The longstanding feud between a powerful Nevada casino company and an influential casino workers’ union shows no signs of abatement after more than 20 years.
According to the Nevada Independent, tension continues to simmer between the Culinary Workers Local 226 and locals casino company Red Rock Resorts, which operates Station Casinos.
In recent elections, a number of Democratic candidates wooed the Culinary Union, including presidential candidate Joe Biden, who told union members, “Folks, I promise you one thing. If I end up being your president you will never ever, ever have in American history someone who is more pro-labor in the White House than Joe Biden.” California Senator Kamala Harris, then seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, also came out in support of the union, and said she wrote a letter to Red Rock CEO Frank Fertitta III saying she wouldn’t support a bill to give Red Rock a tax break. Harris also said the company should sign a collective bargaining agreement with the unions for about 13,000 non-gaming hospitality and restaurant employees at 10 Southern Nevada properties.
“What they’ve been doing at Station Casinos is wrong. I applaud your leadership,” Harris told the union members. Others who stood in line for union support were Senator Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. Ultimately the union did not throw its support to any candidate.
At issue is Culinary’s inability, with its affiliated Bartenders Local 165, to negotiate a contract with Station Casinos, even though the union won six of seven elections at Station properties between 2016 and 2019.
Per the Independent, in July a federal judge in Las Vegas ruled Station Casinos management interfered with a vote at the Red Rock Casino in Summerlin on a new incentives and benefits package for employees. The judge ordered the company to negotiate a union contract covering more than 1,350 non-gaming employees.
In a statement to the newspaper, Red Rock said it “respectfully disagrees with the district court’s decision granting a temporary injunction and has appealed the ruling. The decision, which negates the clear vote of the Red Rock team members rejecting the Culinary Union, appears to have been based on a misunderstanding of the procedural background and, worse, appears to have accepted the argument that Red Rock team members and the Red Rock property should be punished because Station Casinos treated its team members too well.
“Station Casinos does not believe it is correct or consistent with the purpose and stated mission of the National Labor Relations Act to punish Station Casinos and its team members for providing best-in-class benefits to team members based on a dubious theory that doing so ‘undermines’ the union,” the company added.
In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) shot down 2020 union decertification efforts at Palace Station and Boulder Station, saying the company unlawfully encouraged employees to circulate and sign petitions seeking to end union representation.
As part of that case, an administrative law judge in August said CEO Frank Fertitta III and his brother, company Vice Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta, would have to answer questions about allegations that Station Casinos tried to “undercut labor organizing efforts.” The company is also appealing the order.
“Station Casinos believes that the attempts to depose Frank Fertitta and Lorenzo Fertitta are just another chapter in the Culinary Union’s decades-long campaign of harassment of Station Casinos and its principals, this time with the willing assistance of Region 28 of the NLRB,” the company said.
Earlier this year, Red Rock came out against the so-called “Right to Return” bill, which guarantees that casino workers laid off during the pandemic the right to return to their jobs.
Most casinos have reopened, but Red Rock has kept four of its properties closed: the Fiesta Henderson, the Fiesta North Las Vegas, Texas Station in and the Palms. The latter is being sold to Southern California’s San Manuel Indian Tribe for $650 million. Currently, Red Rock is pursuing a new casino development in southwest Las Vegas—a plan the Culinary Union hopes to quash “To approve another casino when three are still closed after a year is ludicrous,” said union representative D. Taylor.
“What’s the endgame? One side gives up,” said Bill Werner, an associate professor at UNLV’s Harrah College of Hospitality and a former casino industry in-house counsel.
“For Station Casinos, the end game is the union goes away and their employees don’t want a union anymore,” Werner said. “I don’t see that happening because the Culinary is very good at maintaining its momentum.” Labor law scholars say they are not surprised the hostilities have dragged on for more than 20 years.
The Culinary has shown it won’t back down, having taken part in the nation’s longest-ever workers strike over a contract dispute, from September 1991 until February 1998 at the Frontier Hotel on the Strip.
“One thing this union has shown is staying power,” said Ruben Garcia, a professor at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law. “The law favors a lot of processes and favors a lot of time. Legally, both sides are required to bargain in good faith. But the sides can also appeal. That is what is going on now. … They could just do this forever.”
