Bought and paid for union thugs versus oppressed Aboriginal-Americans.

Imagine you are a dewy-eyed, squishy-soft leftist pinhead and you suddenly learn one of your most reliable sources of extorted money is leaning on an oppressed minority. Whom do you support?

Heehee. Silly me...

Casper Star-Tribune: Unions eye Indian casinos

SAN MANUEL INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. -- Once steeped in poverty, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians has become one of the nation's wealthiest tribes thanks to casino gambling.

Now the Southern California tribe is using its riches to fund a potentially precedent-setting legal fight contending that tribes are exempt from federal labor laws because they are sovereign governments.

A ruling against San Manuel could open the door for unions to organize an estimated 250,000 workers -- dealers, servers, cooks -- at the nation's 400-plus tribal casinos. Except for a handful in California, tribal casinos are generally not unionized; unions say it's difficult to make inroads without the protection of federal organizing rules.

"It's tremendously significant because tribal gaming is a target for labor, one of the significant targets for labor, and this would significantly open up the ability of labor to organize," said Joseph A. Turzi, an attorney who has represented tribes in labor disputes but isn't involved in this case.

Backed by many of the country's leading tribal organizations, San Manuel is fighting a 2004 opinion by the National Labor Relations Board that asserted the board's jurisdiction over tribal businesses.

Under the decision, tribes would be covered for the first time by the National Labor Relations Act that bars unfair labor practices and gives workers the rights to organize and bargain with employers.

"They've taken the tribe and simply defined us as an employer instead of a government, which we are," said San Manuel Vice Chairman Vincent Duro. "That is, to me, really outrageous. The erosion in and of tribal sovereignty is a serious threat."