“I’m very happy with the casino and the benefits they’ve provided me with,” said Mandie Poncia, 27, a bartender at the Rolling Hills Casino in the small Northern California town of Corning.

Tribal leaders described the medical coverage they provide their employees, 401(k) retirement plans and other benefits, and they presented workers to support their claims. They testified that the union had failed to convince casino employees that they would benefit from union representation.

Indian leaders, however, said the survey was biased and encouraged unfounded assumptions about other tribes. Other witnesses testified that the tribe’s policies cost the state millions of dollars a year. The report said the tribe saves about $1 million a year by offering a family insurance plan that many employees said they could not afford.Ĭal State San Bernardino economics professor Eric Nilsson, the study’s lead author, defended the findings at Tuesday’s hearing. Last month, the union released a UCLA survey of 199 cooks, bartenders, janitors and attendants at one of the Agua Caliente tribe’s two Coachella Valley casinos that found that nearly half of the children of casino floor workers are enrolled in the state’s Medi-Cal or Healthy Families programs for the poor. Leslie Stolar, a 42-year-old cocktail server at Agua Caliente’s Spa Resort Casino in Riverside County, said she was forced to enroll her children in the state’s Healthy Families program for the poor because she couldn’t afford the casino’s family health plan - an experience she described as “very humiliating for me.” At Tuesday’s hearing, four Agua Caliente casino workers told heart-rending stories of their struggles to obtain affordable health care for their families.

Agua caliente casino employee benefits