Union stashes $80 million

More than 12,000 Nevada casino workers, including employees at nearly every casino in downtown Las Vegas, will have access to $80 million to sustain them in the event of a strike.

The fund is the largest of its kind in the history of Culinary Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 and includes money from a recent increase in members' dues and a $50 million line of credit from Amalgamated Bank, a union-owned bank in New York.

Workers at 17 properties in Las Vegas and one in Reno are seeking new contracts. A strike vote for the Southern Nevada employees is scheduled for Sept. 12, although union officials say workers will stay on the job if negotiation talks are productive.

The money, union officials said on Tuesday, will be powerful leverage for workers during negotiations with casino owners who are trying to keep costs down, especially in struggling markets such as downtown Las Vegas.

"We call our strike fund a defense fund," Bruce Raynor, chairman of Amalgamated Bank and general president of the UNITE HERE union, told an audience of about 50 workers and members of the media Tuesday during an event to announce the creation of the fund. "The best way to avoid a strike is to be strong. They know they have deeper pockets than the corporations they go up against."

About 15,000 workers at Harrah's casinos and 21,000 at MGM Mirage recently agreed to new, five-year deals. The deals include 3.7 percent annual raises and continuation of health-care coverage that doesn't require employee-paid premiums.

The contracts have been cited during talks with the unsettled casinos. But representatives of the casinos, at least in downtown Las Vegas, have said second-tier properties are struggling and the pay gap between downtown and the Strip may widen under new deals.

Gregory Kamer of the law firm Kamer Zucker Abbott, which represents seven downtown casinos in the talks, criticized the union for scheduling the strike vote and announcing the fund while negotiations are still in the early stages.

"We just started going through proposals ... and they are already announcing a strike fund and taking a strike vote," Kamer said.

Kamer said the downtown casinos want labor deals that reflect the declining gambling revenue in that market. Since the last labor contract went into effect in 2002, the amount downtown casinos won annually from gamblers decreased from $657 million to $630 million.

"Primarily it is recognizing that downtown is trying to turn around," Kamer said. "We need flexibility."

Rob Stillwell, spokesman for Boyd Gaming Corporation, which owns two downtown casinos in contract negotiations, had little to say about the talks.

"We generally don't negotiate in the press or discuss specifics of it in the press," Stillwell said. "We are optimistic we will be able to reach a resolution that pleases both sides."

The mood was defiant and upbeat during the strike fund announcement at the Culinary Union's Las Vegas headquarters. Speakers stood at a podium in front of about 20 workers in a sparse, second-story meeting room decorated with banners bearing the slogan, "No casino can take away the Las Vegas Dream," in English and Spanish.

Geoconda Arguello-Kline, Culinary Union president, said the Las Vegas dream refers to the opportunity for casino workers to buy homes, send their kids to college and eventually retire.

"They don't come here because Las Vegas has great weather. They don't come here because it has great schools," Arguello-Kline said. "They come here to realize dreams. The dream is to have decent wages."