Pickets pick up pace on Fremont Street

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Hundreds of pickets with the local Culinary and Bartender unions broke free of their mono­tonous circular rhythm and danced to the beat of live music on Fremont Street on Saturday.

It was a case study perhaps in how the Fremont Street Experience is inescapable and irresistible, even in trying times when health and retirement benefits are at risk.

The promoters of Rediscover Downtown Day, a movement designed to attract more visitors to downtown, feared the workers, with their cardboard signs and loud chants, would only serve to set their efforts back. They were afraid such a positive day would somehow be upstaged by something as negative as picket lines.

And yet there they were, hundreds of pickets, breaking down and crossing the universally dangerous line that is known as karaoke, singing along to "Highway to Hell," "Sweet Home Alabama" and "You're Sexy and You Know it."

In nearby casino doorways, security guards looked on. They stood vigil. This was their moment to protect. A showdown was forecast.

But in a weird twist, a handful of casino managers chalked up the much-hyped day as "business as usual."

Indeed, it wasn't the workers who threatened to undermine the Fremont experience. It was the ones who have become synonymous with the Fremont experience: the alpha males dressed in Spider-Man suits, the unwashed tweakers air jamming to the rock 'n' roll music; the overzealous security guards, on their Segways, barreling down on the panhandlers; one woman not looking both ways on her motorized scooter, an accident waiting to happen; the dude, with cap on sideways, grabbing his crotch to keep his pants from falling down, a maniacal smile on his face.

Ironically enough, they were the ones to watch out for - not the throngs of hardworking bartenders, the host of housekeepers, the countless cocktail waitresses and cooks, many of whom, by the way, just got off an eight-hour shift and still felt compelled to join in the revolving door of this circular mass of humanity.

And for what reason?

To remind the owners of nearly a dozen hotels - themselves, mind you, in belt-tightening mode these days - that they want a new contract, that they need a new contract. For peace of mind.

The old one, which lasted five years, expired in June, they said. That's nearly six months ago.

"Our issue isn't pay. We don't mind not getting pay raises," said Ronald Gladstone, 46, a kitchen steward who makes $15.80 an hour after working 23 years with The D - formerly Fitzgeralds - whose grand opening was Saturday night. "What's at stake here is our livelihood: Our health care, our retirement, our families."

With a 26-year-old disabled daughter, Gladstone said he can't afford to lose his health care.

It helps foot the bill, the latest an up-close-and-personal visit by a hard­working nurse who took care of his daughter, who uses a wheelchair, for the past three months.

"If I lose health benefits, I'm history," he said. "We're all history."

Some of the downtown casinos are experiencing difficult times, and they have as much at stake in their finances, they say, as the workers have with their benefits.

If times were booming, a contract would have already been signed, they say. It wouldn't have taken this long to negotiate a new one, they say.

And if times were booming, the chance of pickets protesting at promotional events wouldn't exist.

"Hope is on the horizon, all is not lost, things aren't yet that dire," said Yvanna Cancela, political director for Culinary Local 226, which represents 60,000 workers.

And yet she would like to point out that if it weren't for the workers, there would be no Fremont Street Experience.

"We don't want to be left behind," Cancela said. "We're the ones who serve the drinks, make the beds, cook the food. Where would they be without us? That's a question they should ask themselves."

And so into late Saturday night some of the workers marched.

What a great place for union members to demonstrate, too. The Fremont Street Experience, after all, is not the Chicago Stock Yards, with the smell of slaughter in the background; it's not the dreary gray of Detroit, with its struggling factories.

It's hope in the constant ring of the slot machines. It's Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison on the ceiling.

The only lyrics missing were "Street Fighting Man" from the Rolling Stones.

Asked why he came out to picket on his day off, union member and bartender Al Berry, 52, said he owes his union a lot. Its health benefits helped pay for his double hernia surgery.

"If a man pick you up from the ground," said Berry, of Pioneer, La., "you don't hit him in the head. You do everything you can for the cause."

Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.