On August 22, up to 100 Station Casinos supervisors picketed the Las Vegas office of the Culinary Union, objecting to ongoing attempts by Local 226 to unionize Station employees.
In a statement, Station Casinos said the union “has refused to accept” that workers at Palace Station and Boulder Station declined to organize last year.
In April, after employees signed petitions rejecting the union, the National Labor Relations Board accused Station of “engaging in a scheme to use layoffs during the Covid-19 pandemic to undermine unions representing or seeking to represent their employees,” a release said. The NLRB said Station prodded employees to push for decertification, the process by which a union is disbanded, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Employees at neither property held a decertification vote to leave Culinary, the union has said.
A spokesman for Red Rock Resorts, Station Casinos’ parent company, said the company “rejects the biased and unfair allegations” of the labor board. “The company demands that the Culinary Union respect and stop trying to overturn the wishes of the Palace and Boulder team members.”
Geoconda Argüello-Kline, the union’s secretary-treasurer, replied, “Here, it seems that Station Casinos is simply trying to bring public attention to the wide-ranging allegations of legal misconduct it faces. In our nearly nine decades of organizing, the Culinary Union has never seen company managers or supervisors picket—especially on their day off, when it is 99 degrees outside.”
But Hernan Andrade, director of internal maintenance for Red Rock, said team members at his casino are “furious” with Culinary Union. “We’re out here to send a message,” Andrade said. “A message to the union to just leave us alone.”
A hearing on the matter will begin before a National Labor Relations Board judge on August 31.
In a separate case, U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro ruled last month that Red Rock Resorts illegally influenced the outcome of a 2019 union election within the company. The company was ordered to negotiate with the union for employees at Red Rock Resort.
As for the recent protest, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Culinary Local 226 called it a “publicity stunt.”
