Overturn California Indian Gaming Compacts With a No vote on Props 94 to 97

Their super casinos, each with more than 2000 slot machines and 2,000 employees, enjoy near monopoly privileges and are located off interstate highways close to the metropolitan centers of Los Angeles and San Diego.

The potential to further increase their revenues is substantial. The compacts authorize the tribes to add 17,000 slot machines; Southern California will then become home to some of the largest casinos in the world, surpassing those in Las Vegas.

Moreover, the new compacts lack the same opportunity for public review and comment before local governments sign-off on casino expansions. In a brazen and cynical move, three of the four tribes under these compacts built-out facilities to accommodate new gaming prior to final approval--so it is likely that the environmental review for these casinos will never happen.

Furthermore, the vast majority of California Native Americans will see little or no benefit from this expansion. Ninety percent are members of tribes without gaming. Most gaming tribes have small casinos in relatively isolated rural areas with less than 500 slot machines and 300 employees. Moreover, the rich Southern California tribes have opposed efforts by poor non-gaming tribes such as the Quechan in Imperial County and the Yurok in Humboldt County, the state's two largest tribes, to procure gaming compacts.

Most disturbing, the new mega-casinos will create poverty-wage jobs alongside exorbitant profits. The Morongo in Riverside have built a 27-story hotel and casino complex that employs 3,000 workers, most of whom are not tribal members. The Economist magazine claims the tribe earned $100 million in profit from gaming in 2004 and provided each member $20,000 a month.

Yet according to Peter Dreier's report, based upon public data provided by the tribe, the median minimum entry wage for a non-tipped full-time Morongo casino worker was $9.50 an hour in 2007, and annual compensation less than $20,000 a year.

In addition, UC economist Eric Nilsson found that health care premiums and insurance co-pays provided by the Agua Caliente in Riverside for dependent children of casino workers were so high that state programs such as Healthy Kids and Medi-Cal covered 46 percent of employee's children.

A recent report by the California Budget Project indicates that the gap between high-wage and low-wage workers in California "is greater than it was a generation ago," and that 44 percent of workers in the state do not earn wages sufficient for two full-time workers to provide the basics for a family of four. If denied the right to organize, casino workers employed by the four tribes will join the ranks of the working poor.

Californians should vote no on these propositions and send a message to the legislature that new compacts should be better than the last ones.

Workers, the environment and disenfranchised tribes deserve better.

Martin J. Bennett teaches American history at Santa Rosa Junior College, serves as Co-Chair of the Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County, and is a Research and Policy Analyst for UNITE HERE Local 2850. This article originally appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.