700 union hotel workers begin 48-hour strike at Virgin Hotels casino near Las Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS – About 700 workers walked off the job at a casino hotel near the Las Vegas Strip early Friday in what union organizers said would be a 48-hour strike, after spending months trying to reach an agreement for a new five-year contract with Virgin Hotels. .

The Culinary Union, Nevada’s largest labor union, said the action marked its first strike in 22 years. The union authorized a citywide strike late last year, but reached agreements with all of the Strip’s major hotel-casinos for about 40,000 workers before the end of the year, and with most properties downtown and beyond. of the Strip in early February for 10,000 workers. .

Room attendants, waiters and bartenders, porters, bellhops, cooks, bartenders, laundry and kitchen workers were among those picketing outside the Virgin Hotels, formerly the Hard Rock Las Vegas, west of the Strip, union organizers said. .

Virgin Hotels filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, ahead of the planned strike, accusing the union of failing to negotiate in good faith “despite our sincere efforts to meet and negotiate.” He said union leaders were involved in “illegal ‘take it or leave it’ negotiations.”

“As the Union has not informed us what agreements it considers necessary to avoid a strike, we have asked the Union to join us in mediation as soon as possible,” Virgin Hotels said. “The goal of mediation is to reach an agreement without disrupting the lives of our guests and our team members with a work stoppage.”

Although the weekend’s strike is much smaller in scale than last year’s union-planned strikes on the Strip, the hotel-casino is still a notable Sin City landmark due to its proximity to the Strip and the airport, and because an 80-foot-tall building An 80-foot-tall neon sign remained on the land for decades before it was removed for the property’s transformation into Virgin Hotels.

The last time members of the Culinary Union went on strike was in 2002 at the Golden Gate hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas.

Earlier this year, union officials at other properties in the Las Vegas area reached agreements that gave them a pay raise of about 32% over five years, including 10% in the first year.

Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, said they canceled the strike deadline at Virgin hotels in February when the impending Super Bowl helped pressure other hotel-casinos to come to the negotiating table in order to give more time to the administration. to sort out their financial situation and reach a deal on the 1,500-room hotel-casino.

But he said they had waited long enough and were hopeful the 48-hour strike would help speed up a new agreement on pay and benefit increases.

“It has been almost a year since the Virgin Las Vegas contract expired on June 1, 2023 and workers are still working without a contract,” he said in a statement.

Pappageorge told reporters at a news conference Thursday that the complaint to the NLRB was without merit.

“The accusation is just a coup by the company, and it is unfortunate and sad that they waited until the day before the strike to have this type of discussion,” Pappageorge said.