700 hotel union workers launch 48-hour strike at Virgin Hotels casino near Las Vegas Strip
LAS VEGAS– About 700 workers walked off their jobs early Friday morning at a hotel-casino near the Las Vegas Strip in what union organizers said would be a 48-hour strike after months of trying to reach a deal for a new five-year contract with Virgin Hotels .
The Culinary Union, the largest union in Nevada, said the action marked the first strike in 22 years. The union authorized a citywide strike late last year, but reached agreements with all major hotel-casinos on the Strip for about 40,000 workers before the end of the year, and with most properties downtown and beyond in early February for 10,000 employees. .
Guestroom attendants, cocktail and food servers, porters, doormen, cooks, bartenders, laundry and kitchen staff were among those lining up outside Virgin Hotels, formerly the Hard Rock Las Vegas, just west of the Strip, union organizers said. .
Virgin Hotels filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday ahead of the expected strike, accusing the union of failing to bargain in good faith “despite our sincere efforts to meet and negotiate.” It says union officials engaged in “unlawful ‘take it or leave it’ negotiations.”
“Because the Union has not told us what agreements it considers necessary to avoid a strike, we have asked the Union to join us in negotiations as soon as possible,” Virgin Hotels said. “The goal of mediation is to reach an agreement without disrupting the lives of our guests and our team members due to a work stoppage.”
Although the weekend strike is much smaller in scale than last year’s planned union strikes on the Strip, the hotel-casino is still a notable landmark in Sin City because of its proximity to the Strip and the airport, and because it has an 80-foot high tower. (24 meter high) neon guitar sign stood on the property for decades before it was removed for the property’s transformation into Virgin Hotels.
The last time Culinary Union members went on strike was in 2002 at the Golden Gate hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas.
Earlier this year, union members at other Las Vegas-area properties reached agreements that would give them about a 32% salary increase over five years, including 10% in the first year.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, said they called off a strike deadline at Virgin Hotels in February as the looming Super Bowl put pressure on other hotel-casinos to come to the bargaining table to buy management more time. to address his financial situation and reach a settlement at the 1,500-room hotel-casino.
But he said they had waited long enough and hoped the 48-hour strike would help speed up a new agreement on wage and benefit increases.
“It has been almost a year since Virgin Las Vegas’ contract expired on June 1, 2023, and employees are still working without a contract,” he said in a statement.
Pappageorge told reporters at a news conference Thursday that the complaint to the NLRB was without merit.
“The charges are just a stunt by the company, and it is unfortunate and sad that they waited until the eve of the strike to even have such a discussion,” Pappageorge said.