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UNITEHERE!
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SECRETARY-TREASURER’SREPORTTERRY GREENWALDIt’s been a little while since we put out our last newsletter. The reason is because we are in the middle of contract negotiations and the status of the negotiations changes from day to day and by the time you read this newsletter, the status will certainly have changed. Today is Tuesday, September 25, 2007 and I wanted to give you an update on the current status. First, let me say that there is good news and bad news. For the good news, most of our membership have Collective Bargaining Agreements and have realized the “Las Vegas Dream.” The bad news is that there are still thousands of members without contracts and until every single one of them has a Collective Bargaining Agreement, we have not won this battle. If you think because you have a good contract that everything is great for five years, without all our members having great contracts, it is not fair that we leave anyone behind. Then five years from now, if the bigger companies can see that smaller companies can beat you by holding out, then they are certain to try to hold out and take us on in the future. The companies that we have contracts
ratified with are: the MGM Properties
(excluding the MGM Grand, whose
contract does not expire until 2008),
Harrah’s Properties, Riviera, Sahara,
Stratosphere and Margaritaville Restaurant.
On the strip, we do not have
contracts with the Las Vegas Hilton*, or
the Tropicana and all of downtown
remains to be settled. Also, Local 226
has contracts with laundries that tie
directly to our jobs as bartenders and
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which has restaurants, bars, and housekeeping and is owned by MGM/Mirage. The Four Seasons contract, which is part of Mandalay Bay, has a separate contract that still needs to be completed. To review what is in the new Collective Bargaining Agreements is a $3.47 economic package over 5 years, and is the largest economic package in the history of our unions. The first year is $0.66, of which $0.13 is going to health and welfare. The remaining $0.53 is divided at a ratio of “tipped” vs. “nontipped” workers with non-tipped getting approximately twice as much. There is a formula for hours worked based on the tipped and non-tipped classifications and is slightly different in each company. At Harrah’s, for instance, the non-tipped workers are getting $0.65 ½ an hour with the tipped workers getting $0.30 an hour. In a restaurant like Margaritaville, with the majority being tipped, those tipped workers are receiving the largest raise at $0.47 an hour with a slightly higher raise for the non-tipped workers. *Las Vegas Hilton Update – we came to an agreement with the Las Vegas Hilton that contains the same basic language as the MGM Mirage and Harrah’s properties. The contract was ratified on Tuesday, October 2nd. The economic package insures our free family health insurance over the next five years. We are the only workers in the State of Nevada and one of the very few in the United States, that has free family health insurance. In securing our pension plan for the next five years, our members are among only 17% of Americans today having these defined pension benefits. |
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