Tag: labor

LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas hotel union workers voted overwhelmingly Monday to approve their contract agreement with casino giant Caesars Entertainment, signaling an end to lengthy labor disputes that had brought the threat of a historic strike to the Strip.

The Culinary Workers Union announced on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that 99% of the vote favored the new five-year deal.

“BEST CONTRACT EVER! Congratulations to 10,000 hospitality workers!,” the post said.

The union is expected to also approve its proposed contracts with Wynn Resorts and MGM Resorts International, the Strip’s largest employer, later this week.

The breakthrough deals were tentatively reached earlier this month, just hours before the union had threatened a massive walkout at 18 hotel-casinos on the Strip, including Bellagio, Paris Las Vegas, MGM Grand and Caesars Palace.

In a statement, Ted Pappageorge, the union’s chief negotiator, said the workers had been willing to take a cut in pay if the union had gone on strike. He said they sacrificed their free time over seven months of negotiations to help secure historic pay raises and other major wins, including housekeeping workload reductions and improved job security amid advancements in technology.

“Nothing was promised or guaranteed, and thousands of workers who participated in rallies, protests, civil disobedience, picketing, surveys, picket sign making, strike vote, and delegations inside the properties sacrificed to win a better future for themselves and our families,” said Pappageorge, himself a former union hospitality worker who went on strike in 1991 with 500 other employees at the now-shuttered New Frontier Hotel and Casino in downtown Las Vegas.

It became one of the longest strikes in U.S. history, stretching more than six years. The union said all the strikers returned to their jobs afterward with back pay and benefits.

Now, Pappageorge said the union has won a 32% pay increase for its members over five years, with workers receiving a 10% bump in pay during the first year of their new contract. He said that totals about $2 billion from the casino companies by the end of the contract.

The contracts cover more than 35,000 employees at properties along the Strip that are owned or operated by Caesars, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts.

By the end of the contract, Pappageorge said, union workers will be earning on average $35 hourly, including benefits. Union workers currently make about $26 hourly with benefits.

Pappageorge thanked the casino companies in his statement “for doing the right thing and investing in the frontline workers who make the entire industry run successfully.”

In separate statements released when the deals were reached, the companies said the contracts recognize the union workers for their contributions to the companies’ success, with historic pay raises and opportunities for growth tied to plans to bring more union jobs to the Strip.

A strike by employees of all three companies would have been historic, both for its size and timing.

The union — the largest in Nevada with about 60,000 members statewide — had threatened to go on strike less than a week before Formula 1 was set to debut its new race course on the Strip.

Experts said the impacts of tens of thousands of workers walking off the job would have been immediate: Reduced room cleanings. Dirty, unpolished floors. Neglected landscaping. Slow service at restaurants and bars. Long waits at valet. Limited room availability.

The Culinary Union’s threat to strike added to a big year for labor unions, including walkouts in Hollywood that ground the film and television industries to a historic halt, UPS’ contentious negotiations that threatened to disrupt the nation’s supply chain, and the ongoing hotel workers strike at Detroit’s three casinos, including MGM Grand Detroit.

LAS VEGAS — After a marathon week of negotiations, the Las Vegas hotel workers union announced that it reached a tentative deal with Wynn Resorts, preventing a strike that was set to begin Friday morning if bargaining had failed.

The new 5-year contract announced early Friday covers 5,000 employees at the company’s flagship hotel-casino and Encore Resorts. It comes on the heels of deals made earlier in the week with casino giants Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts.

A message seeking comment was sent to Wynn Resorts.

Experts said a strike by workers at the companies would have been historic, especially as hundreds of thousands of people were expected to attend next week Formula 1’s debut on the Las Vegas Strip.

The union says the contracts will provide more than 35,000 workers at 18 properties with historic pay raises and other unprecedented wins, like mandatory daily room cleanings.

Over seven months of bargaining, the workers said they were willing to strike over that issue, which underscored the big issues that the union said it wanted to address for workers across the board in their first contract since the pandemic. That includes better job security, working conditions and safety.

Terms of the contracts weren’t immediately released. The union said the deals are pending approval by the rank and file.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Over seven months of tense negotiations, mandatory daily room cleanings underscored the big issues that Las Vegas union hotel workers were fighting to address in their first contracts since the pandemic: job security, better working conditions and safety while on the job.

From the onset of bargaining, Ted Pappageorge, the chief contract negotiator for the Culinary Workers Union, had said tens of thousands of workers whose contracts expired earlier this year would be willing to go on strike to make daily room cleanings mandatory.

“Las Vegas needs to be full service,” he said last month.

It was a message that Pappageorge and the workers would repeat for months as negotiations ramped up and the union threatened to go on strike if they didn’t have contracts by first light on Friday with MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts.

But by dawn Thursday, after a combined 40 hours of negotiations, the union had secured tentative labor deals with MGM Resorts and Caesars, narrowly averting a sweeping strike at 18 hotel-casinos along the Strip.

The threat of a strike on a much smaller scale still loomed while negotiations were underway Thursday evening with Wynn Resorts. But a walkout wasn’t likely given the tentative deals already reached with the Strip’s two largest employers.

Terms of the deals weren’t immediately released, but the union said in a statement the proposed five-year contracts will provide workers with historic wage increases, reduced workloads and other unprecedented wins — including mandated daily room cleanings.

Before the pandemic, daily room cleanings were routine. Hotel guests could expect fresh bedsheets and new towels by dinnertime if a “Do Not Disturb” sign wasn’t hanging on their hotel room doors.

But as social distancing became commonplace in 2020, hotels began to cut back on room cleanings.

More than three years later, the once industry-wide standard has yet to make a full comeback. Some companies say it’s because there are environmental benefits to offering fewer room cleanings, like saving water.

MGM Resorts and Caesars didn’t respond Thursday to emailed requests for comment about the issue. Pappageorge said this week that, even as negotiations came down to the wire ahead of the union’s plans to strike, the union and casino companies were the “farthest apart” on the issue.

A spokesman for Wynn Resorts said they already offer daily room cleanings and did not cut back on that service during the pandemic.

Without mandatory daily room cleanings, Pappageorge has said, “the jobs of tens of thousands of workers are in jeopardy of cutbacks and reduction.”

It’s a fear that Las Vegas hotel workers across the board shared in interviews with The Associated Press since negotiations began in April — from the porters and kitchen staff who work behind the scenes to keep the Strip’s hotel-casinos running, to the cocktail servers and bellman who provide customers with the hospitality that has helped make the city famous.

During the pandemic, the hospitality industry learned how to “do more with less,” said David Edelblute, a Las Vegas-based attorney and lobbyist whose corporate clients include gaming and hospitality companies.

And that combination, he said, could be “pretty catastrophic” for the labor force.

Rory Kuykendall, a bellman at Flamingo Las Vegas, said in September after voting to authorize a strike that he wanted stronger job protection against the inevitable advancements in technology to be written into their new union contract.

“We want to make sure that we, as the workers, have a voice and a say in any new technology that is introduced at these casinos,” he said.

That includes technology already at play at some resorts: mobile check-in, automated valet tickets and robot bartenders.

Pappageorge, who led the negotiating teams that secured tentative deals this week with the casino giants, said a cut in daily room cleanings also poses health and safety concerns for the housekeepers who still had to reach a daily room quota.

Jennifer Black, a guest room attendant at Flamingo Las Vegas, described her first job in the hospitality sector as “back-breaking.”

A typical day on the job, she said, requires her to clean 13 rooms after guests have checked out. Each room takes between 30-45 minutes to clean, but rooms that haven’t been cleaned for a few days, she said, take more time to turn over.

“We’re working through our lunch breaks to make it,” she said. “Our workload is far too much.”