LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- A bomb exploded Sunday near a front entrance of the Tropicana Hotel on the strike-bound Las Vegas 'strip,' damaging nine vehicles belonging to non-union employees but causing no injuries.
It was the latest in a series of threatened acts of violence over the Memorial Day weekend in the 56-day-old strike by four unions against Las Vegas hotel-casinos.
The explosion, heard at a police command post about a mile away, occurred in the pre-dawn hours after mass strike demonstrations at several hotels Saturday night resulted in 18 arrests.
'The bomb exploded in the front Tropicana Hotel parking lot at 3:10 a.m. (PDT),' said a police spokesman. 'Some picketers had reported earlier they smelled something burning. Our officers found fragments of sheet metal and fiberglass at the scene. There were no injuries but nine cars were damaged that belonged to employees who had crossed picket lines.'
Eighteen strikers were arrested Saturday night in front of the Frontier Hotel after which some 300 shouting pickets obeyed police orders to disperse.
Strikers roamed the 'strip' for several hours Saturday night in hit-run tactics tracked by a police helicopter. About 125 policemen patrolled the strike-bound area in cars and groups of motorcycle officers. Strikers moved from the Frontier and Desert Inn Hotels to the Tropicana and MGM Grand Hotels.
Traffic on the Las Vegas 'strip' was bumper-to-bumper Saturday night, complicated by brief closures of some traffic lanes because of demonstrations.
MGM employee John Cibitello was arrested when he hit picket Dave Hanson in the head with a wrench. Police said the melee started when pickets called Cibitello a 'scab' as he as leaving work Saturday night.
'A lot of people are carrying clubs and wrenches,' said a police spokesman. 'A lot of people are armed with something.'
Hotels have tightened security because of pre-holiday bomb threats and promised demonstrations by striking unions.
A smoke bomb was tossed Friday night at the MGM Grand Hotel, where riot police arrested a half dozen people for unlawful assembly. A dynamite bomb was discovered under an MGM Hotel employee's car and gamblers fled noxious fumes at three downtown casinos.
Fourteen gamblers were taken to the hospital Friday night when they complained of being sick and dizzy after carbon disulfate, similar to rotten egg gas, permeated the Four Queens, Calfornia and Mint hotel-casinos in downtown 'glitter gulch' -- the neon-lighted street of casinos.
'I thought the downtown hotels were blowing up,' said one edgy downtown Las Vegas resident who heard the beginning of a fireworks display at the non-struck Golden Nugget Hotel-casino, which was celebrating the opening of a new $55 million highroller room tower with a black-tie party.
Holiday tourists were confronted this weekend by picket lines at 17 resorts -- the last holdouts in the longest gaming industry strike in Las Vegas history. The strike started April 2 with a walkout at 50 hotel-casinos by 30,000 culinary workers, bartenders, stagehands and musicians.
Since the strike began, all but 11,500 strikers have returned to work under terms of interim agreements negotiated on a hotel-by-hotel basis with the four unions. Culinary workers and bartenders have ratified a five-year contract with 13 of the 17 struck resorts but will not return to work until musicians and stagehands also have contracts.
Representatives of the musicians union resumed talks Sunday with the Nevada Resort Association, which negotiates for the richest of the struck hotel-casinos. Stagehands resume bargaining Monday.
