Mariano Minaro has worked in hotels for three decades. Half that time, he's worked on the Bellagio's housekeeping crew. His hands show it.
When the 64-year-old Honduran isn’t sweeping, he’s filling bottles with chemicals for housekeepers tidying the famous resort’s 4,000 rooms.
In 2004, he and his wife, Maria, left their apartment building near downtown Los Angeles for Las Vegas, a budding hospitality city with many hotel jobs and perks they couldn’t find anywhere else: Union representation, living wages, full work weeks and a health care plan that didn’t siphon money out of savings.
The Mineros got jobs at the Bellagio a year apart. They've been with the Culinary Union – Nevada’s largest immigrant organization, representing 60,000 workers, mostly women and mostly Latinos – ever since.