Culinary and Bartenders Union members yelled from picket lines outside Park MGM on October 12. A chorus of car horns from Las Vegas Boulevard chimed in.
“MGM, look around! Vegas is a union town!” the chants continued in a sea of red shirts and picket signs.
According to Culinary Workers Union Local 226, thousands of members showed up before and after their shifts, some still in uniform, to picket at eight different properties on the Strip. The Culinary Union is urging the public, customers, elected officials and convention planners to not cross the pickets and to “stand in solidarity with workers by not eating, meeting or staying in a casino resort during an active picket line.”
Since April, the Culinary Union, along with the Bartenders Union Local 165, has been negotiating with MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts, the Strip’s largest employers, for a new five-year contract.
As of September 15, 40,000 guest room attendants, cocktail and food servers, porters, bellmen, cooks, bartenders, laundry and kitchen workers at 18 casino resorts are working under an expired contract, according to the Culinary Union. While much of the contract remains in place, the no-strike provisions are no longer in effect.
On September 26, 95% of Culinary and Bartenders Union members voted to authorize a citywide strike, meaning the unions now are authorized to call a strike at any time.
“Since then, we’ve had another round of bargaining with all three major Strip companies, and we’ve made no progress whatsoever,” said the Culinary Union’s secretary-treasurer Ted Pappageorge during media interviews amid the picket, which spread from Paris Las Vegas in the morning to the Horseshoe, Planet Hollywood, the Linq, Harrah’s, Flamingo, Park MGM and New York-New York by the evening.
“The message we’re trying to send today with this mass picket in multiple locations … is that these companies are really walking down the wrong path. They’re going in the wrong direction. And if they want to have any hope of averting a strike, we’re going to have to get to the bargaining table and get these big issues that are still on the table worked out.”
The unions are asking for the “largest wage increases ever negotiated in the history of the Culinary Union.” Spokesperson Bethany Khan told the Associated Press union members earn about $26 hourly. Pappageorge declined to give the amount of the proposed raise.
The secretary-treasurer outlined five areas of negotiation with the casino companies: economics (wages, healthcare and pension); technology; workload reduction, especially for housekeepers; safety on the job; and the right to respect picket lines for non-union workers. He says companies should be able to meet these demands, based on Vegas casino resorts setting “records on profit, records on margins, records on visitation.”
In July 2022, Las Vegas recorded 3.49 million visitors, the highest monthly visitation since pandemic shutdowns. And that record has been broken twice this year. Gaming revenues also set a single-month record earlier this year when the Gaming Control Board in July reported $834.9 million of revenue on the Strip alone.
According to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, visitor volume is up 32% compared to last year, with Strip occupancy at 86.4% (up 6.4% from last year). Average daily room rates on the Strip are at $189.75 (up 11% from last year) with $163.94 revenue per room (up 20% compared to last year). In 2022, average daily room rates on the Strip were up 25.2% compared to 2021.
“Room rates they’re charging are through the roof, but they’re not even cleaning your rooms daily,” Pappageorge says. “If these companies are going to do great, we’re not okay with just keeping up with inflation. And folks have to pay, now more than ever, for rent, housing, gas, electricity or groceries. And we’re just not going to stand for that.”
A statement from Wynn Resorts says the company has had a “positive and cordial working relationship with labor unions and has always reached satisfactory agreements with each.”
“Our employees are the heart and soul of Wynn, and we will continue to work with Local 226 and Local 165 to reach an agreement that provides our employees with competitive wages and benefits, in a work environment that matches our high standards.”
MGM Resorts and Caesars did not reply to requests for comment.
The Culinary Union’s picketing comes weeks before Las Vegas is scheduled to host the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, an international racing event expected to bring more than 100,000 visitors to the city.
UNREST AMONG WORKERS
The Culinary and Bartenders Unions are not alone in demanding more from employers. They’re acting against a backdrop of labor disputes playing out across the country, from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Detroit to the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) in Hollywood.
UNLV professor Ruben Garcia, co-director of UNLV’s Workplace Law Program, says there are several factors in common among the disputes.
“You have a town that is really focused on a single industry. … You have the same kind of cycle with the pandemic, and everyone looking to see what the post-pandemic future of the entertainment or gaming [and] casino industries will be. … And the workers basically saying, in both cases, ‘We’re looking for a bigger share of that bounce-back.’”
While some unions like the Writers Guild of America have reached an agreement with employers, others including the UAW and SAG-AFTRA continue with bitter negotiations.
As the Culinary Union and hotel resorts continue with negotiations, Garcia says it’s not uncommon for negotiations to go up to the deadline or past deadlines. But the timing of events like Formula 1 and the Super Bowl in February lends an urgency to them.
“As it goes on longer, you have the possibility of more workers being interested in jobs, then having to cross the picket line to take those jobs. But also, the longer it goes, the more it extends into the big events that are coming up in Las Vegas at the end of the year,” Garcia says. “At least for the moment, as those events get ramped up, the union does have an advantage in terms of the economics of the labor pool.”
Pappageorge says another round of bargaining with the Strip’s three largest casino companies is expected in the coming weeks. And while “nobody wants to strike,” it could come to that.
“If we hear that these companies aren’t really going to come to the table with proposals that are going to be fair, there could be a strike before the end of the month,” he says.
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