Court won’t overturn ruling ordering Station Casinos to bargain with unions

Station Casinos volition person to bargain successful bully religion with unions for employees astatine Red Rock Resort aft a national appeals tribunal sheet declined to overturn a little court’s ruling.

A sheet of judges connected the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a Friday determination affirming an bid issued by U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro successful July that requires Station Casinos to bargain with the Culinary Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 until a national labour committee makes a ruling connected the dispute.

The lawsuit stems from a ailment filed by the prosecuting limb of the National Labor Relations Board that accused Station Casinos, which operates Red Rock Resort and respective different local-oriented casinos successful Southern Nevada, of utilizing an connection of enhanced worker benefits to effort to sway enactment distant from the national successful the run-up to a December 2019 national predetermination astatine Red Rock Resort. The ballot yet failed.

In the ruling, the appeals tribunal judges said the little tribunal was not incorrect successful determining that the granting of those benefits “was apt an unlawful labour practice” and that the connection apt changed however employees voted implicit fears of losing the recently announced benefits.

“Here, caller worker benefits were announced conscionable days earlier the national election, and determination was extended grounds that those benefits were designed to discourage national support,” the judges’ ruling said.

The Culinary national connected Monday applauded the ruling.

“Just similar Judge Navarro earlier it, the Ninth Circuit saw Station Casinos’ assistance of benefits close earlier the predetermination astatine Red Rock for what it was — a poorly disguised effort to instrumentality distant national powerfulness and to discourage workers from unionizing. This is different triumph for workers who stood up and organized to person a national astatine Red Rock Casino,” Geoconda Argüello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary union, said successful a statement.

Red Rock Resorts, Station Casinos’ genitor company, did not respond to a requests for remark Monday.

The institution could inactive entreaty the ruling, either to the afloat 9th Circuit oregon to the U.S. Supreme Court, but UNLV labour instrumentality prof Ruben Garcia said it “seems unlikely” that this lawsuit would emergence to those levels.

The panels’ ruling cited respective “bedrock precedents” from the Supreme Court and 9th Circuit, and Garcia said the Red Rock Resorts lawsuit “is precise typical.”

“These are bedrock principles that are reasonably straightforward,” Garcia said.

Yearslong dispute

The appeals tribunal lawsuit is the latest clash successful the years-long quality betwixt the national and Red Rock Resorts.

The Culinary national has been trying to unionize Station properties for respective years, with immoderate of those campaigns being successful. But Station Casinos and the national person not signed a declaration astatine immoderate of those properties.

The federal labour relations committee successful April filed a 92-page ailment against Red Rock Resorts and the company’s affiliates. The ailment is simply a consolidation of much than 60 unfair labour signifier cases filed with the labour committee since September 2018.

A fig of employees astatine Boulder Station and Palace Station successful August and September signed petitions asking to permission their national representations. Those withdrawals, the committee said, were “unlawful” and “based connected anti-union petitions that Station Casinos unlawfully encouraged employees to circulate and sign.”

In November, the labour committee filed different suit successful national tribunal that said the gaming elephantine was hindering the underlying unfair labour signifier lawsuit by refusing to supply documents that the committee had subpoenaed.

Station Casinos tried to quash astir 150 circumstantial requests for documents. But an administrative instrumentality justice overseeing the unfair labour practices lawsuit denied that petition connected Sept. 3 and ordered the institution to nutrient the documents immediately.

Despite that order, lone a fistful of the subpoenaed documents person been turned over, according to the filing. A justice has yet to regularisation connected that case.

Contact Colton Lochhead astatine clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead connected Twitter.