Frustration is mounting for gaming employees with Casino Regina after a meeting last week with their employer, the Crown-owned Saskatchewan Gaming Corp., failed to strike a new deal.

Communication between Sask. Gaming and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), which represents about 425 gaming employees at the casino, has been minimal since the strike began more than a month ago.

Both parties had high hopes an agreement could be reached when the corporation arranged the meeting last week, but Robin Benson, regional executive vice president of PSAC, said they now seem even further apart.

She said the corporation is willing to increase wages, but not without scaling back some positions to part-time.

“We had really hoped they were serious about us coming back to the table. We are nowhere close to an agreement,” said Bensen.

“You can’t take from one hand and give to the other. A wage increase, but no full-time hours, is just not possible. If you are never going to be more than a part-time worker, how is that a career?”

On June 3, more than 400 gaming employees walked off the floor and went on strike after failed attempts to reach a new contract with their employer.

Food and beverage employees also are on the picket line in support of PSAC’s decision to strike, leaving the casino operating with limited services and shorter hours.

The union members, which include dealers, cashiers, security guards and slot attendants, have been without a contract since May 2009. Wage increases, family leave and night-shift premiums are the outstanding issues.

Members of PSAC, along with the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, will be hosting a rally outside the Legislative Building on Thursday, and have also been in contact with local MLAs to step in.

Blaine Pilatzke, vice-president of human resources for Sask. Gaming, said he was hoping the meeting would spark further discussions, but was disappointed when nothing further materialized.

He said Sask. Gaming presented a fair offer that included 5.5 per cent in total increased compensation over a three-year period and a realignment of existing provisions within the collective agreement to address some of the union’s priorities.

The offer also included improvements to health care benefits.

“We presented a couple of options to try to address some of their priorities, but those were rejected,” said Pilatzke.

“It’s been more than 30 days and the corporation recognizes it’s difficult on the picketers, but it’s also difficult on our out-of-scope staff who have been asked to perform additional functions as well. I would hope that at some point in the near future we can get back and have some further discussions.”

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The negotiating committee for United Steelworkers Local 2724, representing more than 600 salaried supervisory and technical personnel inside Essar Steel Algoma Inc., is seeking strike authorization from its membership less than a month prior to the expiration of its three-year contract.

The local will conclude two days of special membership meetings Tuesday at the Days Inn.

The update meeting is scheduled to begin at noon, with strike authorization voting from 6 a.m. through 8 p.m. at 2724′s Days Inn office, while Monday evening’s meeting and vote was at the Marconi Hall.

A strike authorization vote is essentially a show of membership solidarity for its bargaining committee and puts the local in a legal strike position, if necessary, at the expiration of its contract.

Three-year contracts between the Sault Ste. Marie steel maker and its two unions, including Local 2251, representing more than 2,500 hourly production, maintenance, service and clerical employees, and Local 2724, expire at 12:01 a.m. Aug. 1.

As of Monday afternoon, the 2251 negotiating team had not yet called on its membership for strike authorization, but has called special membership meetings for Wednesday, at 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Great Northern Hotel and Conference Centre, to discuss the company’s proposed asset integrity proposal in the event of a labour disruption.

The asset integrity proposal, according to Mike Da Prat, president of Local 2251, relates to staffing in such areas as “the coke oven batteries and other ancillary operations that need to be maintained and kept operating in the event of a labour disruption.”

During the last negotiations, in 2007, the company trained its more than 100 non-union personnel and hired contract workers to augment its non-union people, on operating tasks such as the coke ovens, utilities and material handling, as well as fire and flood patrolling throughout the steelworks.

While Da Prat says negotiations, which began with an exchange of proposals more than a month ago, on June 1, are “plodding along” the local’s website is reporting that 2251 submitted its monetary proposal to the company a week ago, on June 28.

Monetary proposals are traditionally one of the last items of discussion in the negotiating process.

“We are still awaiting the company’s response … I wouldn’t read too much into the proposal at this stage, there are still outstanding issues on the table,” said Da Prat.

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When Brigida Ruiz opened the door to a “green” hotel room that hadn’t been cleaned for several days, she says her heart sank at the sight of the dusty, stained carpet.

“Can you imagine how a room gets after one week without cleaning service?” says Ruiz, who has worked as a hotel-room attendant for 18 years at the Sheraton Centre Toronto.

“It’s dirty, filthy. Really stinky.”

Ruiz says it took her longer to clean the room and she used more electricity, more water and more cleaning products than she normally would — hardly a save-the-planet exercise, she argues.

But that’s exactly what the U.S.-based Starwood Hotels chain is touting with its “Make a Green Choice” program, which invites guests to “conserve natural resources” by declining daily housekeeping in return for 500 loyalty points or $5 in food and beverage vouchers a day.

The green initiative, rolled out last summer in 140 Starwood hotels across North America — including at least five properties in Metro Vancouver — has hotel workers and their union seeing red.

They say the program is a bogus green plan that does nothing for the environment. But it does result in reduced shifts and more work for housekeeping staff, says Michelle Travis of Unite Here Local 40.

The union represents about 8,000 hospitality workers in B.C., including Starwood’s Westin Bayshore in Coal Harbour and the Sheraton Vancouver Airport in Richmond.

“This has been a real problem for housekeepers for the hotels,” says Travis.

“It’s just a cost-cutting measure on the part of the hotel employer.”

The Westin Bayshore defended the “Make a Green Choice” program in a statement emailed to The Province.

The program helps “hotels save energy and reduce water and chemical use” and has saved more than 31 million litres of water, 38,000 kilowatts of electricity and 42,000 litres of chemicals across the Starwood chain in its first six months, the statement said.

An estimated 4.5 to five per cent of guests at the Bayshore avail themselves of the program, compared to eight per cent companywide, says hotel spokesman Mitchell Fawcett.

The Bayshore was unable to say exactly how much water and electricity it has saved, Fawcett says.

“Since it’s been such a short time, we’re still assembling property statistics and don’t have a full tally we can share at this point,” he says.

One room attendant at the Bayshore, who asked that her identity not be published for fear of repercussions in the workplace, says she doesn’t see how the program — dubbed the “fake green-card program” by critics — is environmentally friendly.

“It doesn’t save the environment. But it’s bad for us, because we are losing hours and there’s more work,” she told The Province.

If 45 rooms opt out of housekeeping in a day, three staff members lose their shifts, says the 18-year employee.

But by the time workers finally clean a “green” room, the rooms are messier, the garbage stinkier and the towels are “like a mountain,” she says.

They also take longer to clean, forcing workers to rush the job in order to meet their daily quota, she says.

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