Members of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, react as members and leadership are arrested after blocking traffic in a Culinary Union civil disobedience protest on the Las Vegas Strip Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. The union is currently in contract negotiations with the casinos.
Published Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023 | 9:59 a.m.
Updated Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023 | 7:38 p.m.
Members of Culinary Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 are prepared to walk off their jobs in one week at properties owned by the three major Strip resort companies if union representatives don’t secure a new work contract, Ted Pappageorge, Culinary’s secretary-treasurer and chief negotiator for the unions, announced Thursday.
Some 35,000 workers at MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts are expected to walk out at 5 a.m. Nov. 10 unless a contract is reached.
“I can tell you that we’ve given the (companies) plenty of time, but at this point, it looks like there’s gonna need to be a strike to get these companies to move forward with a fair contract,” Pappageorge said in a Zoom call Thursday with the media.
The strike, should it occur, would be the largest by hospitality workers in U.S. history, Pappageorge said. It would cover 18 properties with pickets lined up at 45 strike locations, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It would be the first time in more than two decades since Culinary workers struck a property in Las Vegas. In 2002, Culinary workers staged a 10-day strike at the Golden Gate in downtown Las Vegas before the two sides agreed on a contract.
The last time Culinary struck on the Strip was in 1991, when 500 workers went on strike at the Frontier. That strike became the longest in U.S. history, lasting six years, four months and 10 days before being settled. Culinary said 550 workers maintained a 24/7 picket line, and not one striker ever crossed the line. At the end of the strike, all the strikers were able to return to work. Culinary was able to negotiate bringing original workers back to their jobs, and workers were provided back pay and benefits.
Union workers at the Cosmopolitan, which MGM Resorts officially acquired in February, are still working under a contract approved by the property’s previous owners and would be the only MGM Resorts workers that would not be participating in the strike set for next week, Pappageorge noted.
This strike deadline is only the first of what could be many others in Las Vegas. The unions also are negotiating with several properties on the Strip and downtown owned by other corporations or individuals. Union workers at those properties continue to work under contract extensions, at least for now, Pappageorge said.
Pappageorge stressed that this strike only applied to workers from MGM, Caesars and Wynn properties on the Strip.
None of the three companies commented Thursday on the strike deadline announcement.
Paul Anthony, a server at the Bellagio for 25 years, said hotel workers would “do anything (they) need to do necessary” to take care of their families and support their communities.
“We’re fighting for wages; we’re fighting for insurance; we’re fighting for our pension and fighting for things that we’ve earned over the years,” Anthony said. “The company has been very successful, and we’ve been a part of that success, of course … we want to now have the company please sit back with us and get this contract done.”
The locals have a strike fund in place for workers on the picket line. The unions also will be supported by UNITE HERE, the international parent union of Culinary Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165, as well as the AFL-CIO. Striking workers who walk the picket line four hours a day for five days a week will get $300 a week. Any time on the picket lines above that standard, and the payment is increased to $400 a week.
Pappageorge said the union was “very comfortable about (their) strike fund.”
Negotiations have been ongoing with MGM, Caesars and Wynn Resorts since April. Contracts for 40,000 union workers at the three major hospitality companies were initially slated to expire in June, when union membership voted to extend the contracts, Pappageorge said.
After five months of negotiations and a lack of any “substantial progress,” however, he said the negotiating committee voted to end the contract extensions, which officially expired Sept. 15.
On Sept. 26, the union voted with a 95% support rate to authorize a strike. In October, thousands of union members picketed for the first time in decades at MGM and Caesars properties on the Strip.
Dozens of union members, including Pappageorge, were arrested Oct. 28 after staging an act of civil disobedience in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip following a massive rally outside Paris Las Vegas and the Bellagio.
“When the companies are breaking records and have record results, workers deserve a record contract, and they’re willing to fight to get that,” Pappageorge said. Profits at the three big resort companies, he said, are “nearly 30% higher than they were pre-pandemic.”
The union has been negotiating with hotels for the past seven months and “gotten about as far as (they) can get,” without going on strike, Pappageorge said.
Another round of negotiations with MGM, Caesars and Wynn Resorts was completed last week, in which the sides “made some progress” toward a new contract, Pappageorge said. But larger issues — like wage increases for tipped and nontipped workers, health care funds and daily room cleanings — “are still on the table,” he said Thursday.
Pappageorge explained that the resort companies were looking to reduce labor by eliminating daily room cleanings, putting “tens of thousands” of union jobs in jeopardy. Elimination of the daily cleanings, he added, also was a safety factor for the properties.
“I’m ready to go on strike to fight for a big contract — fighting for our family, fighting for the best contract, especially for daily room cleaning (and) housekeeping language from reduction, safety,” said Elena Newman, who works at Mandalay Bay. “It is very important for us to have very good housekeeping language in order for us to get back to our family.”
Culinary has proposed that “do not disturb” signs be used again by patrons at hotels rather than having to request that their rooms be cleaned, as many of the resorts now require, Pappageorge said. They’ve also negotiated safety buttons and welfare checks — where rooms would have to be checked by companies after a certain amount of time.
Pappageorge said the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting, which left 58 immediately dead and around 800 wounded, was an example of why daily cleanings were a safety issue. The Route 91 Harvest festival shooter’s hotel suite did not undergo daily room cleanings, which allowed the shooter to stock up his arsenal without any hotel employee noticing.
Nevertheless, Pappageorge said, the resort owners and Culinary negotiators are still “not seeing eye to eye on daily room cleaning.”
The strike would come only days before the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix, which is expected to attract around 170,000 people to Las Vegas. Race activities are slated Nov. 16-18.
Many of these visitors are likely to be staying on the Strip as part of Formula One-related ticket packages offered by the resort companies.
Pappageorge said “customers would expect significant difficulty” during their stay in Las Vegas should a strike occur. With 35,000 workers expected to be out, visitors may see less food on the table and dirtier rooms, among other issues with service.
Pappageorge said he would encourage customers staying at Strip resorts for the Formula One race to “take their business elsewhere.”
Until Nov. 10, he said, the union will be open to additional negotiation sessions with MGM, Caesars and Wynn Resorts.
“I think that the right thing to do for these companies is to sit down and bargain in good faith and let’s just get this contract done; these workers deserve a great contract,” Pappageorge said. “If they’re not willing to do that, then yes, we’re going to ask customers to take their money and spend it elsewhere.”
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