The ongoing battle between Station Casinos and the Culinary Union entered a new phase when the union attacked the operator on two fronts. The union appealed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board to revoke the operator’s gaming licenses, saying Station is “unsuitable” for a Nevada license after repeated failures to bargain with the union.
Separately, the Culinary Union filed a mass action lawsuit against Station, alleging it violated Nevada’s Right to Return law by failing to return furloughed employees to their jobs.
In a statement, Culinary officials urged the Nevada Gaming Control Board to investigate the suitability of Station Casinos “for failing to adhering to federal labor law.”
But apparently the union has no problem with Boyd Gaming, whose CFO has bragged about not re-hiring furloughed employees.
In the statement, Ted Pappageorge, the union’s secretary treasurer, said Station’s ongoing practices have violated labor laws, citing allegations currently before the National Labor Relations Board.
“The Culinary Union is confident the state’s gaming regulators will want to take action against Station Casinos after they have reviewed the ample documentation and evidence of the company and its affiliates’ disregard of federal law, including the current allegations before the NLRB,” Pappageorge said. “No one has a right to a revocable, privileged Nevada gaming license—gaming regulators have a duty to make sure license-holders, like Station Casinos, are always operating in way befitting Nevada’s gold standard of gaming industry regulation.”
Station wasted no time in responding. “The Culinary Union seems unable to win the hearts and minds of our team members, so they just continue with their harassment and their thuggish attempts to intimidate Station Casinos, whose employees voted us the top casino employer in Las Vegas,” a Station Casinos spokesperson told station KLAS in Las Vegas.
Station also has indicated employees voted to decertify the union at Boulder and Palace Stations, where the company no longer recognizes the union as a bargaining agent. The union alleges the decertification votes were illegal, and that union members were intimidated by Station management to vote against the union.
The union already has won several court rulings. An Oct. 25, 2021, injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro stated the National Labor Relations Board would likely rule that Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa had violated federal labor law in its campaign to defeat the union in an election.
The union made an official request to gaming officials to review Stations Casinos’ suitability to hold a license. The Gaming Control Board meets April 6 and April 7 in Carson City.
Station, after signing contracts recognizing the Culinary Union at seven of its properties, closed two Fiesta properties and sold the Palms. Maintenance workers at the Palms have since petitioned the NLRB to decertify the International Union of Operating Engineers at that property. More recently, slot technicians at Red Rock Resort, owned by Station parent Red Rock Resorts, Inc. petitioned the national board to decertify the same union.
Last year, an NLRB administrative judge found Station’s parent company, Red Rock Resorts, Inc., “has engaged in contumacious conduct by failing to respond fully to a federal subpoena issued by the NLRB.”
“The Control Board does have jurisdiction over federal law violations on licensed properties. This is arguably a violation of federal law under the National Labor Relations Act,” said Ruben Garcia, Boy Law Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in an interview with Nevada Current. “They also have an interest in ensuring suitable operations, and if you’re violating that would seem to be unsuitable.”
The mass action complaint alleges that Station—Nevada’s third-largest private employer and owner of nine casinos in Las Vegas—has operated “in flagrant violation of its obligations as an employer and has not recalled hospitality workers back to work as mandated by SB386.”
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, 98 percent of Culinary Union members were laid off and currently 80 percent are back to work. While a majority of unionized workers already have extended recall protections in their contracts, a majority of workers protected by SB386 are not unionized.
“The Culinary Union is proud to have won the Right to Return for over 350,000 hospitality workers in Nevada,” the union said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “SB386 gave hundreds of thousands of union and non-union casino, hospitality, stadium, and travel-related employees, who were laid off, through no fault of their own, the Right to Return to their jobs as business returns. Every Republican member in the 2021 Nevada Legislature voted to not support SB386.”
In its press release, the union noted SB386 Right to Return mandates;
- Workers laid off after March 12, 2020 for economic reasons due to the pandemic are eligible for Right to Return. Protections in SB386 begin July 1, 2021 and expire August 31, 2022.
- Hundreds of thousands of union and non-union hospitality, airport, casino, travel, and stadium workers (including third party operators at hotels and casinos such as retail shops, restaurants, bars, and parking facilities) are protected.
- Covered employers (that have 30 or more employees) must make offers to laid-off employees when they have job openings for the same or similar positions as the employee worked previously.
- Workers who receive job offers have 24 hours to accept or decline and must be available to work within five days of receiving an offer.
Meanwhile, the Culinary Union rallied last week outside the Foley Federal Building in Downtown Las Vegas to call on the Internal Revenue Service to change the tax method for tipped workers, saying the tax had been hiked without consulting organized labor.
The IRS tip allocation rate estimates how much a tipped employee usually makes, and taxes them at a rate deemed appropriate. The IRS lowered the allocation rate in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, but raised the rates again at the beginning of 2022—according to the union, higher than pre-pandemic levels in many cases.
“These are good jobs” said Pappageorge, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “These people are making a decent living, but these are average working-class jobs that the IRS is going after them instead of going after the biggest corporations and billionaires out there.”
Boyd Gaming, like many other operators, including Station Casinos, made significant cuts to promotions, comps and other marketing expenses in reaction to the Covid-19 crisis. The operator also cut staffing by 40 percent, from 25,000 before the 2020 shutdowns to 15,000 today.
According to the company’s chief financial officer, Boyd Gaming is in no hurry to bring either promotions or staffing back to pre-pandemic levels. In a meeting with Truist Securities analyst Barry Jonas, Boyd CFO Josh Hirsberg and Director of Corporate Finance Jake Mulcahy said there was “no going back” to pre-pandemic promotional levels.
As far as staffing, the executives said current plans for the next 12 to 24 months call for augmenting a workforce down by 10,000 employees by adding only 1,000 to 1,500 new hires.
“While some of the increased staffing will ease pressures on existing staff, (management) believes other hires will drive incremental revenues,” Jonas wrote in a note following the meeting. He added that new investments in technology will reduce its reliance on labor.
