By TREVOR HAYES
REVIEW-JOURNAL

  A prospective union that would represent casino table games dealers should include floor people and poker dealers, attorneys for the Monte Carlo argued Wednesday at a National Labor Relations Board hearing.

  The Transport Workers Union of America, which started its organizing campaign in September, wants to include only the 314 table games dealers and 85 extra board table games dealers.

  An extra board worker is a part-time employee who receives no benefits but is on call and often works 40 hours per week, sometimes for more than a year, before being hired permanently.

  The Monte Carlo management wants to include 62 floor people, 19 craps box people, 24 workers who alternate between dealing and floor jobs and nearly 40 poker room employees.

  "We are taking the position that either (floor people) are supervisors or have no community of interest" with the dealers, said the union's attorney, Dennis Kist.  Kist said the poker dealers did not share a community of interest with the table games dealers.

  Both sides have seven days to submit additional evidence to support their case and a decision from the NLRB's regional director in Phoenix should follow soon after, NLRB deputy regional attorney Steve Womser said.

  The amount of contact between different employees, whether there is interchanging of jobs between employees, the type of work and compensation, including benefits, and if there is common supervision are among the criteria used to decide which employees are included, Womser said.

  Wrangling about the appropriate size of a bargaining unit is common before union representation elections. Management usually tries to make the unit larger, which makes an election harder to win, while unions prefer smaller groups, because they are easier to sway.

  The union contends that floor people, who earn $158 per day, are not in the same class with dealers because they are paid substantially more than dealers, who start at $5.15 per hour.

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