LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Negotiations between 5,000 hotel maids, foodservice workers, bartenders and seven hotel-casinos continued early Monday past a self-imposed deadline, averting a crippling strike.þþ``We have frozen time. Anticipating that we'll be in negotiations through the night, we're leaving workers on the job as long as we're still talking,'' Glen Arnodo, political director for the culinary union, said soon after the 12:01 a.m. PDT deadline passed.þþInformational pickets were still up at the Union Plaza, El Cortez, Western, Las Vegas Club, Horseshoe, Golden Gate and Castaways casinos where contracts had not been agreed on, Arnodo said.þþTentative agreements were reached late Sunday with five downtown casinos: Main Street Station, Fitzgeralds, Fremont, Four Queens and Jerry's Nugget, Arnodo said.þþHundreds marched on the picket line during triple-digit temperatures earlier Sunday as part of Culinary Local 226 and Bartender's Local 165 efforts to raise pressure on the properties.þþThe possible work stoppage by nearly 5,000 maids, foodservice workers and bartenders would be the largest Nevada casino strike since 17,000 Culinary workers staged a citywide strike in 1984.þþIn a strike, hotel operators said they would use their 4,625 nonunion workers to try to do much of the work usually done by union employees.þþAmong those chanting and carrying signs bearing the message ``No Contract, No Peace'' on Fremont Street in front of the Golden Gate hotel-casino -- the city's oldest -- was Bud Whitehead, union committee member and Golden Nugget bellman for 16 years.þþ``We're all in this together,'' the 48-year-old said, referring to the Golden Nugget already having negotiated a contract for its workers. ``No one will be left behind.''þþMGM Mirage's Golden Nugget and 22 Strip properties settled new five-year contracts earlier this month that will cost operators an extra $3.23 per hour by the last year of the pacts.þ
Source: NY Times
