As of September 15, the most recent five-year worker contracts for Las Vegas properties owned by MGM, Caesar’s, and Wynn/Encore, which include major establishments like the Bellagio, Waldorf Astoria, Planet Hollywood, Aria, and the Mirage, have expired. As the union noted in a press release on September 18, expired collective bargaining agreement terms still remain, including wages, benefits, and job security protections. However, 40,000 members of the Culinary Union as well as members of Bartenders Union Local 165 are no longer restricted by the previous contract’s no-strike clause.
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The notion excited Elena Newman, a guest-room attendant at Mandalay Bay, which is owned by MGM Resorts International. “I’m so excited to vote ‘yes’ on Tuesday!” she told me before the strike vote occurred. “We’re fighting for our pension, our benefits. We want to retire with dignity.” Newman’s been working for Mandalay Bay since she first arrived in Vegas 20 years ago.
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In tandem with ongoing contract negotiations, the Culinary Union has recently begun efforts to organize some 10,000 non-unionized restaurant workers across the city. A key provision in the proposed contract is language protecting union members’ right to respect and join the picket lines of non-union workers.
Alejandra Lopez has been a cook at Eataly Las Vegas, housed within the Park MGM, for two years. Only half of Eataly’s employees are unionized because, when Eataly first opened, unionized workers negotiated for a contract that, when the company later expanded its footprint, no longer applied to new hires. Lopez, who worked as a unionized cook at Harrah’s for over 20 years, was forced to quit when the hotel’s restaurants didn’t reopen after lockdown. She says the work at Eataly is even more difficult and faster-paced. “A lot of us time ourselves when we go to the bathroom. I have a coworker who developed kidney problems from holding her bladder.” Lopez’s past experience in a union looms large for her. Without health insurance, she recently had to seek medical care in Mexico for five months, away from work and her son. “Every lady who works with me is a single mom. We’re not asking for much. We want health insurance and a little bit of a raise, that’s all.”