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Strip Negotiations Turn to Sunday

Executives of the two companies, which employ about half of the unions' members, struck a conciliatory tone Friday when discussing the upcoming meetings.

The sessions will follow tentative deals that were reached Thursday by labor leaders with their counterparts at Park Place Entertainment, Harrah's Entertainment and Tropicana-owner Aztar.

The companies agreed to hourly increases of $3.23 for each of the union's 16,500 members they employ as well as reduced workloads for housekeepers.

Union members could vote on the proposals as early as this week.

"I don't think there's going to be a great deal of economic difficulty now that the economics have been settled," said Mandalay Senior Vice President Mike Sloan. "There's no reason not to be optimistic we're not going to settle this promptly."

Yet John Wilhelm, the chief negotiator for Culinary Local 226 and Bartender's Local 165, was guarded when asked whether Las Vegas has averted its first citywide gaming strike in 18 years.

"No, I don't know what Mandalay Resort Group and MGM Mirage are going to do, and secondly, there's a whole group of Strip properties and downtown properties that we still need to sign an agreement with," said Wilhelm, president of the Culinary's parent union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.

Typically, the unions first negotiate contracts with the largest Strip operators, which set the parameters for agreements with smaller stand-alone operators.

The 47,000-member unions have set a June 1 strike deadline but must still negotiate deals with 14 stand-alone gaming properties in addition to multiproperty operators MGM Mirage, Mandalay Resort Group and Boyd Gaming.

Union representatives met Friday with Boyd executives. No deal was reached, leaving the two sides to schedule a Thursday meeting.

But it's the Sunday sessions at Mandalay's Excalibur and MGM Mirage's Golden Nugget that could determine how quickly the remaining agreements are reached.

"The practicality of the bargaining dictates that none of the smaller companies are going to negotiate a settlement until there's a pattern established by some of the larger companies," Wilhelm said. "Now that we have that pattern established we have an enormous amount of work to do."

Thursday's deals were structured to preserve the unions' health insurance plan, which sees employers foot the full cost of monthly premiums.

Some observers wonder how the financially challenged casinos of downtown and the north end of the Strip can afford similar contracts. A Wednesday negotiating session has been scheduled by the unions and several downtown companies.

"Downtown is different - vastly different - from the Strip," said one downtown casino owner who requested anonymity. "Economically we have a different set of issues. We just don't have the same means to generate revenue, and we can't afford the same contracts. "There are a lot of people downtown who are terribly concerned that our employees won't understand that there is a significant difference between downtown and the Strip."

In 1988, downtown casinos generated 13.9 percent of the state's gaming revenue. Last year, that percentage had fallen to 7.2 percent, with the Strip building boom of the past 13 years forcing the decline as gamblers have turned their backs on downtown's aging properties.

"I think they're going to have to run a solid analysis on the numbers and see whether or not it makes sense," said MGM Mirage Senior Vice President Alan Feldman. "You have several properties downtown that have very little cushion right now."

Feldman's company owns downtown's largest and most profitable hotel-casino, the Golden Nugget, which has nearly 2,000 rooms.

The MGM Mirage executive said he is confident that his company will reach a deal with union negotiators during Sunday's session.

"There's nothing that I feel is so significant that we're not going to resolve it," he said. "Most of it is how the language of the contract gets worded."

But it's his company's ownership of the Strip's Bellagio, MGM Grand, the Mirage, Treasure Island, Boardwalk and its half-interest in Monte Carlo that allows MGM Mirage to be a key player in the union talks.

"Whatever we did on the Strip we just went ahead and did downtown," he said of his company's negotiating strategy.

Meantime, Wilhelm said he has no plans, as some have speculated, to develop a cheaper health benefits package for downtown workers to aid their struggling employers.

"Absolutely not," he said. "We have no intention of creating a two-tier health plan for our members."

But union negotiators could recommend a phased wage and benefits increase to ease some of the financial pressure on struggling gaming operators.

One proposal could see half of a yearly increase come on June 1 and the other on Nov. 1.

"We've done that in the past with some of the worst-off properties," Wilhelm noted.

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