Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Act applied to an on-reservation Indian casino operated by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. This assumption dissolved last February, when the U.S. Less than one year ago, tribal casinos were fairly insulated from union organizing efforts based on the widespread assumption that tribal sovereignty precluded applying the National Labor Relations Act to tribes. With the union’s success on November 24th, the Tribe will have to take its jurisdiction argument to the courts, an act that ultimately may lead to the U.S. The Tribe argued throughout the six-month union campaign that its tribal sovereignty prevents the National Labor Relations Board from asserting jurisdiction over the on-reservation casino. In what is believed to be the first National Labor Relations Board-supervised union election at a tribal casino, employees of Foxwoods Resort and Casino, owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, voted by a wide-margin to be represented by the United Auto Workers union. Table game dealers at one of the world’s largest casinos broke long-standing precedent on November 24th by voting to bring federally-regulated collective bargaining onto a tribal reservation.
