Just a few decades ago Steve Wynn, as much a visionary in labor relations as resort development, saw the utility in making a deal with Ed Hanley, the leader of the Culinary’s parent union.
Wynn, soon to be followed by other casino tycoons, saw the trade-off between making it easier for the hotel workers’ union to organize via card check and assuring labor peace for the long run. Hanley, they also knew, could prove helpful to the gamers with various proposed federal incursions into their businesses, especially because of his closeness to legendary Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski.
Thus was born the productive symbiosis between the Culinary and the Strip that, with few exceptions (The Elardis, MGM’s Bob Maxey, Gondolier Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson), assured peace in our time up and down Las Vegas Boulevard South.
But peace is not a word used much these days in the labor movement here and nationally. Indeed, the very name of the Culinary’s parent — Unite Here — has become laughable as the threads of a merger begin to unravel on the public stage and another national and local player — SEIU — eagerly seeks to exploit the fraying.
As Unite Here is engaged in a civil war, as the gamers now stand united against card-check legislation and as the state’s two senators are split — and decidedly so — on the Employee Free Choice Act, what happens in D.C. sooner or later could happen in Las Vegas.
Nevada has always been inherently contradictory when it came to labor relations: A right-to-work state with its largest city an exemplar of union strength.
But now simmering resentment toward the Culinary, forever an object of jealousy by other unions not granted card-check privileges on the Strip, SEIU’s aggressive search for what it apparently believes is its manifest destiny and the jihad announced by one-time gaming executive John Ensign against card check will roil the labor waters here as never before.
“I will not rest until this bill is dead,” Ensign said of a bill that would codify a process used at casinos his father and other casino owners sanctioned for many years. But that was then and the expansiveness of this measure (an arbitrator could impose a contract after 120 days) and the economy have changed the dynamic.
Last year, in a vote that received little attention, the American Gaming Association’s board of directors, with Wynn the most fervent backer, voted to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act. (That this came as the Culinary was doing a card check at Encore is just one of this story’s many ironies.)
The AGA is part of a national coalition fighting the legislation, one that includes the U.S. chamber and the manufacturers. (An issue on which the gamers and the chamber agree? I really need to stop the presses!)
It appears that the battle against the legislation is having some effect with reports that some Democrats who signed onto the bill last year — knowing it would fail — have gone weak-kneed now that it may actually come to a vote. Surely the disintegration of Unite Here — and SEIU’s attempt to exploit it — cannot help with the labor lobbying effort. And the SEIU efforts, though they have yet to reach the local scene, surely will arrive here because they, Willie Sutton-like, will go where the members are.
If the Unite Here marriage continues to come apart, the fight on card check should challenge the Reid-Ensign merger as any issue so far.
Senate Majority Harry Reid may be just an Al Franken seating away from getting close to the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, if he can corral those moderates going soft. If Reid could push the card-check bill through, that would greatly endear him to Big Labor. And I understand he is up for reelection next year and ...
The issue also presents Ensign a great opportunity to further enhance his bona fides with the GOP base, which is desperately seeking a dynamic leader. If he can be seen as an instrument of card-check destruction, his national profile will be greatly burnished.
None of this seems easily resolved — the Unite Here carcass and SEIU circling, the Reid-Ensign potential pitched battle and the overall fight over card check. Gone are the days when Steve Wynn and Ed Hanley could have resolved a problem over lunch.
These days, you can barely find a gamer to sit down with a gamer, unless it’s to reject a hostile takeover, or a labor leader sit down with a labor leader, unless it’s to reject a hostile takeover.
Welcome to the new labor/gaming world: Symbiosis has mutated into parasitism.
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