Hundreds of dealers at Foxwoods Resort Casino are expected to vote as scheduled Saturday on whether to unionize, but it could be longer before they know the results of the election, a regional labor official said.
Foxwoods opposes the union. Casino owners, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, has filed an appeal asking the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington to review the Connecticut regional director’s decision to allow the union vote.
The regional office ruled in favor of the dealers last month, rejecting the Mashantuckets’ argument that tribal employment law has jurisdiction in the matter. The union would be one of the first at a tribal casino.
The United Auto Workers wants to form a union for about 3,000 dealers and says it has support from more than half of them.
But the Mashantuckets say the bargaining should be done under tribal employment law that has been developed over 15 years.
Because of the difficulties involved in planning an election for Thanksgiving weekend, Connecticut Region Assistant Director John Cotter said he does not expect the full labor board to reschedule the election because of the appeal.
“What is still unclear is whether we will still count the ballots or whether the board will order us to impound the ballots pending further review,” Cotter said. He said he is not sure when the full board will make a decision.
Around Thanksgiving the sprawling casino, one of the largest in the world, is typically filled with customers celebrating the start of the holiday season, requiring the Mashantuckets to schedule dealers to leave gambling tables to vote.
The federal labor agency also must find enough NLRB employees to staff the election for 15 hours.
A call seeking comment was placed Monday to a spokesman for the Mashantuckets.
Tribal gambling has grown into a $22 billion-a-year industry with casinos in 28 states. About 250,000 people, mostly non-Indians, work at the nation’s 400-plus tribal casinos.
A few tribal casinos in California are unionized, but most workers are nonunion. Unions have tried to make inroads with the growing work force but say they’ve had trouble without the protection of the federal National Labor Relations Act.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Monday that he has filed a brief opposing Foxwoods’ appeal. He said Foxwoods’ tribal ownership is transcended by its sheer size and commercial impact on the state. He also said previous decisions affirm that federal labor laws apply to tribal commercial ventures, including casinos.
