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Strike Talk Rekindles Memories of 1984

LAS VEGAS - Most current Las Vegans had yet to arrive in Sin City by 1984, the last time housekeepers and food servers staged a citywide strike.

Ronald Reagan was president, and Clark County's population was 550,000. The county now has 1.5 million residents, and the current president is the son of Reagan's vice president.

The 1984 strike lasted 67 days at most properties and prompted bombings, assaults and hundreds of arrests, along with severe economic repercussions for Southern Nevada.

"It was an interesting time, but a difficult one," said former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, then governor of the state. "It was protracted, and it was ugly. Las Vegas received a lot of negative publicity."

As Culinary Local 226 workers prepare to vote Thursday to authorize their negotiating committees to call a strike against 35 Las Vegas hotel-casinos, few of the union's 45,000 members remember the 1984 strike.

One who does is Bally's cocktail waitress Debra Jeffries, who's worked at the property, then called the MGM Grand, for 22 years.

"It was tough on a lot of us, getting by on $50 in weekly strike pay from the union," said Jeffries. "We were worried about our jobs, but we all stuck together. Only one of the cocktail servers didn't walk out with us."

Edward Sanders, a bellman at downtown's Plaza hotel-casino for 31 years, said the 1984 strike elevated tension between employees and management, tension that remained after the strike was settled.

"It was hard on the whole city," Sanders recalled. "A lot of workers couldn't afford to do without a paycheck, and they went back in. After we were on the picket line for a few days, things got a bit tight. People were angry at the strikebreakers."

Unlike a 16-day strike against 15 Strip properties in 1976, and a four-day walkout in 1970, when most hotels, casinos and restaurants closed, property owners kept their hotels and casinos open in 1984 with the help of replacement workers and managers shifted to other jobs.

The size of the casino industry's contributions to the Culinary's health and welfare fund was 1984's biggest issue, with wages and job descriptions two other important areas of contention.

Culinary leaders agreed to contracts with 15 hotel-casinos before the 1984 strike, but were unable to settle with owners of 32 other properties.

Most Las Vegas casinos in 1984 were owned by individuals or partnerships, with only the Las Vegas Hilton and the Flamingo Hilton owned by a publicly traded corporation, Hilton Hotels.

Corporate-owned properties now control more than 90 percent of the Strip's hotel rooms, with the three biggest players, MGM Mirage, Park Place Entertainment and Mandalay Resort Group operating more than two-thirds of the estimated 73,000 rooms.

In 1984, hard-line owners were affiliated with the Nevada Resort Association, the casino industry's Carson City lobbying arm.

When the city's two Hilton properties reached deals with the Culinary four weeks into the strike, the agreements paved the way for subsequent contracts with the 20-member association.

Workers received most of the wage and benefit boosts they sought, while management was able to defer most of the increases until the end of the five-year pacts.

Bryan said he constantly talked with both the union and property owners during the strike, urging compromise.

"A governor can facilitate a deal, but can't dictate the terms," Bryan explained.

All but six of the city's hotel-casinos settled by the strike's third month, with pickets remaining at properties that refused to accept terms agreed to by the rest of the city's casinos.

Workers at two of the properties, Boyd Gaming Corp.'s Sam's Town and California, eventually dropped their union ties as a result of the strike. Housekeepers and food service workers at those properties remain non-union.

The city's hotels funded the Metropolitan Police Department's overtime costs in 1984, an arrangement that prompted labor leaders to question the nearly 1,000 arrests made of picketers and other union members.

"We're coordinating with Metro, and have a good rapport," said Culinary laywer Jim Bonaventure said. "It's not the bad old days anymore."

For 17,000 striking workers the strike's economic cost included an estimated $75 million in lost wages and benefits, while the city's casinos lost an estimated $150 million in tourism and gaming revenue.

For Bryan, the lesson from the 1984 strike is clear.

"Everyone should hope a strike can be averted," he said. "They're never easy."

"Nobody likes a strike," added Bally's cocktail waitress Jeffries. "I hope it doesn't come to that."

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