May 26, 2003 - Three of Jack Gribbon's luckiest numbers are 6, 4 and 10, as in six years, four months and 10 days. 

That's the length of one of the more monumental strikes in recent American history, one that brought down the owners of a major casino on the Las Vegas Strip and changed that gaming Mecca's labor landscape. 

Now Gribbon, who is the political director of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union -- known as HERE -- in California, has his sights on a new challenge. But his union faces an entirely different set of union organizing ground rules when the venue is casinos owned by Native American tribes. 

HERE and at least one other union have designs on the Indian casinos in Riverside County. 

The opening salvos have been fired in Palm Springs, where the Hotel Employees and Restaurants Union, often referred to as the culinary union, has staged several contentious protests at and around the Spa Resort Casino concerning health-insurance packages. 

This is the same union that spent more than half of the 1990s picketing the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The union's public support came from Nevada's then-governor Bob Miller and other prominent Democratic politicians. 

The owner of at least one rival casino delivered box lunches and coffee to the strikers. 

Eventually, after the six-year, four-month and 10-day siege, the family that owned the Frontier was forced to sell. The strike solidified the union's presence -- and the labor movement in general -- in Las Vegas. 

Now, HERE is contending the owners of the Palm Springs casino and another casino in nearby Rancho Mirage, the Agua Caliente Band of Cauhilla Indians, offer workers a family health-care plan that is too expensive for low- end casino workers, who make $8 to $9 an hour on average. 

Workers must rely on taxpayer-supported state health coverage, and are encouraged by the tribe to apply for these programs, which cost a fraction of the tribe's health plan, HERE officials say. 

The tribe says its health-care package is "more than efficient." Richard Milanovich, Agua Caliente tribal chairman, has said the tribal plan covers all children in a family for $40 a two-week pay period. Spouses cost $69, and there is a co-payment at the doctor's office. 

Milanovich says the HERE protests are more about influencing negotiations between the gaming tribes and Gov. Davis. The state is attempting to balance its budget deficit and wants to renegotiate the compact with tribes that allows casino-style gaming. 

"They're just using this as a stage to present a pretty picture in Sacramento for compact negotiations," Milanovich said of HERE's demonstrations. "They're trying to make points with the governor's office and increase their membership and revenue stream as well." 

HERE was trying a back-door organizing approach at the Spa, trying to get a union toehold without seeking an election, Milanovich said. 

"They know if they went to an election, they'd lose," Milanovich said. "We have 2,000 employees, and more than 500 have been here five years or more. That says quite a bit." 

HERE and most other unions have been supporters of Davis, as have many tribes, Gribbon said. 

"In this environment, we'd hope Gray Davis would care about the welfare of working people," Gribbon said. "This is a time when the tribes are asking for the expansion of an incredibly lucrative monopoly. We think it's appropriate for them to give something back." 

Negotiators have met with several groups on the tribal gaming compact, Davis spokeswoman Amber Pasricha said. She didn't know if organized labor was one of those groups. 

HERE has about 85 percent of the workers in Las Vegas under its wing, Gribbon said. The only tribal casino in California it represents is the Cache Creek Indian Bingo and Casino operated by the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians near Sacramento. 

In Las Vegas, hotel and restaurant workers -- dishwashers, cooks and launderers -- make about $12 an hour, three or four dollars more than those doing the same work at nonunion casinos in Inland Southern California. 

"Our contracts in Las Vegas are great," Gribbon said. "They get full family health care and great wages. Our workers buy homes and send their kids to college. Here, they're just a growing sector of the working poor." 

But the rules for organizing are different when a union targets an enterprise on the soil of a sovereign, Native American nation. The National Labor Relations Act was created by the federal government during the Great Depression and has been a blueprint for union organizing for nearly 70 years.

James Small, a spokesman for the National Labor Relations Board Region 21, which covers Riverside County, said his organization has some jurisdiction, but only if the enterprise operates off the reservation. 

"We do not have any jurisdiction over a sovereign Indian nation because it's considered foreign soil," Small said. 

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(c) 2003, The Business Press, Ontario, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.