LAS VEGAS, FEB. 1 -- Kathleen Hahn's eyes grew moist as she watched hundreds of loudly chanting union members, led by Jesse L. Jackson, converge on the entrance to the Frontier Hotel-Casino.
"It's been a long, hard fight, but we made it," she said of the strike against the Frontier that started on Sept. 21, 1991.
The message on the hotel marquee read "Everyone Welcome. Strike's Over."
Hahn was one of 550 Culinary Union members who walked out when the resort refused to match a contract offered by most hotels in this gambling capital. They expected to be out for days, maybe weeks.
The bitter and sometimes violent strike ended at 12:01 a.m. today when the new owner, Phillip Ruffin, joined by civil rights leader and TV talk show host Jackson and Nevada Gov. Robert J. Miller (D), snipped a red ribbon and entered the hotel with hundreds of union members.
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Culinary Union officials said it was the nation's longest present-day labor walkout. The nation's longest walkout, according to the Guinness Book of Records, was the United Auto Workers strike against plumbing fixtures maker Kohler Co. in Sheboygan, Wis., that ran from April 1954 to October 1962.
Ruffin, a Wichita businessman who bought the hotel in October for $167 million, took control of the property today with the promise of a union contract. He said 280 of the original workers are coming back, while more than 100 current workers are being laid off.
"I think anybody who stays out 6 1/2 years has a lot of intestinal fortitude," Ruffin said as he waited at the entrance for the union members' arrival. "We think these people will make good employees. We think we can bring the hotel back to what it once was."
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Ruffin, who owns a dozen Marriott hotels, has said he has agreed to pay the union $3.5 million in back pay and benefits for the strikers. Outgoing Frontier owner Margaret Elardi is picking up half of that tab, he said.
Ruffin also pledged to pump at least $20 million into remodeling the resort, which he is renaming the New Frontier.
The Elardi family had maintained it could not afford to pay workers as much as other hotels in the city because the Frontier, purchased from Howard Hughes's old Summa Corp., was too small. Margaret Elardi herself has never made any public comment about the dispute.
Her son, former Frontier general manager Tom Elardi, a bitter union foe, was seen in the casino shortly before midnight, but was gone by the time union members swarmed in the front doors.
The labor strife was punctuated by numerous incidents of violence.
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In one case in 1993, a yelling match between several pickets and a couple from California turned into a fight captured on hotel surveillance tape and broadcast around the world. The man suffered neck and back injuries, and seven pickets were arrested and given suspended sentences.
Local and state officials had pressed for a sale of the property; the strikers had said their goal was a "3-S Plan" -- sell, sign or shut down.
Culinary Union leaders said they spent $26 million on the strike. Much of that, according to local Secretary-Treasurer Jim Arnold, went toward strike pay and benefits -- $200 a week for manning the picket line.
The new contract calls for a starting wage of $7.50 an hour for food servers, $9.50 for hotel maids and $12 for cooks. Striking workers were averaging $2 an hour less before the strike started.
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Hahn, a 50-year-old cocktail server, said she and other Frontier workers had all but given up hope.
"We were absolutely elated by the sale," she said. "You would hear stories that they were going to settle or sell, but it never happened. You just sort of expected it to go on and on.
"Only in America could you be on the picket line six years and come back to win," said Hahn, who worked at other resorts during the strike and is among those returning to the Frontier.
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