ONLINE / TWEET
MEDIA ADVISORY FOR:
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
MEDIA CONTACT:
Bethany Khan: bkhan@culinaryunion226.org ▪ (702) 387-7088
Culinary Union to host a guest room attendant Lobby Day at the Nevada Legislature
Carson City, NV - The Culinary Union to host a Lobby Day in Carson City, Nevada with dozens of guest room attendants who are opposed to Senate Bill 441, which would end the required daily cleaning of hotel rooms in Nevada.
WHO:
*Diana Valles, President of the Culinary Union
*Dozens of Culinary Union members who are guest room attendants
WHAT: Guest room attendant Lobby Day press conference at NVLEG
WHEN: Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 4:00pm
WHERE: Nevada Legislature (101 North Carson Street, Carson City, Nevada 89701)
WHY:
The Culinary Union recognizes the need to repeal some of the provisions of SB4 from the 2020 special session, but are strongly opposed to SB441 as currently written because the Culinary Union believes that the Nevada Legislature should be protecting guest room attendants over huge casino companies.
Daily room cleaning was standard practice in Las Vegas prior to the pandemic, it was good policy during the pandemic, and it is still good policy. Protecting daily room cleaning means protecting workers, protecting Las Vegas’ image, and protecting hotel customers.
Since the pandemic, resort hotels in Nevada have cut short-term costs to achieve long-term downsizing of labor and increased their profits, which is very unfortunate because the customers are still paying for first-class rooms, but not getting first-class service and ultimately Nevada’s reputation of being a premiere hospitality destination suffers.
By cutting labor costs to increase profits, companies are shirking their social responsibility of providing good and sustainable jobs in our local community to achieve even greater quarterly profits for their Wall Street investors.
This is all happening in the midst of repeated record revenue. In 2022, Nevada’s casinos generated a record-breaking $14.8 billion in gaming revenue. So, what have Nevada gaming companies done with their record earnings? MGM Resorts International spent close to $4.7 billion on share buyback since 2021 and authorized another $2 billion. Caesars Entertainment Corporation spent $1.2 billion in 2022 to pay down its debt.
Even with all this profit, the gaming industry has only provided as many jobs as it did in the mid-1990s. Government data for employment levels (BLS) in February 2023 showed there were 148,400 Nevadans employed in the state's casino hotels. In January 1994, that figure was only 400 more at 148,800.
As the New York Times reported in September 2020, even before the COVID-19 pandemic: “Companies want to save money, so they’ve created programs that discourage guests from requesting housekeeping, but have framed them as environmental initiatives and offered guests rewards points for skipping cleanings. The pandemic, as [housekeepers] see it, has given these companies an opportunity to trim cleaning even more — and cut their costs.”
The attempt to eliminate daily room cleaning is particularly concerning for Nevada’s “resort” hotel industry. The lack of daily room cleaning unnecessarily downgrades and degrades the kind of resort experience guests would expect when paying hundreds of dollars either on vacation or on a business trip.
In Nevada, there were 25,140 workers working as guest room attendants in May 2019. By May 2021, that number was only 15,580 statewide. A roughly 40% reduction due to the elimination of daily room cleaning would mean the destruction of 9,800 jobs and $310 million in lost wages for workers in our community and a windfall profit for Nevada’s resort hotels and companies.
This would be an absolute blow to a group of workers, who are majority women and women of color, who have already been economically most impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We cannot leave working women behind. Culinary Union urges the Nevada Legislature to oppose SB441 as written or significantly change the law to ensure the daily room cleaning provisions of the current law are intact, and also enforce the current law that mandates daily room cleaning - that isn’t happening currently across the gaming industry, an issue that the Culinary Union has been raising for the past 2 years.
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ABOUT CULINARY UNION:
Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165, Nevada affiliates of UNITE HERE, represent 60,000 workers in Las Vegas and Reno, including at most of the casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and in Downtown Las Vegas. UNITE HERE represents 300,000 workers in gaming, hotel, and food service industries in North America.
The Culinary Union, through the Culinary Health Fund, is one of the largest healthcare consumers in the state. The Culinary Health Fund is sponsored by the Culinary Union and Las Vegas-area employers. It provides health insurance coverage for over 145,000 Nevadans, the Culinary Union’s members and their dependents.
The Culinary Union is Nevada’s largest Latinx/Black/AAPI/immigrant organization with members who come from 178 countries and speak over 40 different languages. We are proud to have helped over 18,000 immigrants become American citizens and new voters since 2001 through our affiliate, The Citizenship Project.
The Culinary Union has a diverse membership which is 55% women and 45% immigrants. The demographics of Culinary Union members are approximately: 54% Latinx, 18% white, 15% Asian, 12% Black, and less than 1% Indigenous Peoples.
Culinary Union members work as: Guest room attendants, cocktail and food servers, porters, bellmen, cooks, bartenders, laundry and kitchen workers. The Culinary Union has been fighting and winning for working families in Nevada for 88 years.
CulinaryUnion226.org / @Culinary226
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