On the Line with Lilo Distler

Picket Captain

The casinos won't hire older people. But if you're in the job they can't terminate you. We've got a union. But they can make it really rough on you. They want only young ones. If you go to the non-union hotels you won't find a cocktail waitress over thirty.

I came to the United States from Germany in the 1940s and married an American. I've been at the Frontier since 1967. At that time, you needed a thousand hours food service to get into cocktails. I served food at the Tip Top Drive-in, the Pussycat a Go-Go, and worked banquets in all the hotels. I never called in sick and I was never late. I worked graveyard for 22 years. It gave me time to go to college and study politics and computers.

Now I'm on the picket line. Swing shift. I sign the people in and out and see that everything's OK. I talk with people to keep up morale. We have 350 people picketing. They come 30 hours a week, after their shift or on their days off. If they have full-time jobs they do 15 hours. The Sahara sends a free food truck. We're the oldest strike in the country. We're striking for a contract. Pension, good wages, insurance. The Frontier is being kept open with scab labor. They make $4.25 an hour.

Under Howard Hughes the Frontier was a hundred percent better. You could be elected employee of the month, get a free vacation, a $500 bonus, free dinner. They gave a Christmas party for all the children in the big showroom. You got a turkey or a ham, an extra day's pay. After so many years on the job you got a gold watch, a ring, diamond bracelet. We had several uniforms over the years. One was taffeta with a big full skirt. Another was a Hawaiian dress. Customers dressed up too, in dresses and high-heel shoes. Back then they came with a lot of money.

I'm very interested in politics. I don't like Republicans. It's for the rich, and I'm not rich. I'm pro-choice, to each his own body. Like affirmative action, the more you think about it, you have to have it. Otherwise people will never move up, they'll be pushed down all the time. I register voters. I've been pushing the Spanish people in the union to register to vote, to get their citizenship papers. My whole neighborhood wants me to run for office. They're all senior citizens. I'd like to run for county commissioner, or state assembly, but it takes a lot of money. When I'm not on the picket line, I'm home reading, or making dolls. I visit my daughter. She is a cocktail waitress, studying to be a social worker. I've been married 50 years, same person. My husband was with the police department. We don't go on vacations. We stay here in town, go out to eat, watch television together. I like to crochet and knit while I watch TV. I have made dozens of these dolls.

from Inside the Glitter: Portraits of Workers in Nevada's Casino Industry by Kit Miller, which will be exhibited in the Clark County Main Library beginning January 23, 1997.

The strike against the Frontier Hotel-Casino by Culinary Union workers is the longest ongoing strike in America today. In the five years since Frontier workers voted 460 to 7 to strike against unfair labor practices, 350 volunteers have kept the picket line going 24 hours a day, seven days a week; 13 strikers have died; 101 children have been born to strikers; and more than 10,000 workers at other Las Vegas casinos have joined the union.