Binion’s Gamble : Son of Popular Las Vegas Casino Owner in High Stakes Battle With Striking Workers
Labor relations used to be a simple thing at Binion’s Horseshoe. As old-timers remember it, Benny Binion--the casino’s charismatic founder and patriarch of one of this city’s pioneer gaming families--approved union contracts with little ado while sitting at his favorite booth in the club’s coffee shop.
There was a strike once, back in the 1960s, but it didn’t last long. Legend has it that Benny bought beer for the pickets and had them back on the job within three days.
These are the ‘90s, however, and Benny Binion is gone. A nasty strike now grips his venerable gaming hall in downtown Las Vegas, and the new operator, Binion’s son, Jack, is finding union negotiations a bit thornier than in his dad’s day.
“I’d like to get this damn thing over with,” Binion, 53, grumbled recently, a portrait of Benny hanging behind him on the office wall. “I’m not liking it. . . . But I’m not giving in, either.”
The battle over Binion’s turned ugly Jan. 27, when more than 600 waitresses, bartenders, maids and other members of Culinary Workers Local 226 walked off the job. Their five-year contract expired last June, and the strike was called after talks on wages and insurance benefits fell apart.
The Horseshoe fight--the only strike in Las Vegas this contract season outside of the musicians’ dispute settled in January--has captured local and national attention, in part because of the casino’s popularity and landmark status on the downtown landscape.
But its significance goes beyond the fate of the pickets wearily circling the club under the steady stare of police and security guards. Watching intently from the sidelines are the AFL-CIO, with which the culinary union is affiliated, and owners of 14 other Las Vegas hotel-casinos that also have failed to sign new contracts with their culinary employees.
If the Horseshoe holds firm and the replacement workers hired by Binion vote out the local, the union could lose these other family-owned casinos as well, weakening labor’s once iron grip on the West’s gambling capital.
“The first families of gaming in Las Vegas have embarked on a course designed to destroy the union,” said Glen Arnodo, a union organizer. “It’s a war, and to win we simply need to last one day longer than Jack Binion.”
To do that, strike organizers have employed an unusual array of weaponry that typifies the broad-based attack today’s unions must mount to make a walkout pay off.
In addition to traditional militant tactics such as sit-ins, union researchers have identified the Horseshoe’s sizable local clientele and reached out to these folks through direct mail and door-to-door visits.
Last month, union leaders launched a bid to influence the Southern California market--the backbone of the Las Vegas visitor industry. Strikers were posted at gas stations, food stores and restaurants in Barstow and Baker to distribute leaflets and lectures to travelers bound for Sin City.
“If we get the tourists in Barstow, they’ve got two hours to read our brochure and make a decision” about whether to patronize the Horseshoe, Arnodo explained.
The union is also urging high-stakes poker players--such as Amarillo Slim Preston--to boycott the Horseshoe’s famous World Series of Poker in May.
So far, Binion has limited his counterattack to handing out rolls of coins to slot machine players. “Until now, I’ve basically played defense, figuring I’d wear them down,” he said.
But declaring that it was time to “start playing offense,” Binion last week unveiled a new enticement for visitors: improved odds at the craps table and a bonanza of payoffs at the club’s numerous poker slot machines.
The Horseshoe--a gaudy, block-square gambling palace and hotel in downtown’s Glitter Gulch--has become a Las Vegas institution during its 39-year history, and most of the credit goes to Benny Binion. A Texas cowboy rarely seen without his boots and 10-gallon hat, Binion learned to gamble during his youth as a mule handler for horse traders in the Lone Star state.
After moving to Nevada in 1947, Binion took over a small club and created a casino that became known for high betting limits, favorable odds and a rough-and-tumble Western style. Casino restaurants even served beef flown in from Benny’s Montana ranch, where he lived the life of a cowboy half the year.
His recipe for success--”good food cheap, good whiskey cheap and a good gamble”--drew locals and tourists alike, many of whom had their picture snapped beside the $1 million in cash Binion kept in a giant glass horseshoe on the casino floor.
A former bootlegger who served time in prison for federal income tax evasion, Binion was immensely popular with guests. And he was a hit with workers as well.
“We used to call him Papa Binion,” said Dona Bonaventure, a striking waitress who has worked at the Horseshoe for 20 years. “He made people feel special.”
More important, Bonaventure said, “We always knew we had a contract, because he cared about us.”
Several years ago, Binion fell ill and his son gradually assumed more responsibility for the club. When the elder Binion died at 85 last Christmas, Jack took control. Workers say things changed.
“Benny always wanted you to give the customer what he wanted, but Jack was different,” said cocktail waitress Dody Leitner, a 16-year veteran now on strike. “He used cheap vodka, and we were only allowed two bar towels per shift, no matter how dirty they got.”
Jack Binion, a thin, balding fellow whose first name is embroidered on the pocket of his crisply pressed shirt, is the first to admit that he lacks the magnetism of his father: “Benny Binion was a much more dynamic guy than I’ll ever be,” he said somewhat wistfully. “He was a legend in his own time.”
But Binion sharply rejected suggestions that the casino’s quality has slipped, and he insisted that he is as good a friend to workers as his father was.
The trouble, Binion insisted, is that times have changed in Las Vegas. To compete with the neon casinos sprouting on the Strip--and with non-union clubs on the city’s fringe that are popular with locals--the old Horseshoe has to run lean and mean.
“The union says I’m rich,” Binion said, “and that’s true. I have plenty of money. But I’m not going anywhere. And with (the competition increasing), going along and getting along just aren’t enough anymore.”
Labor leaders say Binion--and the other casino owners who have yet to sign contracts--are out to bust the union. Jim Arnold, the local’s secretary-treasurer, called Binion’s contract proposal “40 pages of take-aways that would set us back 20 years.”
Specifically, Arnold said Binion wants to replace the union’s health insurance plan with one of his own, a substitute Arnold called “a scam” that would dramatically reduce workers’ benefits. He also said Binion’s proposal seeks to “gut our grievance procedure,” leaving rules that govern the discipline process “totally without teeth.”
The union’s chief goals are an increase in management’s contribution to the workers’ insurance fund, as well as elimination or modification of a rule that requires employees to work their first year on the job at 80% of their wage.
Equally important to the local is contract language that preserves terms of the five-year agreement in the event the casino is sold.
Binion said he can be flexible on most issues provided he wins one concession--the right “to get rid of the low-productive employees. . . . As my dad used to say, ‘If you’ve got one guy dragging his feet, pretty soon you got 100 guys dragging their feet. And you can’t let that happen.’ The union won’t give me that flexibility.”
Strike organizers estimate that their campaign has cut business at the Horseshoe by 30%, and they are determined to keep up the pressure. Union members at other hotels have doubled their dues to increase financial support for striking workers, and the resolve of the pickets seems high.
“He made a pile of money last year, and we all know it. So why’s he doing this to us?” bell captain Jim Robertson, 68, asked as he took his turn on the picket line one recent afternoon. “He forced us onto the street, and I’ll stay here till the bitter end, till I drop dead if need be.”
Binion, however, is no pushover. Although conceding that business is off “a bit,” he declared that the union has largely failed to sway customer loyalty built through years of good times and good odds.
“They wanted to jump on somebody so they jumped on me,” he said. “Well, that was a mistake. I’ve got no debt and no public stockholders. . . . I’m not going to just go away.”