PALM SPRINGS — Labor organizer Reggie Turner earned his battle stripes in the casinos of Las Vegas, an old union town. Now he's been dispatched to a new front where unions have no history and where his marching orders are more daunting.
Turner is at the forefront of efforts to organize workers employed by California's Indian casinos, and he is decidedly unwelcome on most reservations.
Rank-and-file casino workers deserve better wages, benefits, protection and dignity, he says, and the Indian tribes that operate the casinos respond that their employees are treated well.
This, however, is not your run-of-the-mill management-versus-labor face-off, because the sovereign tribes are exempt from state and federal labor laws that allow workers in other industries to freely organize.
Similar to efforts to formally organize California farm workers 25 years ago, unions today have no force of law to back their campaigns to collectively bargain on behalf of Indian casino workers.
To help their cause, the unions have turned to state politicians for support, much to the tribes' consternation.
Last year, then-Gov. Pete Wilson became an unlikely political bedfellow with a union in an unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 5, the tribes' ballot measure to expand Indian gaming in California.
Wilson had already crafted his own, more rigid casino agreements with a handful of smaller tribes. Then, to win the support of the Legislature's Democrats, he included terms allowing casino workers to join unions--a provision that was not included in Proposition 5. But those compacts were voided after another tribe sought a referendum challenging them.
Now the issue of unionizing casinos falls in the lap of Gov. Gray Davis, who is friendly with Indians and labor, and received campaign contributions from both.
Compact negotiations between Davis' office and 70 tribes are underway, and it remains to be seen whether he'll pressure tribes to allow workers to freely organize.
The fate of Proposition 5 remains uncertain because its constitutionality was challenged by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union--Turner's group--which in recent years has organized tens of thousands of casino workers in Las Vegas.
The state Supreme Court today will hear oral arguments on the case from union and tribal attorneys.
Labor officials and Indian leaders say they know of no Indian casino in the nation whose workers have union representation.
