Laundry company, union end talks with no pact

The Culinary union will begin setting up picket lines and passing out fliers in high-traffic tourist areas today, just hours after Wednesday's talks between Mission Industries and Culinary Local 226 ended without an agreement.

The end of the negotiations and the union's cancellation of a contract extension that the laundry employees have been working under moved the union a step closer to its first strike in five years.

The union's demand that workers be included in the Culinary's health plan continued to be biggest unresolved issue.

A spokesman for the laundry company said its health care insurance costs would more than double if the employees were added to the health plan.

"We're doing everything we can to try to implement the plan," said David Spurlock Jr., general counsel for Mission Industries. "For us, it's not that we don't want to. It's just, economically, without assistance from the hotels, we can't."

Three days of picketing is slated, but union officials say the pickets could escalate into strike lines by next week.

The union submitted its latest proposal Wednesday, with the next negotiating session scheduled for Monday.

Kevin Kline, the union's lead negotiator on the laundry, said the negotiating committee will make a decision on a strike after that meeting.

"They are crunching their numbers, reaching out to their customers and will give us a response Monday afternoon," Kline said.

Mission Industries is trying to renegotiate many of its service contracts with area hotels and casinos to help pay the bill for the health plan.

Nearly 50 hotel-casino receive sheets, pillow covers and towels, tablecloths and napkins at restaurants and dry cleaning services for uniforms from the laundries' six local plants.

The union's health plan provides full coverage for family members with no coverage caps and no out-of-pocket payments from workers.

The laundry workers' current health plan provides limited coverage for them and their children. The coverage does not include spouses. It also includes coverage caps.

Kline said some progress was made Wednesday on an agreement to offer the health plan.

The union said it still is willing to agree to a two-year wage freeze if the health plan is implemented immediately. The union is also willing to reduce its wage increases and pension contributions between 2008-2010.

With the laundry workers' wages averaging around $10 per hour, Kline said their offers to accept a wage freeze is an indication of how important the health coverage is to them.

Mission Industries, however, wants to wait to introduce the health coverage until Nov. 1, 2009, a year earlier than its earlier proposal.

"We're saying to the unions, we can't do it without assistance from the hotels," Spurlock said. "We're making every effort we can to talk to the hotels and in the meantime provide service to the hotels."

The average laundry contract is three to five years in length. The current contracts provide for periodic rate increases but not to the extent needed to cover the new health costs, he said.

The union plans to picket outside delivery areas at a number of casinos at times that Mission Industries trucks are scheduled to arrive.

Union members will also pass out leaflets in front of Strip and downtown casinos as well as at McCarran International Airport.

"We want to make sure their customers are aware of that so they make a decision on what to do with Mission," Kline said.

Bill Lerner, gaming analyst for Deutsche Bank, said the properties won't want their customers' experience to be negatively affected by a labor dispute.

"I would suspect they would engage is some sort of solution," Lerner said. "They might be motivated to come to some sort of reasonable resolution."

Mission Industries has told many of its customers that service will continue.

Debbie Munch, spokeswoman for Harrah's Entertainment, parent company of Mission Industries customer Imperial Palace, said the property had several conversations with Mission Industries about the laundry's union negotiations and its current contract with the property.

Other gaming companies contacted declined to comment or did not return calls by press time.

Contact reporter Arnold M. Knightly at aknightly@reviewjournal.com or (702) 477-3893.