The Culinary Workers Union local 226 holds a strike vote today at the Thomas & Mack Center Tuesday Sept. 26, 2023. The culinary and bartenders union is currently in negotiations with casino and hotel employers for the contracts of its members and will be able to call a strike, if needed, if the vote passes today.
Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Thousands of hospitality workers will picket outside eight Las Vegas Strip properties on Thursday after another week of negotiations with three major resort companies didn’t result in a new contract, the Culinary Union announced Monday.
Informational picket lines will take place in the morning and evening at the Linq, Paris Las Vegas and Park MGM, with overflow demonstrators slated to go to Harrah’s, Flamingo, Horseshoe, Planet Hollywood and New York-New York — all properties belonging to either Caesars Entertainment or MGM Resorts International.
The union has been in negotiations with both companies, as well as Wynn Resorts, on a new five-year deal since April.
“Our goal is to get to a great contract for our members,” said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer and chief negotiator for the union. “These companies are setting records on profit margins, room rates are through the roof — guest visitation is through the roof. And we expect that if these companies are doing well, then workers should also share in that prosperity. And that’s just not the case yet so far in these negotiations.”
Although Culinary and the Bartenders Union passed a strike authorization last month with 95% support, Pappageorge emphasized that a strike deadline has not been set, and that the union hoped to leverage the authorization as a bargaining chip in ongoing negotiations for 40,000 contracts that expired earlier this year and thousands more slated to expire by December.
Members of the union do not want to strike but will if they have to, and the picket line will show resort companies just how detrimental a strike could be to business, Pappageorge said.
“We have announced these picket lines to send that message to the industry that they’re walking down the wrong path, and they’re going to have an opportunity to change that direction,” Pappageorge said. “But time is running out.”
Thursday’s demonstrations will be lawful and not meant to disrupt work, Pappageorge said, though tourists and other bystanders will be asked not to cross the picket lines.
“Workers come out before work or after work,” he said of how the picket lines will run. “And so, they’ll clock in and do their job like they always do — like they’ve been doing through this whole pandemic and through this incredible recovery, helping (make) these companies billions of dollars. But they’re going to come out in a show of force and to send a message to these companies what a strike is going to look like.”
The union returned to the bargaining table last week, armed with the passing of the strike authorization vote, but Pappageorge called those negotiations “very disappointing.”
The union and the resorts were “dollars apart” when it came to wage and benefit increases, he said, and no significant movement was made on job security, protections against new technology, workload reduction and other demands the union is making for a fair contract.
“We’re not really seeing anything that’s sufficient to try to avert a strike,” said Pappageorge, who noted the importance of issues like daily room-cleaning for guest room attendants and rebuilding a workforce diminished by the pandemic. “And that’s unfortunate.”
Culinary is also seeking language that a “no-strike clause” does not prevent it from taking action — including a strike — against nonunion restaurants on casino properties, or from respecting the picket lines of nonunion restaurants, if their workers decide to organize.
The union has had a tough time nailing down that language with MGM and Caesars, which is why the picketing Thursday will take place at their properties alone, and not at the Wynn.
“MGM Resorts has a decades-long history of bargaining successfully with the Las Vegas Culinary & Bartenders Unions,” the company said in a statement after the strike authorization vote Sept. 26. “We continue to have productive meetings with the union and believe both parties are committed to negotiating a contract that is good for everyone.”
MGM and Caesars did not immediately comment on the union’s plan to picket.
No dates for further bargaining have been cemented, Pappageorge said, but the union has offered to come back to the table and hopes to do so — and come to a contract — before major events like Formula One and the Super Bowl make their Las Vegas debut over the next several months.
The picket lines Thursday will be the first of their kind for the union in several years.
“We’ve had close calls,” Pappageorge said. “We’ve had strike authorization votes every contract cycle, which are generally five years. And we’ve had some tough negotiations, but we’ve been able to get to the finish line. But that’s not happening, it looks like, this time around.”
The union has a long history of bargaining, and sometimes striking, on behalf of Las Vegas hospitality workers. It’s made a difference in the past, Pappageorge said.
The goal now remains to find a solution and avoid a strike, he said, but the union refuses to “go backwards.”
He hopes the picketing later this week will spur a sense of urgency around contract negotiations in resort companies, Pappageorge said, and he’s confident some new bargaining dates will be set.
“And then we’ll be prepared to do some hard bargaining to do whatever it takes,” he said. “But at the end of the day, our members have spoken — we’re not going to back down, and if there’s a strike, we’ll win.”
