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Monday, March 01, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Venetian sidewalk fight heats up
The Culinary union today will defy a resort owner who says he controls a walkway in front of his Strip property.
By Hubble Smith
Review-Journal
Sheldon Adelson says he owns the sidewalk in front of his Venetian resort, giving him the right to decide who can walk on it.
Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, says the sidewalk is a public right of way, and if Culinary union members want to use it to protest Adelson's hiring policies, that's their right.
The battle over sidewalk rights that's ultimately headed for federal court starts today as about 2,000 members of Culinary Local 226 plan to march from the New Frontier to The Venetian at 5:30 p.m.
They'll be joined by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights leader who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
The Metropolitan Police Department will assign officers to patrol the rally, but no number has been set, police spokesman Steve Meriwether said.
"Things keep changing every day," said Jim Arnold, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary union. "He's (Adelson) been doing some construction on the sidewalk to discourage us from coming, but that's not going to discourage us."
Arnold said Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Inc., The Venetian's parent company, is "grabbing at straws" trying to keep the union from expressing its feelings about workers' rights.
Unlike Mirage Resorts Inc., which rehired Culinary workers from the Dunes, after it was torn down, for jobs at The Mirage and Treasure Island, Adelson has refused to hire back former Sands workers without putting them through the same application process as everybody else. The Sands was imploded in November 1996 to make way for the Venetian megaresort.
"Bricks and mortars are nice, they make it look good," Arnold said of the $1.2 billion Venetian set to open in mid-April. "But you still have to invest in your workers. Without those workers, you won't be successful."
Because Adelson will be leasing, or "subcontracting," his restaurant space to private operators, as New York-New York does with ARK Restaurants, many workers at The Venetian will be paid below the Strip average, receive little or no benefits and have no rights or protection, Arnold said.
Bill Weidner, president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Inc., said the union is using the sidewalk issue as "a smoke screen, throwing a red herring at us."
"It's not The Venetian privatizing a public sidewalk, it's The Venetian building a sidewalk on private property," Weidner said. As part of its permit approval by the Clark County Planning Commission, The Venetian agreed to build the sidewalk on its property so Las Vegas Boulevard could be widened to handle increased traffic.
"The sidewalk and civil rights really aren't the issue. What you have to do is step back and see what the real issues are. They want to get on the sidewalk to hurt our business. The bottom line is money. They want employees to pay $35 a month (in union dues) when they don't have to."
Peck said the prime players in the dispute are Adelson and the Culinary union, but the issues at stake are much broader and have implications for the general public, not just in Las Vegas, but nationwide.
"What is in dispute is whether or not a private business, in concert with the government, can take public sidewalks where the balance of First Amendment rights should be protected," he said.
Allen Lichtenstein, cooperative attorney with the ACLU, said the county made it clear to Adelson that the only way he would be allowed to build The Venetian was if he agreed to certain conditions, the sidewalk among them.
"If The Venetian couldn't let people walk on the sidewalk and forced them out on the streets, out on Las Vegas Boulevard, the county would close them down," he said.
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