Las Vegas hotels reach deals for new union contracts, averting a strike
With only a few hours to go before a strike deadline, the last of three Las Vegas casino companies reached labor deals with the city’s most powerful hospitality workers union, ending the threat of a labor stoppage in one of the nation’s hottest tourist destinations.
Culinary Workers Union Local 226 said Friday that it reached a new five-year contract agreement with Wynn Resorts Ltd. The deal means 5,000 workers won’t walk off the job, joining another 30,000 workers for Caesars Entertainment Inc. and MGM Resorts International, which also reached labor pacts with the union this week.
The union hasn’t disclosed the details of the agreements, but has said they include the largest wage increases ever offered. In a statement Friday, the group said the Wynn agreement includes new technology safeguards, workload reductions for room attendants and extended recall rights in the event of another pandemic or economic crisis.
The deals also mandate daily room cleaning, a top priority of the union to protect jobs after many hotels ended the practice during the pandemic.
“After 7 months of negotiations, we are proud to say that this is the best contract and economic package we have ever won” in the union’s 88-year history, Ted Pappageorge, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said in a statement.
The hotel strike is hitting consumers harder than any other during Los Angeles’ labor summer, bringing complaints, a disrupted wedding and violence.
The hospitality standoff was the latest in a series of high-profile labor disruptions from Hollywood to Detroit, where workers sought to flex newfound leverage from a tight labor market to get better deals than they could in recent years.
But hospitality workers in Southern California continue to wage rolling strikes. In early July, more than 15,000 members of Unite Here Local 11 went on strike against about 60 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Four hotels have reached contract agreements with the union.
The three companies raced to agree on a new contract for Las Vegas hotel workers ahead of a Formula One Grand Prix scheduled to begin Thursday and expected to bring 100,000 visitors and generate nearly $1.3 billion in economic activity. Las Vegas is also scheduled to host the Super Bowl in February, raking in another $500 million.
The dispute was months in the making, with workers laboring under expired contracts at 18 resorts on the Vegas Strip, including the MGM Grand, Bellagio and Caesars Palace.
The Las Vegas workers also won the right to strike in support of nonunion restaurants on casino properties, laying the groundwork for smaller, but perhaps more frequent, labor disruptions in the future.
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