{"id":26737,"date":"2020-04-13T11:43:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T19:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=26737"},"modified":"2020-10-16T07:09:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T15:09:57","slug":"culinary-issues-demands-outlasting-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/culinary-issues-demands-outlasting-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Culinary issues demands; Outlasting Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a Thursday media event, the Culinary Union<\/strong> called for casinos to continue paying<\/a> their inactivated employees for as long as the Coronavirus<\/strong> crisis lasts. Said Unite-Here<\/strong> President D. Taylor<\/strong>,\u00a0\u201cThe industry, obviously, is a very profitable industry.\u00a0We don\u2019t understand \"\"their behavior.\u201d As many as 158,000 casino-industry workers in Southern Nevada<\/strong> could be out of jobs in a 30-to-90-day shutdown. The casinos will be hurting, too.\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em> estimates a $39 billion loss for Las Vegas<\/strong> casinos, should they be forced to stay closed for three months. Taylor was unmoved, saying,\u00a0\u201cWe don\u2019t understand why they\u2019re not stepping up now, particularly when they have the benefit of having some government loans that would help them retain the workers and retain the benefits.\u201d Ironically, the workers who have been faring best during the shutdown are the nonunion staffers at Venelazzo<\/strong>. Meanwhile, MGM Resorts International<\/strong> is trying place unemployed workers at Amazon<\/strong> and Wal-Mart<\/strong>, where there is apparently a demand for employees, although the pay will not be remotely as good.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies have the opportunity to take very big loans and retain their workers, and they haven\u2019t taken advantage of that,\u201d grumbled Taylor.\u00a0\u201cA lot of these aren\u2019t cash-poor, that\u2019s not the problem. They just don\u2019t have the will to do this.\u201d There’s a fair amount of truth in that. Taylor added,\u00a0\u201cThe industry\u2019s done well, and we think they should step up and pay people through this closing.\u201d Looking forward, Culinary Secretary-Treasurer\u00a0Geoconda Arg\u00fcello-Kline<\/strong> warned that (much as happened after\u00a0the mass purge following 9\/11<\/strong>) what casino companies do now will color the next labor negotiation. For their part, casino companies generally insist that they need to conserve cash in order to recover more quickly when the opportunity arises.<\/p>\n

And when will that be? As our readers frequently point out, probably not until Coronavirus testing is widely available, which is hardly the case at this point\u2014or in two weeks. Nevada<\/strong>‘s Covid-19 situation is that of having 28,335 test performed, 2,700 positive results, 20,877 negatives and 111 deaths. 62% of licensed and staffed hospital beds are occupied, 70% of ICU rooms, and 41% of available ventilators. Case numbers continue to trend upwards, which makes us think that a May 1 reopening of casinos and resorts is quite premature.<\/p>\n

* Donald Trump<\/strong> must not have read American Gaming Association<\/strong> President Bill Miller<\/strong>‘s letter to him about Small Business Administration<\/strong> strictures against helping small casinos. \"\"\u201cNobody\u2019s told me about it, but I\u2019ll look at it. It\u2019s a great state,” The Donald said<\/a>, presumably meaning Nevada, “they do a great job.\u201d Had Trump peruses\u00a0his correspondence, he would have seen Miller’s plea that “As it stands, the [SBA] policy discriminates against these mainstream businesses and, more importantly, the hundreds of thousands of employees who rely on gaming for their livelihood.” Amen.<\/p>\n

* Need someplace to hide until Covid-19<\/strong> blows over? If you’ve got a spare $18 million, this little pied-a-terre<\/a> can be yours. It’s a complete Vegas rambler … built underground. Your 18 mil gets you one year’s caretaker service, a spa, pool, waterfall, fountain, and “500 linear feet of floor to ceiling illuminated murals of landscapes of wide open spaces simulating day, dusk, dawn and night modes.\u201d The product of late-Seventies nuclear anxiety, the subterranean bungalow<\/a> is the perfect place to wait out a pandemic, even if the furnishings are hilariously demod\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* Make $38 million a day? Nothing to it. There better not be if yours is a Macao<\/strong> casino and you wish to stay out of red ink this year. Right now, \"\"the casino enclave is falling almost $30 million a day short of that benchmark. Fortunately, the casino operators are sitting on billions in liquidity, especially Galaxy Entertainment<\/strong>, which can absorb seven years of losses if it defers Galaxy Cotai<\/strong>‘s second phase. Sociedade de Jogos de Macau<\/strong>\u00a0“has four years (or three years even if it finishes Grand Lisboa Palace<\/strong>), Sands<\/strong>\/Melco<\/strong>\/Wynn<\/strong> have about two years, and MGM over a year,\u201d added JP Morgan<\/strong> analysts.<\/p>\n

* Doesn’t converting video gamers into slot players, via skill-based slots<\/a>, seem supremely beside the point right now?<\/p>\n

* Finally, congratulations to the Ione Band of Miwok Indians<\/strong>, which just won an eight-year fight to obtain reservation land in Plymouth<\/strong>, California<\/strong>. The Bureau of Indian Affairs<\/strong> took the disputed land into trust for the Miwok, which is just east of Sacramento<\/strong>. Their competitors will be Harrah\u2019s Northern California<\/strong> and Jackson Rancheria Casino<\/strong>. The Miwok casino was to be the largest of three, with 2,000 slots and 40 tables, plus a 250-room hotel. However, those plans may be in flux.\u00a0\u201cCertainly, the Coronavirus pandemic has thrown a wrench into our plans,\u201d Chairwoman Sara Dutschke<\/strong> told the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a Thursday media event, the Culinary Union called for casinos to continue paying their inactivated employees for as long as the Coronavirus crisis lasts. Said Unite-Here President D. Taylor,\u00a0\u201cThe industry, obviously, is a very profitable industry.\u00a0We don\u2019t understand their … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[249,65,34,151,42,14,201,283,241,62,53,222,245,207,25,213,8,20,196,38,233],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26737"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28366,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26737\/revisions\/28366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}