A bill that could be adopted by the U.S. Senate this year would make it more difficult for labor unions to organize workers at Native American tribal businesses.

But regardless of whether the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act makes it all the way through Congress and is signed by President Barack Obama – which, based on a statement he made, appears to be unlikely – some tribes that operate California’s Native American casinos appear to be making it easier, and not harder, for organized labor to increase its footprint in that industry.

The federal law if passed in its current form would exempt casinos and other tribal enterprises from the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that protects the rights of workers to bargain collectively for wages and other benefits and to negotiate with and join a labor union. The law also protects the rights workers have to discuss working conditions among themselves.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act last November on a 249-177 vote that mostly fell along party lines. A companion bill was approved by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in June.

However, a number of California tribes that operate casinos, including three of the largest ones in the Inland region, have in the past six weeks amended their deal with the state, initiating changes that will make it easier for a labor union to attempt to organize casino employees. These amendments to the 1999 compacts that created Native American casinos in California would supersede the federal law.

The amendments, known as the Tribal Labor Relations Ordinance, were adopted in August by the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

More than 20,000 people in Riverside and San Bernardino counties work at tribal casinos, and the overwhelming majority of them are not Native Americans. Nationally, an estimated 600,000 people work at Indian gaming operations.

Tribal casinos across the country took in an estimated $29.9 billion in revenue in 2015, according to data from the National Indian Gaming Commission. That represented a 5 percent increase from the previous year.

Jack Gribbon, California political director for UNITE-HERE, a union that represents workers in the hospitality and casino industries, said the state’s measure offers the same level of protection to the rights of workers as the 81-year-old federal law.

“It’s an accommodation that works for the state, the tribes and the workers,” Gribbon said.

The amended compacts signed by the three Inland tribes and about nine others in California also reduce the revenue the tribes agreed to pay the state under the 1999 compact. The money the tribes would not be sending to the state will go to local communities and government agencies for economic and infrastructure improvement projects, along with fire and police agencies and education. It also allows tribes to send more money to Native Americans in more remote parts of California that do not have casino revenue.

“The new compact emphasizes and solidifies our ongoing commitment to local communities which we are proud to be part of and have consistently supported,” Jeff Grubbe, tribal chairman of the Agua Caliente group, said in a statement released Aug. 4.

The measure also gives the tribes more money to reinvest in their own casino operations, to ensure that gaming money stays in the area, Grubbe said. Any tribe with at least 250 employees is eligible to negotiate a revised compact.

The House bill ratified last November was introduced by Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ill. A representative from Rokita’s office did not respond to several requests for comment.

Sen. Jerry Moran, the Kansas Republican who introduced SB248, the Senate’s version of the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act, issued a statement after the June hearing that stressed the concept of tribal sovereignty. State, city and local government workers are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, and he called on tribal governments to have the same status for dealing with their employees.

“SB248 would prevent an unnecessary and unproductive overreach by the NLRB into the sovereign jurisdiction of tribal governments,” Moran wrote in a commentary on his website.

Gribbon, the UNITE-HERE official, said the NLRB essentially protects workers’ rights, and he criticized the bill as an attack on unions, which do not represent many Southern California workers. Workers at the Pala Casino in northern San Diego County are the only ones with UNITE-HERE representation, Gribbon said.

“We don’t care for it,” Gribbon said of SB248. “It undermines our ability to organize.”

Obama has not issued a definitive statement on whether he would sign the law, but has indicated that he would oppose a measure that he believed did not support workers’ rights. Last November when the House measure passed, he said in a statement he would support the measure “only if the tribes adopt labor standards and procedures … reasonably equivalent to those in the National Labor Relations Act.”

The issue of how federal labor laws should be applied to large tribal entities such as casinos is one that started to mushroom nationally in part because of an Inland case from more than a decade ago. In that case, the NLRB was asked to rule on a dispute at San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino near San Bernardino. The dispute was between two unions that wanted to represent San Manuel workers. One union filed an unfair labor practices charge against its competitor, claiming the other union was unfairly given better access to employees.

But the real issue was whether the labor board, a five-member body of presidential appointees, had jurisdiction over a dispute over an enterprise owned and operated by a Native American government authority.

The board in 2004 ruled that federal labor officials did have jurisdiction because the San Manuel casino and others like it were essentially competing with established casinos in Las Vegas – about four hours away by car – for the public’s gaming dollar. That meant the tribal casinos were engaged in interstate commerce.

Also, the NLRB found that, although it was a tribal casino, most of its employees were not Native Americans.

San Manuel appealed that decision, but it was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2007.

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