Culinary Union’s relentless power against Station Casinos stems from a long history of organizing led by workers themselves, many of them Black and Latinx women working as attendants and in service positions. Today, the union reflects the workforce in hospitality. The average Culinary Union member is a 44-year-old Latina who is a guest room attendant, and this is alive and present across the members, leadership and organizing in the union – with women representing 55% of the members, Latinx workers 54%, Asian workers, 15% and Black workers 12%. In total, the Culinary Union represents more than 60,000 workers in Las Vegas and Reno, nearly half of whom are immigrants.

Culinary Workers Union Local 226’s organizing has not relented across the span of the last decades, whether it’s the multi-year Stations Casinos organizing campaign, its tripling in size in the last decades, or its creation of one of the most robust benefits systems for working class people in the U.S.

Make the Road Nevada and PLAN December 2022 vigil on the Las Vegas Strip supporting permanent protections for migrant workers and calling for US Congress to pass legislation for a pathway to citizenship during their “lame duck” session. Photo credit: Make the Road Nevada
Make the Road Nevada and PLAN December 2022 vigil on the Las Vegas Strip supporting permanent protections for migrant workers and calling for US Congress to pass legislation for a pathway to citizenship during their “lame duck” session. Photo credit: Make the Road Nevada

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the Las Vegas hospitality ranks, but during this time the Culinary Union stepped in to deliver 430,000 packages of food and other mutual aid, offering comprehensive assistance even to laid off workers to navigate the pandemic. While most casinos with contracts had union-negotiated recall language to allow workers to return to their job when the economy and closures shifted, the Culinary Union still fought and won an expansive Right of Return law in mid-2021, which allows for workers in non-union hospitality jobs throughout the state to have first rights to return to their positions as the economy recovered.

The pandemic, in the words of one interviewee, “blew everything open. It moved front and center how many in Las Vegas are living paycheck to paycheck, and how those most affected are often the last to access the resources needed.”

Given that Vegas is one “the fastest warming cities and its air quality is toxic,” migrant workers across sectors have been put at risk of extreme heat injuries and illness. Day laborers, street vendors and construction workers have organized through Make The Road NV (MRNV) for further protections.