The National Labor Relations Board has ordered Station Casinos to begin negotiating with the Culinary Union to secure a contract for hundreds of union employees at the company’s Green Valley Ranch hotel casino in suburban Las Vegas.
The board has found that Las Vegas-based Station, the operating subsidiary of publicly traded Red Rock Resorts, engaged in unfair labor practices by failing to begin collective bargaining after the Culinary was certified in March as the official representative of roughly 890 workers at the 495-room resort, including cooks, service personnel and housekeepers.
The certification followed an election conducted by the NLRB in November 2017 in which 730 workers voted by an overwhelming 78 percent to be represented by the union.
Approximately 900 Green Valley Ranch workers are members of the Culinary and Bartenders Union Local 165, both affiliates of the national labor organization UNITE HERE.
“We urge Station Casinos to recognize their workers’ voices and votes at Green Valley Ranch and begin contract negotiations in good faith immediately,” said Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Arguello-Kline.
The order also requires Station to post notices around the property stating that the company “will not fail and refuse to recognize and bargain with (the Culinary Union) as the exclusive collective-bargaining representative of our employees in the bargaining unit” and that it would not “interfere with, restrain, or coerce” employees in exercising their rights to unionize”.
Station, which said it plans to appeal the ruling, has filed numerous complaints with the NLRB alleging various violations on the part of the union in connection with the vote but has failed to back them up, according to the board, which said in its latest order that “The company has not offered any newly discovered or previously unavailable evidence or alleged any special circumstances that would require (the board) to re-evaluate its decision.”
Workers at a Station Casinos-managed tribal casino in California ratified a first union contract in October 2015.
Workers at five Station casinos have unionized following NLRB-sponsored elections. The first, in 2015, was Graton Resort & Casino, an Indian-owned property outside San Francisco. Four Las Vegas resorts followed in quick succession: Boulder Station in September 2016, Palace Station in March 2017, Green Valley Ranch in November of that year and The Palms in April 2018.
An NLRB ruling is pending at the Palms, whose management has also lodged several challenges, none successful to date.
