Although Biden launched his campaign with an explicit appeal to labor, he's not meeting during his Nevada visit with the 60,000-member strong Culinary Union. The union, which represents bartenders, housekeepers and other workers in the city's famed casinos, is one of the most powerful endorsements in Nevada Democratic politics.
Biden spoke at the union's meeting hall last year as he campaigned for Democratic candidates in the state.
Instead of bringing his presidential campaign message about middle-class workers before the Culinary Union, he was expected Tuesday night to hold a fundraiser with MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren — whose company sits on the other side of the negotiating table from Culinary.
The fundraiser at a Las Vegas Strip luxury hotel comes on the heels of an announcement late last month that MGM Resorts, the state's largest private employer, expects to cut about 1,000 nonunion jobs by June.
D. Taylor, the former Culinary Union president and current president of the union's national affiliate Unite Here, sent a letter to Murren last month warning of a corporation's responsibility to keep good jobs in communities and cautioning that the union would "not stand by silently if the benefits of casinos and casino jobs are imperiled by the financial engineering" of investors.
The Culinary Union had no comment about Biden's fundraiser Tuesday.