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This
just appeared in the Wall Street Journal and it is the best
explanation of the
present union movement in Las Vegas that I've seen to date. It's a
worthwhile read!
Jack Lipsman, NFGE
________________________________________________
In
Drive to Unionize, Casino Dealers
Defy a Longtime Las Vegas Tradition
By CHRISTINA
BINKLEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
LAS VEGAS -- Here at MGM Mirage's lavish Bellagio casino, Gabriel
Ruz deals baccarat to some of the world's richest and wildest
gamblers. For 30 years, the 52-year-old Mr. Ruz has worked up and
down the Las Vegas Strip, for suspected mobsters, entrepreneurs
and, more recently, for
big corporations. Though he holds one of dealing's most
prestigious jobs, he earns just $5.15 an hour -- less than half
what the Bellagio pays its housemaids. Tips brought his income up
to $68,500 last year, he says. Still, in time-honored Las Vegas
fashion, a high roller in a huff could get him fired without
notice or explanation.
Like most dealers, Mr. Ruz considers himself one of gambling's
skilled professionals. But while this town is sometimes called the
New Detroit, because of organized labor's extraordinary power
here, none of its estimated 30,000 dealers has any union
protection. Even as unionized cocktail waitresses have outstripped
their earning power, dealers have served drinks during strikes to
help keep casino doors open. Now, some Las Vegas dealers,
frustrated by low pay and a lack of job security, are waging a
high-stakes campaign to unionize their profession.
So
far, the results have been mixed. Since the campaign began last
fall, dealers at three casinos have voted to organize, opening the
door to chartering a union local. Dealers at seven casinos have
rejected the union. Elections are scheduled this weekend at one
more casino -- MGM Mirage's Treasure Island -- and dealers and
labor organizers are busy at others gathering
petitions for a vote. The casinos, which have long tolerated other
unions, are dead set against this one. "There is no way there
is going to be a dealers' union," says one top-level casino
executive. "I will replace every one of the dealers if I have
to -- and you know how long it would take me? Half a day,"
adds the executive, who declined to be identified because his
threat might violate federal labor law.
Mr. Ruz, who works alongside Bellagio's unionized bartenders and
slot-machine attendants, is bewildered by the animosity. "If
they have unions, why can't we have a union?" he asks.
"No one will give me a straight answer." Many casino
executives decline to discuss the dealers' campaign, citing
labor-law restrictions. But several former casino operators say
the organizing drive pits dealers not only against their
cost-conscious corporate bosses but also against an unwritten
labor agreement that dates back to the days when the mob ruled the
Strip.
'A
Compromise'
Decades
ago, when mob bosses were still skimming cash from some Las Vegas
counting rooms, most big casinos grudgingly agreed to let
housekeepers, mechanics and waiters form unions. Dealers weren't
included in the deal. "It was a compromise," says Frank
"Lefty" Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust and other
casinos in the late 1960s and early '70s and gained fame when
Robert De Niro played a character based on him in the 1995 film
"Casino."
"A lot of things can shut down a casino, but not many things
faster than dealers -- they're the heart and soul of the
place," says Henry Gluck, a former chairman of Caesars World.
It wasn't just the fear of dealers striking that made casinos so
intent on controlling them directly. The compromise assured
casinos that they could continue to hire, fire and reassign
dealers as they
liked in the lightning-fast world of gambling. Some casinos, for
example, consider certain dealers lucky for the house and try to
slip them into games with customers who are on a hot streak.
"You
cannot have to go to the union and ask for permission every time
you want to move dealers around," says Henri Lewin, who ran
the Las Vegas Hilton, Flamingo and Sands casinos in the '70s and
'80s. Dealing is highly ritualized. Teams of supervisors in the
so-called pit area watch dealers' every move, as do high-tech
cameras monitored by security personnel. A shift begins when a
dealer relieves a colleague with a tap on the shoulder. It ends
with a clap to show that both hands are empty. In between, the
dealer's job is to keep his game running smoothly, guard against
cheating and to keep gamblers -- often drinking, usually losing
and frequently abusive -- happy. A mistake in judgment can be
catastrophic. A winning gambler in a high-wagering game such as
baccarat can dent a casino's quarterly earnings.
The Bellagio's Mr. Ruz works in the inner sanctum of Las Vegas's
most expensive casino, built at a cost of $1.8 billion and opened
nearly three years ago. On any eight- to 12-hour shift, he may
wait for hours behind his green-felt-covered table without a
baccarat player in sight. Or, as on one day this past January,
during the gambling industry's busy Chinese New Year period, a
big-time player may turn his shift into a high-pressure betting
session. On that particular day, the player, who had a $3 million
credit line, wagered $150,000 a hand for hours on end. Mr. Ruz and
his colleagues worked according to casino rules, rotating around
the baccarat table, spending 20 minutes standing upright at
"pole" position calling out results, 40 minutes sitting
at "base" paying out winnings and collecting losses,
then taking 20-minute breaks intended to keep their minds sharp.
"Your brain is fried when you get out of there," Mr. Ruz
says.
For much of Las Vegas's history, dealers held a special place in
town. They tracked the bets and kept a sharp eye out for cheats.
Good dealers knew the big players and kept them gambling. In turn,
casino managers took care of the dealers. Bosses showered them
with such perks as special parking spots and private dining rooms.
In the old days, getting a dealing job took "juice" -- a
well-connected friend or relative. It was an attractive job
because of its tips and perks. When Bill Shutt was hired at the
Sands in 1982, his boss treated him and his wife to a steak dinner
in the casino's gourmet restaurant. "It was an elite
position," recalled Mr. Shutt, a union activist at the
Tropicana who died recently after a 30-year career.
First-Class
Fraternity
Dealers
and their generally small-time bosses formed a tight-knit
fraternity -- linked by their connections to a business that was
widely illegal outside of Nevada. "We were tainted in the
public's eyes," says Bill Friedman, a dealer in the 1960s who
later went on to run the Castaways and Silver Slipper casinos. But
the lifestyle was "first class," he says. That helped
make up for the fact that dealers were often fired for little
apparent reason. Even so, there were plenty of jobs available
right down the street.
Things began to change not long after reclusive billionaire Howard
Hughes, who wanted to get into the casino business, persuaded
Nevada regulators in 1967 to let corporations own casinos.
Smelling profits, big companies, with their deeper pockets, began
buying out the old bosses. By the end of the '80s, the trend had
transformed Sin City into a corporate town, with a new emphasis on
cost-cutting and earnings per share.
"When the goodfellas left, things changed," says Jack
Lipsman, who spent most of his 25 years as a dealer at the
Flamingo, where Bugsy Siegel made his name. "The old-time mob
managers, they wanted their share, and as long as you didn't steal
from them, you had a pretty good job. The corporate types are
stricter. They manage with an eye to the bottom line." Trying
to broaden Las Vegas's appeal as a tourist destination, the new
corporate owners, backed by Wall Street, built bigger and fancier
casinos. Overhead rose, profit margins shrank, and casinos
began to cut dealers' perks.
Low
Rollers
Soon,
hard-core gamblers stood elbow-to-elbow with convention groups and
bus tours. The new low rollers gambled and tipped less, often
preferring to play slot machines. They spent more money in
restaurants and shops, which "further reduced the relevance
of dealers," says Mr. Gluck, the former Caesars World
chairman.
During the '70s, the Stardust's Mr. Rosenthal, now an odds maker
in Florida, had an idea he thought would increase business. He put
six buxom young women behind his gaming tables, firing male
dealers to make room for them. Gamblers wagered more than usual at
the women's tables, Mr. Rosenthal says, and rivals were quick to
copy his strategy. That put pressure on dealers to be more
alluring.
Union contracts protect waitresses and bartenders who grow older
and less attractive. Indeed, Caesars Palace, now owned by Park
Place Entertainment Corp., is famous for its mature, scantily clad
cocktail staff. But dealers began to complain of what Gail
Lipsman, who has dealt
blackjack and pai gow poker for 23 years, calls the "Ken and
Barbie" phenomenon -- favoring attractive dealers with prime
tables, schedules and surer employment. "The older dealers
have a rough time," she says.
Then, about a decade ago, the Internal Revenue Service cracked
down on dealers' failure to report tips, or "tokes," as
they're known in gambling circles. Taxes sliced into dealers'
incomes. Mr. Shutt, the late Tropicana dealer, said his earnings
never kept up with inflation, rising from about $400 a week in the
mid-1970s to between $550 and $600 a week last year. Dealers'
pensions, often based solely on hourly wages, excluding tips, can
also be slim. Mrs. Lipsman's husband, Jack, who retired after
dealing for 25 years, says he receives a pension of only $176 a
month.
With improvements in technology, casinos began to track the number
of hands per minute a dealer could handle. Automatic card
shufflers sped up games. The new gear increased casino revenue,
but reduced dealing to just a few motions, de-emphasizing dealers'
skills and increasing the incidence of repetitive-strain injuries.
Over time, some dealers tried unsuccessfully to form unions at
individual casinos. But none managed to negotiate a contract until
a few years ago in Detroit, when the United Auto Workers formed a
tiny dealers' union as casinos sought approval to build casinos in
that city.
All the while, Wall Street kept gobbling up Las Vegas gaming
properties. Today, three companies -- MGM Mirage, Park Place and
Mandalay Resort Group Inc. -- control most of the Strip. During
acquisitions, casinos sometimes fired dealers en masse, costing
them seniority and benefits packages, and told them to reapply to
new management. As the industry consolidated, fired dealers often
found themselves frozen out of every casino owned by the same
company that had dismissed them.
Park Place inadvertently provided the spark for the dealers'
unionization movement. Over the past five years, the company,
which owns Caesars Palace, the Las Vegas Hilton, the Flamingo,
Paris and Bally's, underwent a series of sales, spinoffs and
acquisitions that left its work force shell-shocked and slimmer
than before.
Calling
the Teamsters
Linda
Werstuck, a 43-year-old blackjack dealer at the Las Vegas Hilton,
grew incensed at what she viewed as the erosion of dealers'
benefits and tips. In 1999, when a casino manager attempted to
alter tradition by paying several trainees from the dealers' pool
of shared tips, Ms. Werstuck called the Teamsters Union. The union
movement was born in her living room. Last June, the Teamsters
quietly held organizing meetings here. A few weeks later, though,
they abruptly ended the effort, saying they'd been ordered to
stop, without explanation. Teamsters officials at the Las Vegas
local and the union's Washington headquarters didn't return
repeated phone calls seeking comment.
The Culinary union, whose 54,000 members represent nearly a third
of all Las Vegas casino and hotel employees, turned the dealers
down flat. It viewed organizing them as too risky because of
pressure from employers, say several officials of the union, the
largest local of the Washington-based Hotel Employees &
Restaurant Employees International Union. "We have a lot on
our plate just with our traditional base -- plus we have our
contracts coming up for renegotiation next year," says D.
Taylor, the Culinary union's staff director.
The dealers' resulting scramble to find a supportive union turned
up the Transport Workers Union of America, a relatively small New
York-based organization of 115,000 bus, train, airline and other
employees. Before agreeing to take on the dealers, the union
sought and obtained permission from top executives of the
Teamsters, Hotel Workers and the AFL-CIO, according to Marty
Levitt, a former anti-union strategist whom the Transport Workers
Union last fall retained as a consultant.
The Transport Workers hardly had the kind of presence other Las
Vegas unions did. Last year, the Culinary union sent 20 staffers
to organize 2,000 housekeepers and other workers at the Rio Hotel
& Casino. By contrast, just three organizers from the
Transport Workers flew in last fall to recruit the Las Vegas
dealers. Lacking a local base, the Transport Workers bunked
in hotel rooms at the Strip's less-expensive hotels, gathered
signatures on union petitions and leased a hall in a suburban
strip mall for meetings.
The organizers -- two airline employees and Timothy Grandfield,
the union's director of organizing -- set about familiarizing
themselves with the cards and dice trades. Initial support was
strong. Within weeks, 90% of dealers at several casinos had signed
union cards, and votes began to be scheduled in rapid succession
at a dozen properties. The casinos wasted little time in
responding. The MGM Grand suddenly decided to build a comfortable
dealers' lounge, complete with two televisions.
A casino executive says the decision wasn't related to the union
movement. But Dick Richards, who deals "21" at the MGM
Grand, says, "We were told six months earlier that no way
could we have" a lounge. At the Monte Carlo, anonymous
leaflets were distributed that suggested that dealers who
supported the union could lose their jobs, houses and cars. The
Las Vegas Hilton brought a beloved casino manager out of
retirement, raising employees' hopes of workplace improvements. By
the end of January, dealers at those casinos had voted the union
down after rancorous elections.
With union wins at the Tropicana, which is owned by Aztar Corp.,
the Stratosphere, owned by firms controlled by financier Carl
Icahn, and the privately owned Frontier -- and more elections to
go -- the Transport union is settling in for a long fight. So far,
other unions in town haven't stepped in to help, though some union
officials worry that a failure to organize the dealers might
hinder their own future negotiations with the casinos.
However, some feel it's just a matter of time until one of the
last old-time Las Vegas covenants collapses. Says Mr. Levitt, the
consultant to the Transport Workers: "There's a crack in the
dike now."
* * *
Write
to Christina Binkley at christina.binkley@wsj.com
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