Union Plans to Upset Unveiling of Vegas’ Aladdin

Union leaders hope to stage the most significant labor protest here in two years by disrupting tonight’s scheduled opening of the Aladdin, the Strip’s newest hotel-casino.

Members of Culinary Union Local 226 say they plan to upset the unveiling--and be arrested for civil disobedience--to highlight their concerns that the Aladdin will become the third nonunion hotel on the Strip, otherwise a showcase of organized labor.

“The core of our membership is up and down the Strip,” said Kevin Kline, chief organizer for the powerful, 50,000-member local. “We have to protect our base. If a new casino opens, it has to be a priority for us, and we’ll put all our resources on it.”

Union members will enter the hotel-casino to attempt to recruit employees minutes after it opens to the public, he said. They expect to be arrested as trespassers.

The labor protest would be the most visible since the six-year-long strike at the Frontier, prompted when its owner unilaterally cut wages and benefits of union members. The strike concluded in 1998 when the financially crippled hotel was bought by a new operator who embraced organized labor.

The union’s focus on the Aladdin comes as it continues to picket at the nonunion, 1-year-old Venetian. The Strip’s other nonunion hotel is the smaller and older Imperial Palace, which union officials have not targeted.

The Venetian and Aladdin, however, “are new-generation properties that want to bust the union and challenge our standard of living,” Kline said.

After tonight’s protest, the union will stage further demonstrations and work quietly behind the scenes to try to organize Aladdin employees, he said.

The original Aladdin opened as a union hotel in 1966, went bankrupt, was imploded in 1998 by its recent owners and rebuilt under the same name, at a cost of $1.1 billion. The resort, which also includes a $300-million retail-restaurant complex by TrizecHahn Development, is the only one to open on the Strip this year and will be the last for several years.

The new Aladdin was created by Jack Sommer, son of Sigmund Sommer, who became wealthy by developing post-World War II housing tracts and malls in New Jersey and office buildings in New York City.

Jack Sommer, who lives in Las Vegas, had hoped to tap the family trust to bankroll 75% of the Aladdin project. When he was unable to cover cost overruns, however, his partner and casino manager, London-based gaming company London Clubs International--which had pledged a 25% stake in the Aladdin--grudgingly poured more money into the project. Today, the Sommer Family Trust and London Clubs have a 60%-40% equity share in the project.

The penny-pinching Aladdin plans no gala VIP party tonight, but will simply open its doors at 7 p.m., and shoot off aerial pyrotechnics later.

Fireworks over labor is something that executives hope to avoid.

Aladdin Chief Executive Richard Goeglein, a minority investor, said the reincarnated hotel is creating “a truly unique place for all the team members.”

“We’re not either pro or con [toward unions],” he said. “If our employees want to go forward with a secret-ballot election supervised by the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], that’s fine with us.”

But, he acknowledged, workers are told in their new-employee orientation sessions that “they don’t need a third-party intermediary.”

Union officials say the Aladdin’s insistence on an NLRB election to settle the question is essentially an anti-union stance, and more contentious than the alternative, which is to allow employees to voluntarily sign union pledge cards. If a simple majority of workers sign such cards, committing them to union membership, the local becomes their bargaining agent.

NLRB elections give an unfair advantage to management to campaign against the union, union officials complain, and the results of such an election can be appealed by management, stalling organizing efforts for years.

The simpler union-card process has worked at the other resorts along the Strip, including ones run by such corporations as MGM Mirage, Park Place Entertainment and Mandalay Resort Group. Collectively, they are far and away the Strip’s largest employers.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve really built a partnership in town with employers, where membership has a place at the table,” Kline said. “Now the Aladdin is coming in, wants to challenge that partnership and turn the clock back.”

Casino-union relations date back to the 1940s and ‘50s, when hotels began sprouting and bosses struggled to find enough local service employees to work in the hotels, casinos and restaurants.

Legendary local Culinary Union boss Al Bramlet came to the rescue, supplying owners with pre-screened workers--sometimes personally recruiting them from his home state of Arkansas and elsewhere from the South.

In Las Vegas, he set up hiring halls, and workers could find good work by day’s end.

Las Vegas’ marriage to unions was solidified during the 1960s with the influx of casino capital from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund, which, along with Howard Hughes, financed the Strip’s growth.

The early casinos were run by fellows with union blood as well, so negotiations between them and Bramlet were generally friendly affairs.

Relations toward the unions chilled in the 1980s with the emergence of corporate-run casinos, but again shifted in favor of unions when Circus-Circus, and then Mirage Resorts, welcomed organized labor.

The culinary local has focused its organizing efforts on the Strip, increasing its membership to 50,000 from 20,000 just 10 years ago. With successes there, it will move more aggressively to off-strip casinos, its bosses say.

With its clout, the local has become a flagship within its parent organization, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. And it has endeared itself to some of the largest casinos in town.

Alan Feldman, an MGM Mirage vice president, noted that its labor contract with the Culinary Union explicitly refers to rank-and-file employees as partners with management. The two sides provide joint training programs, agree on service standards and cooperate on matters of employee discipline.

“There obviously are cases where companies have chosen to either passively or aggressively keep organized labor out,” he said. “I have yet to hear anyone explain the benefits of doing that.”

Today, Las Vegas has “the strongest union history of any city in a right-to-work state” where union membership is not required for employment, said Hal Rothman, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor. “Las Vegas is the last Detroit--the last place where you can be unskilled, make a middle-class wage and have it mean something.”

Among the Culinary Union members who hold jobs that earn tips, food servers and cocktail waitresses make $8.96 an hour; bellman, $9.25. Among non-tip jobs, maids, dishwashers and porters who keep the casino floors clean make between $10.70 and $10.97 an hour; cooks make $13.96.

They also receive health benefits and pension plans, in exchange for their monthly union dues of $32.50.

The protest at tonight’s Aladdin opening “will be theater more than anything else,” Rothman predicted. “The union will make its point, very visibly and remind the Aladdin that hotels on the Strip do better with unions than not. Then the union will settle down for the long haul.”

Will the public take sides over the labor protest? “Probably not,” he said. “People are on vacation. What do they care?”