With labor contracts covering 50,000 Las Vegas casino and hotel workers set to expire on June 1, members of UNITE HERE’s Culinary and Bartenders locals are scheduled to gather Tuesday to authorize a citywide walkout.
If a majority of members vote yes, the union negotiating committee can call a strike at any time after the contracts expire, meaning in a worst-case scenario that workers may walk off the job as soon as the morning of June 1.
Participating Culinary and Bartenders members be participating include housekeepers, cocktail servers, bartenders, food servers, cooks and kitchen workers and bellmen and porters at 34 resorts on and around the Las Vegas Strip and Downtown.
The vote will be held at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
“Over eight decades, casino workers in Las Vegas have been faced with the same decision: Show up or give up. You either show up and fight for what you deserve, or you give up and take whatever the company gives you,” said Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline. “On May 22, thousands of union members will show casino employers that workers are going to fight and that they are not going to be left behind as companies are making record profits and getting windfall tax breaks.”
Argüello-Kline is referring to the corporate tax breaks installed via the Trump tax cuts approved by Congress earlier this year, which one executive described as a “windfall.” In the fourth quarter, according to reports, the tax cuts generated an addition $4.3 billion in profits for the top four major Las Vegas Strip operators—MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts and Las Vegas Sands (which is not organized under the Culinary Union).
“The union’s economic proposal seeks to provide workers a fair share of the employers’ enormous anticipated cash flows and Trump tax windfalls,’’ the union said in a statement.
Employee safety and sexual harassment are also expected to figure prominently in the negotiations in response to last October’s mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip and the storm of sexual misconduct allegations surrounding Steve Wynn and subsequent indications that Wynn Resorts management ignored complaints from female workers about his behavior.
Casino security policies have come under scrutiny in the wake of the shooting, in which a gunman was left undisturbed for three days in a suite at Mandalay Bay while he assembled an arsenal that enabled him to rain automatic weapons fire on a crowd at an outdoor concert, killing 58 and wounding hundreds.
Resort and hospitality companies nationwide have since adopted policies requiring guest rooms to be checked periodically, even if a “Do Not Disturb” sign is in use. The frequency of checks ranges from 12 hours to two days.
MGM Resorts International, the owner of Mandalay Bay, requires a room check after two days if a guest has not interacted in person or over the phone with housekeeping or other hotel staff. MGM said it also “reserves the right to enter the room if it is deemed appropriate to conduct a welfare check.”
UNITE HERE has clashed with Caesars Entertainment in recent weeks over the issue. Caesars has rejected a union proposal to require hotel security to open a room before a housekeeper enters if a guest has refused housekeeping for more than 24 hours. Caesars, which announced in February that it would begin checking rooms every 24 hours, even if a “Do Not Disturb” sign is displayed, wanted housekeepers to do the checks, but dropped the idea after opposition from the union.
The Wynn imbroglio has prompted the Nevada Gaming Control Board to inform gaming licensees that more stringent regulations are on the way to combat sexual harassment in the workplace and that these will be extended to include the conduct of their customers as well.
UNITE HERE, which has applauded the board’s support for broader policing, sent representatives to testify at a recent hearing the board held on the proposed rules. The union also is demanding specific language in its contract negotiations to address sexual misconduct by guests and gamblers.
Robert Ostrovsky, a lobbyist for the Nevada Resort Association, testified at the hearing in support of the union’s position, saying guests are often indulged by casino management and given the benefit of the doubt when complaints of sexual harassment arise, especially if they’re big spenders.
“These issues are in the forefront, but they are not new,” he said. “Yeah, we are in an industry where guests may drink too much, where guests may party too much. You know, we have an obligation to make sure our employees are protected.”
Board Chairwoman Becky Harris said, “It was nice to hear some contextualized feedback and to understand how the regulations as currently drafted are being interpreted so that we can be specific with our language to make sure that we are accomplishing what we are trying to accomplish.”
In 1984, thousands of Culinary Union members went on a crippling strike that lasted 67 days. The union’s last citywide strike vote was in 2002 when 25,000 workers overwhelming voted to authorize a walkout.
