Jack Gribbon, California political director for HERE, provided the following remarks:

“Our union feels vindicated by the decision of the California Supreme Court to declare Proposition 5 as unconstitutional. It has always been our view that compacts should be negotiated with the full participation of the California State Government.

“We do not believe that enforceable worker rights can be effectively advocated when the casino owners are the only drafters of a compact. In fact, Proposition 5 excluded enforceable worker rights completely. When the state is involved, we believe it becomes the state’s responsibility to ensure that the 15,000 workers, who are the engine behind this multi-billion dollar industry, have basic employment rights and protections. That is our issue, it has always been our issue, and it is our only issue.

“All that said, this is not a joyous occasion for our Union. Let me explain that by recounting to you or involvement in this struggle over the last several years. HERE has 300,000 members nationally, 100,000 in the gaming industry. In California, we have 70,000 members, many thousands in the commercial gaming industry (and now over 1,000 in the Indian gaming industry).

“We are proud of our record of accomplishment in California. Over the past 5 years, we have begun to set a standard of decent wages and affordable family health care in the commercial gaming industry in our state. The standard used to be low wages with family health care so expensive for the workers that very few could afford to purchase it. It is fair to say that the low wages and lack of affordable health care remanded many of the workers to the rolls of the working poor.

“This situation continues in part of the commercial gaming industry and in the Indian gaming industry as well.  Given that tribal gaming has been the fastest growing and most profitable sector of the gaming industry in our state, we began to approach the gaming tribes over the past several years to discuss the subject of worker rights and try to build a coalition between labor and the tribes. Our attempts may have been clumsy at first but we tried.  Those attempts were rejected until last year.

“We reached agreement with six tribes last year over the issue of enforceable workers rights and in return, we offered to lead the campaign to ratify the compacts negotiated by those tribes. We believed that by helping those six tribes, we would show everyone in Indian Country that we could be a valuable and effective partner. After an eight-month battle, we achieved ratification of those compacts. Anyone involved in that campaign will tell you that it would not have happened without us.

“Unfortunately, rather than become a positive example of how helpful our Union could be, it raised the level of contentiousness around the debate over enforceable worker rights and caused some individuals to try to vilify our Union.

“Another result was Proposition 5. We had no choice but to oppose Proposition 5 and to subsequently file suite against its implementation. If Proposition 5 had become law, it would have denied the 15,000 plus workers in the Indian gaming industry in California the most basic employment rights on into perpetuity.  “It is our hope that this issue will be resolved in compact negotiations between the tribes and Governor Davis.  “The State Labor Federation has reached agreement with five tribes in California on enforceable worker rights this year. 

This unique agreement which respects tribal sovereignty and allows workers to bargain collectively through any union that a majority of them would elect to represent them has also been endorsed by Senator John Burton.  “If this issue can be resolved by Governor Davis and gaming tribes in California, our Union will commit all of our resources and hard work—along with the full support of the national labor movement—to advocate both in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. for economic development opportunities through gaming for all of the California tribes.”

In December of 1998, HERE filed the writ of mandate challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 5, the “Tribal Government Gaming and Economic Self-Sufficiency Act of 1998.” The California Supreme Court granted the union’s request to stop implementation of the Proposition until a decision was reached.  On June 1, 1999, HERE argued before the Supreme Court that Proposition 5 is an inappropriate use of the initiative process and that the Court must clarify that federal law provides for negotiations between California and the state’s gambling interests.