Assembly Democrats in California: Hang in There For the Casino Workers, There's National Labor Issues At Stake

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By David Brody
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Davis

Last summer the Governor struck a deal with five southern California tribes tripling their allotment of slot machines. The Legislature balked, however, and the gaming compacts are now back for reconsideration. They have been approved by the Senate, so it’s up to the Assembly. The debate vibrates with an energy that only big bucks can generate. The tribes, the State, assorted lobbyists, consultants, and party money-raisers—everyone stands to win, except the working people who keep the casinos running. There’ll be more jobs, yes, but at poverty-level wages. This country has a remedy for such inequities. It’s called collective bargaining.

If employees want collective bargaining, that’s their right under our labor law. All the compacts embrace this enshrined principle and, indeed, take the federal law as their template, which means, first, that the choice rests with casino workers and, second, that the casino operators have a “duty to bargain” once the majority has spoken. No one is contesting these basic rules. What is being contested, furiously, is a procedural question: How should majority rule be implemented?

The original gaming compacts, the ones approved in 1998, opted for the electoral process that the National Labor Relations Board uses for certifying bargaining agents. Sounds nice and democratic until you observe what actually happens. The playing field—what transpires before the worker enters the voting booth--almost ludicrously favors the employer. He can make employees attend mandatory meetings and one-and-one interrogations; he can tell them their jobs are at stake; he can keep organizers off the premises; and he doesn’t have to put up with troublemakers. He fires them. The NLRB is not much, but at least it’s there. There’s no NLRB for the Indian casinos; they essentially police themselves. No wonder that casino workers keep their heads down. Or that not one of casinos mandated by the original compacts has been organized.