LAS VEGAS — “Give us the same as the other hotels,” pickets chanted in front of Virgin Hotels Las Vegas Jan. 6. Some 700 members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 — guest-room attendants, cocktail and food servers, porters, bellmen, cooks, bartenders and laundry and kitchen workers — have been on strike since Nov. 15.
Through protest actions and negotiations, the union has won contracts covering its nearly 50,000 members except for the 700 currently on strike, Bethany Kahn, Local 226 communication director, told the Militant.
These new agreements include a 10% wage increase in the first year and 32% in raises overall over five years. Before the new contracts, wages for union hotel workers here were around $20 an hour.
The owners of Virgin Hotels Las Vegas offered an insultingly low raise, provoking the strike. “They offered us 30 cents, when the pattern at other hotels is $9 over five years,” Rudy Royal, organizer of Bartenders Union Local 165, told the Militant. That local, another affiliate of UNITE HERE, is also on strike.
Virgin has brought in replacement workers and is paying them generously, workers say. “Some people are getting paid $300 a day and yet the company refuses to pay us the raise we deserve,” hotel worker Isabel Sanz told Channel 8 News Jan. 4 during a union-organized “Noche Cubana” fiesta. It celebrates the culture of some of UNITE HERE’s Nevada membership, which includes workers from 178 countries who speak 40 languages.
Virgin owners have refused to negotiate, demanding instead that the union agree to binding arbitration. “We have never settled a strike or contract dispute by arbitration in the history of Las Vegas,” Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of Local 226, said Dec. 29.
Virgin Hotels are owned by three Canadian groups — Fengate Asset Management, Juniper Capital and the $8 billion LiUNA Pension Fund of Eastern and Central Canada, run for the Laborers Union. Strikers have appealed to LiUNA for support.
Two casino porters on the picket line, Maria Gómez, 50, and Martha Violante, 49, who both clean slot machines, bathrooms, restaurants and the swimming pool, told the Militant they were optimistic. “We hear the hotel is dirty, all the restaurants are closed, and the union drummers’ noise is bothering guests,” Violante said. Gómez, who started six months ago, walked out on strike right after completing probation.
Union members from other hotels and restaurants volunteer on the picket line, which is up 24/7. They invite everyone to join in. Messages of solidarity and financial contributions can be sent to Culinary Workers Union Local 226, 1630 S. Commerce St., Las Vegas, NV 89102, or emailed to online@culinaryunion226.org. Online contributions can be made on the United Labor Agency of Nevada’s “Support the Virgin Las Vegas Striker Solidarity Fund” website.