From Fox News: A union veterans committee's battle royale with the Ultimate Fighting
Championship may have more to do with union organizing than its claim
that the brutal sport reflects badly on the U.S. Marine Corps, which has
spent roughly $4.5 million sponsoring the bloody bouts.
Veterans who are members of UNITE HERE, a union representing roughly
250,000 hotel, food service, gaming and manufacturing workers, have
mounted a campaign to urge Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos to drop
sponsorship of UFC fights, which they claim promote violence and
bigotry. But Jim DuPont, a former Marine and the chairman of UNITE
HERE's Veterans Committee, acknowledged that the effort would not have
happened had it not been for the ongoing union dispute between UNITE
HERE and Las Vegas’ non-union Stations Casinos, which are owned by Frank
and Lorenzo Fertitta, who also head the UFC.....
For more than a decade, UNITE HERE has unsuccessfully tried to unionize
12,000 employees at Station Casinos. DuPont, who served in the Marines
from 1971 to 1975, acknowledged the nexus between the union fight and a
petition seeking the dissolution of the relationship between Marines and
the UFC’s “mercenaries,” but claimed the larger issue is the
“disservice to servicemen” due to that link....
UFC officials, meanwhile, cited “ulterior motives” by UNITE
HERE/Culinary Union Local 226 regarding the petition in a statement to
FoxNews.com.
“Recently, the management of UNITE HERE/Culinary Union Local 226
launched an aggressive campaign against the UFC and the Marines under
the guise of concern about the UFC's conduct,” the statement read.
“However, the leaders of UNITE HERE/Culinary Union Local 226 have their
own agenda that has nothing to do with the issues they have raised.”
According to the UFC’s statement, the union is targeting business
partners in the hope Station Casinos would “cave to the pressure” and
force its employees to join.
“This whole issue with the Marines is really not the issue at all,”
UFC Executive Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence Epstein told
FoxNews.com. “It’s all about the culinary union here in Las Vegas trying
to organize workers at the Station Casino properties.”
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