More than 53,000 Las Vegas hospitality workers will vote Sept. 26 on whether to go on strike if no contract agreements are reached, two of their unions announced Thursday.
The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165, which are Nevada affiliates of the labor union Unite Here, represent hospitality workers in Las Vegas, including at most of the casino resorts in downtown Las Vegas and on the famous Las Vegas strip. The workers include hotel and casino housekeepers, cocktail and food servers, porters, bellhops, cooks and more.
The unions said they have had multiple rounds of negotiations with the top three Las Vegas hotel owners — MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts — since contracts expired June 1, though some affected workers are employed by other hotels as well. Workers, unions and the hotels are now operating under a contract extension, which requires either side to give seven days’ notice if they feel negotiations are unsuccessful and, in the unions’ case, if a strike may be necessary, according to a spokesperson for the Culinary Workers Union.
“We are negotiating for the best contract ever in the Culinary Union’s history to ensure that one job is enough,” Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union, said in a statement. “Companies are generating record profits and we demand that workers aren’t left behind and have a fair share of that success.”
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Pappageorge said the union is concerned about issues including wages, benefits, workload reductions, technology protections, safety, the right to strike and bringing more workers back to work. The union has complained that hotels have retained pandemic-era practices, which have meant reduced staffing in some areas, such as housekeeping.
From the archives (May 2023): Hotel housekeeping jobs have fallen by 102,000 during the pandemic. What happened?
The unions, which are trying to reach an agreement for new five-year contracts, have not made their exact wage proposals public.
MGM and Caesars did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday, and neither did the Las Vegas Hospitality Association. A spokesperson for Wynn said the company would have no comment.
The unions have not set a strike deadline. If the Las Vegas hospitality workers go on strike, they would outnumber the 15,000 hotel workers who have been on rolling strikes in Los Angeles since July.
See: Violent clashes are marring a summer of labor solidarity. Here’s what happened at a wedding.
From the archives (July 2023): Actors, writers, hotel housekeepers and grad-student workers are all striking for the same reason
