding” of hours, which has never been upheld nor overturned. It’s a rude surprise that Station, which has made Fortune‘s “100 Best Places to Work” list from 2005 through 2008, would be on the receiving end of such litigation.
That said, Station COO Kevin Kelley surely could have come up with a more substantive rejoinder than to sneer at the plaintiffs’ Reno-based law firm as “out-of-town class action lawyers.” Just you try to locate an in-town class action lawyer, Mr. Kelley, and more power to you if you succeed. At least as far as challenging the big casino companies is concerned, they’re not to be found locally. Remember that Wynn Las Vegas dealers Joseph Cesarz and Daniel Baldonado also had to go to Reno find counsel when taking on their employer over his tip-confiscation policy.
Even why you try to go easy on Columbia Sussex, it goes and steps in yet another cow pie. Now its security force gets a ‘mulligan’ after an NLRB judge held that management at the Atlantic City Tropicana conducted illegal surveillance and intimidation of workers prior to a union vote, including a promise of favorable treatment to anti-union voters. The election went the Tropicana’s way, but only by one vote. (Too bad Columbia Sussex can’t keep as close an eye on the doings on the front steps of its Las Vegas Tropicana.)
One of the more bothersome revelations in the Press of Atlantic City story is that the pro-union vote among the A.C. Trop’s slot technicians was 19-2. Think about it: If every slot tech was present and voting, that means the Trop was operating with only 21 slot technicians — 1.4 per eight-hour shift, for a property that boasts in excess of 4,000 slot machines. One and a half technicians. Four thousand-plus slots. That’s the Columbia Sussex way.
In another confidence-inspiring development, Columbia Sussex is poor-mouthing the New Jersey Casino Commission. It wants to defer paying its $750K fine (of which the first installment payment is five days overdue) until the Trop is sold — which not be until June. Yeah, that’ll sure make those mutterings about insolvency go far, far away …
… Not.
