Organizing for elections at Coach USA in Las Vegas Second Page

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The operators of Gray Line Las Vegas have been represented by the UTU since mid 1995. They formed Local 105 and obtained a contract in December 1995. Some of these Coach Operators have been working for Gray Line Las Vegas since 1968. Walter Anderson hired on with Gray Line Las Vegas on January 23, 1968. He recalls that Teamsters Local 631 had been representing Gray Line since the early 1960's.

On October 15, 1994 IBT Local 631 abandonded representation rights to these workers due to the low percentage of membership among the workforce. Nevada is a right to work state of course, and any Union must work to convince workers to be members every month.

 

Membership One, docked | John Nadalin at Work.

After more than a year of working without any Union representation the Gray Line workers invited UTU reps to speak to them about joining the United Transportation Union. UTU Local 105 thus came into existence at Gray Line Las Vegas in 1996.

In late fall of 1997 Gray Line was bought by Coach USA, along with another Las Vegas charter bus line, KT Services. In April 1998 the Gray Line operation was moved to the KT yard north of town. This resulted in a work force working under two separate contracts, and two separate Unions representing the work force. The type of work performed by Gray Line and KT were different, with Gray Line having the permit to pick up at the Airport, and running regular tour service from a Casino location on the Strip. KT had been doing largely individual charters, with a considerable amount of government contract work. (employees to the nuclear test site, military base transfers, etc)

   

Membership One, getting there

In November 1998 the National Labor Relations Board notified Bernie McNelis (Vice-President and director of the UTU bus department)  that Coach USA had called for a winner take all representation election at the Las Vegas site. This was rather a surprise to everyone in the UTU as both the Local 105 contract and the IBT 631 contract had more than a year to run. Coach, USA did not give prior notice to UTU International or UTU Local 105 of their intent to have a representation election for a single representative on the property.

   

Membership One, At the Base

Within two weeks Bernie called up his expert bus organizing team from scattered locations around North America and dispatched them to Las Vegas, to assist Local 105 in the election. 

This is the story of that election campaign.

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created: December 3, 1998
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