|
Jack
M. Lipsman
4307 Lucas Avenue
Las Vegas, Nevada 89120
Voice:
(702)456-8272
Fax: (702)435-6245
February
1, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Letters to the Editor
By Fax: 383-4676
To the editor:
We see that Mr. Bible stepped forward with an
RJ article on 1/26 that announces that, "union representation
may not help dealers." After we dealers have been
beaten-up for decades, Mr. Bible, acting as the resorts
mouthpiece, asks us to ignore the blood and bruises of wage
freezes and arbitrary firings and to give up support of a union.
Why? Because last year slots won more than table games, a subtle
reaffirmation that management thinks that dealers are really not
worth as much as we think we are.
Speaking of "worth-versus-juice", we
should note that if anyone knows about how "juice" works
in Nevada, it is Bill Bible. He has just retired as head of the
Nevada Gaming Commission and has now turned to greener pastures as
the newly appointed President of the Nevada Resorts Association.
His dad was Senator Alan Bible, one of Nevada's original
good-ole-boys, and, it is said, a major factor in securing the
Commission job for Billy Boy. In his tenure as the head of
the Gaming Commission, notwithstanding his new role as
advice-giver, Mr. Bible scrupulously distanced himself from any
issue that might have remotely benefited or protected Nevada's
gaming dealers from the predatory and oppressive policies of many
of our major casinos.
Dealer's issues were public knowledge, yet in
spite of that, and in spite of direct pleas for administrative
intervention from individual dealers and from this organization's
media statements, all we heard from Mr. Bible was silence,
deafening silence, with an occasional whimper of, "that's not
our job."
He professed to be charged with insuring the
health of this state's primary industry, yet he ignored for years
the infection festering just beneath the surface. Conditions and
policies that were designed, promoted and maintained by the
gambling resorts to establish and preserve totalitarian control
over casino dealers and their workplace.
The fact is that this industry revolves around the table game
dealers, not slots. You take away professional, skilled table game
dealers and their games and all you've got left are a bunch empty
barns with thousands of high-tech Nintendos that spit coins,
hardly a Mecca for the high-rolling vacationer, is it Mr. Bible?
Mr. Bible goes on to state that dealers occupy
a unique position in the gaming industry, one that makes union
membership inconsistent with our goals.
If we are so unique, why have our wages been
frozen at the minimum for more than a decade?
If we are so unique, why do 90% of the major
casinos still have an arbitrary, no-recourse termination policy
that is largely used to maintain fear in the workforce, so they
can prop up that "workforce control" element we spoke of
earlier.
If we are so unique, why do casinos use every
scheme imaginable to tap into our toke box?
And in answer to this close working
relationship Mr. Bible claims we have with management, I can only
ask if he has ever heard the expression: "dummy up and
deal?" Case closed!
He mentions job preservation. He is correct in
that no one can control a market downturn or competitive trends,
but conversely, there are things that can be controlled, such as
arbitrary, unjustified terminations carried out by a mean-spirited
boss with a nefarious agenda. I personally know of a
"boss" who dispatched 63 dealers in a relatively short
time, most for no reason at all. He himself was finally fired and
escorted off the property. No solace to those already fired
dealers, though, is it Mr. Bible?
So when Mr. Bible says we should eliminate the
middleman, I think before we attempt to follow his advice and
eliminate the union, the industry would be much better served if
we eliminated the Nevada Resorts Association, and of course, Mr.
Bible, its president.
Jack Lipsman
Las Vegas
* * *
The writer is Vice President of the National Federation of Gaming
Employees.
(Back
to Index)
|
