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Golden Gate Workers Split Over Strike

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- Angry on the outside. Angry on the inside. Lots of frustration all around.

Doesn't matter if you're walking the picket line or working the blackjack tables.

Neither brand of Golden Gate worker was happy with the other on Thursday.

Business is down. Tips are off. Uncertainty rules. And that's the plight of the people actually working inside the tiny hotel-casino.

"They're taking our money. It's bad, very bad," said blackjack dealer Judy Solie, puffing a cigarette while on break from a very quiet day shift. "How many people don't have to pay for their health insurance? This is ridiculous."

Beneath the Fremont Street canopy, picket Jennifer Gonzales was well into her four-hour daily shift of walking the line with her 6-year-old son, Danny.

"I really need my health insurance," she said. "He's getting ready to have an operation. We're good workers. We do our best. I wish they'd settle."

There is no telling how long the strike could last for the property's 175 union members and the 200 nonunion workers who are picking up the slack.

It began early Monday but could end in hours, days, months or never, potentially forcing the property's closure. No one can say.

What's certain is that Golden Gate managing partner Mark Brandenburg says his aging 106-room gaming property is financially troubled, especially in the aftermath of the post-September 11 travel decline.

So Brandenburg argues that he and his half brother, Detroit casino executive Craig Ghelfi, can't meet the unions' asking price of uninterrupted health-care benefits.

The two sides are scheduled to meet today for a 2 p.m. negotiating session.

Brandenburg and Ghelfi estimate that the requested hourly increase of $2.20 per worker would cost the Golden Gate at least $2 million a year extra by the final year of a union-desired five-year contract.

That would come at a property that recorded a $300,000 net operating loss last year, according to Brandenburg.

Hotel desk clerk Debbie Cade backs her boss.

"The people that are out there they know business went down after Sept. 11," said Cade, a nonunion worker who has been filling in for deli workers since the strike began. "I think they should pay for their insurance like I do. I think they're just trying to close us down."

Her mother, Jerri Houchin, works the hotel's front desk.

"It's a shame that some of them don't understand he can't compete," Houchin said. "This is a small property."

But leaders of Culinary Local 226 and Bartender's Local 165 question the veracity of the brothers' claims of corporate poverty.

They argue that the Golden Gate is the last of 35 Las Vegas casinos to work toward a new five-year deal - and the only one to balk at the unions' proposal.

Labor leaders charge that the pair have rarely kept their word, breaking union wage-and-benefit agreements in 1984 and most recently in December.

Besides, they say, the men invested millions in Golden Gate in the 1990s to buy out their partners, betting that it would be a money maker.

But now it's not?

Many of the pickets seemingly knew little about the nuances of the back and forth between labor and management. To them this was about everyday life.

"I feel bad about being on strike, but my sister works here and has a special child. She needs the insurance, and so do I," said striking restaurant busperson Wyevonna Langstaff.

The part-time worker earns $6.10 an hour, and in a good pay period takes home less than $100 every two weeks. "I don't understand why he won't settle."

But it's also affecting the daily life of Jon Newman, who runs the Golden Gate's nonunion, six-person maintenance staff.

He has worked at the hotel-casino for 13 years. His dad was there 20 years before that, and Newman says he's angry by what he views as the selfishness of his unionized coworkers.

"It makes me want to puke," he said. "Being here as long as I have been I know the financial situation.

"I think the union is attempting to kill this business so they can say, 'Hey we killed somebody. You better deal with us or we'll put you out of business like we did the Golden Gate.' "

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