179 Arrested in Sit-In Outside Las Vegas Hotel

About 300 striking employees staged a Labor Day sit-in Monday outside the Frontier Hotel and Gambling Hall in Las Vegas, blocking traffic on the famed Strip and triggering 179 arrests, police said.

The peaceful protest, initiated shortly before noon, lasted about 90 minutes as members of the union representing hotel cooks, bartenders and maids sat in traffic lanes and chanted slogans critical of the Frontier’s management.

About 1,000 spectators lined the Strip to watched the protesters as they were loaded into a bus and hauled away by more than 70 police officers, said Officer Keith Bowers of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Traffic was diverted onto side streets and the demonstration appeared to have little effect on gambling at other casinos, which were jammed with crowds.

“There was no violence, no disturbances,” Bowers said. “Cooperation by the union . . . (and) hotel management was very good.”

Kathy Espin, a publicist at the neighboring Stardust casino, described the unusual labor action as appearing festive, with American flags flying as leaders of the protest shouted their contract demands over megaphones. Union members sat on seat cushions to protect themselves from the hot asphalt, even though temperatures were relatively mild for the Nevada summer--in the mid-90s.

Matthew Walker, a director of the striking Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union, said its members decided to stage the sit-in on Labor Day--the second-busiest day of the year in Las Vegas after Memorial Day--because its contract dispute has gone unresolved for 11 months.

Altogether, 550 hotel workers--including Teamster truck drivers and members of two other labor groups--are on strike against the Frontier, angry over management’s moves to cut wages and medical benefits and to eliminate pension plans, Walker said. Hourly wages have been reduced by as much as $4 for some employees, he said.

“All in all, their plan is to destroy the unions,” Walker said.

Hotel general manager Tom Elardi, a member of the family that purchased the Frontier from the late billionaire Howard Hughes’ Summa Corp., criticized the union action, saying: “Does this look like a normal labor practice? It’s a crime that the union puts the strikers through this.”

As he watched strikers yelling at cars pulling into the hotel driveway, Elardi also condemned the strike’s effect on the Strip.

“No question, this is hurting our tourist industry,” he said.

The labor dispute has taken center stage in a town that has become increasingly unionized, giving Frontier owners a reputation for hard-line, no-frills management.

Angry over the lingering strike’s potentially harmful effects on the Strip, Chairman William G. Bennett of Circus Circus began sending free catered meals to the daily gathering of pickets outside the Frontier. At that time, Elardi responded by saying that the strike would have ended long ago if workers spent as much time bargaining as they did planning the “publicity stunt.”

Strikers arrested Monday were cited and released, police said.