Workers in the United States must be free to demand overtime pay without fear of retaliation, an attorney for high-level security agents at casino giant Las Vegas Sands Corp. argued Tuesday.
A federal judge agreed and blocked a plan by Las Vegas Sands to reassign five of the executive protection agents from their plain-clothes, executive-level duties to entry-level work as uniformed security guards at the Sands Expo Center convention center.
The agents are among 10 employees suing the company alleging they weren’t paid overtime. Nine of the plaintiffs are current or former members of the elite, armed security detail that protects the family of Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson. The 10th plaintiff is a former personal driver for Adelson.
After the filing of the June 10 overtime lawsuits, the security officers who remained employed by Las Vegas Sands were placed on paid administrative leave as members of Adelson’s family could no longer trust them, Las Vegas Sands attorneys said in court papers.
Then, work was found for them in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo Center next to Sands’ Venetian and Palazzo resort complex.
That prompted attorneys at the Las Vegas law firm Campbell & Williams, representing the agents, to ask U.S. District Judge Philip Pro for a restraining order against the plan to place the agents at the convention center.
Such mundane uniformed work would harm their careers as the officers have extensive high-level government, military or corporate security backgrounds; and the plan was launched in retaliation for the overtime claims, attorney Donald Campbell told Pro on Tuesday.
“This sends a very, very strong message — if they can get away with what they’re doing here — putting them in the worst position available,” Campbell said.
But attorney Rick Roskelley of the Las Vegas office of the law firm Littler Mendelson, representing Las Vegas Sands, said the convention center jobs were the only ones available.
“There’s no dishonor in being a security guard,” he said.
Pro said he understood the concerns that Adelson’s family no longer trusts the agents.
With Campbell arguing there are corporate or property-level plain-clothes security and surveillance positions the officers could be assigned to, Pro issued a temporary restraining order blocking the plan to post the agents at the convention center.
The order will remain in effect while the main overtime lawsuit proceeds, unless Sands convinces Pro to dissolve it during a preliminary injunction hearing that has yet to be scheduled.
“Included within the Fair Labor Standards Act is the ability to consider injunctive relief to protect the integrity of the act to allow people to make such claims and to allow others not to be chilled” in making claims or providing evidence, Pro said.
The judge noted claims that the agents’ careers would be harmed by them moving to the convention center were speculative and there was little evidence on that assertion one way or the other.
Still, he said, “There can be a placement of the five plaintiffs back as executive protection agents or corporate security agents in a position that doesn’t involve working directly in the (Adelson) home or in protection of individual family members.”
Dr. Miriam Adelson, wife of Sheldon Adelson, upon learning of the lawsuits from a news story made it known to the security staff she was unhappy about the suits, court papers show.
This prompted one of the agents to send her a text saying: “I didn’t say any of the hateful things in that article. I only wanted to be paid the overtime I believe I deserved. I am sorry for betraying your trust.”
Las Vegas Sands has denied claims it failed to pay the plaintiffs overtime and also denies its plan to assign the agents to the convention center was retaliatory.
Las Vegas Sands said in a court brief defending the plan to move the agents to the convention center:
“This case does not involve cable installers, truck drivers, nurses or police officers in a city that employs thousands of police. Rather, it involves a few executive protection agents who, due to their close working proximity to their clients, and the job function of human protection, foster a required level of trust. Trust that they will carry out their job duties and trust that they will not breach confidences they learn from this relationship.
“The manner in which plaintiffs have chosen to assert their claims (with a lawsuit) creates a direct conflict of interests, which casts doubt on their ability or willingness to act in the best interests of the family they were hired to protect. In addition, the agents cannot presently return to their positions on the EPT (executive protection detail) because they would be placed in assignments where they would necessarily be privy to private family and business matters which would include discussions as to the strategy and defense of this case as well as numerous other matters presently in litigation in which plaintiffs’ counsel represents the adverse party,” Sands’ filing said.
Campbell & Williams also represents fired Sands China CEO Steven Jacobs in his high-profile lawsuit against Sands China and Las Vegas Sands. That lawsuit is believed to be responsible for multiple government investigations of Las Vegas Sands.