Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is illuminated on Wednesday, March 24, 2021, in Las Vegas.
Benjamin Hager | Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP
Hundreds of hotel workers at a casino near the Las Vegas Strip went on strike just before dawn Friday after a long and highly publicized fight for a new contract.
The strike at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas marks the first open-ended strike in 22 years for the Culinary Workers Union, the largest labor union in Nevada, with about 60,000 members.
The union posted on the social platform X on Friday morning: “@VirginHotelsLV casino is ON STRIKE! Virgin hotel workers are walking out RIGHT NOW at Virgin Las Vegas for a fair contract! Stand with the workers, DO NOT CROSS THE STRIKE LINE!”
Workers at the casino also walked off the job for 48 hours earlier this year as negotiations escalated, hoping to pressure Virgin Hotels to agree to a new five-year deal with increased wages and better benefits.
Housekeepers, cocktail and food servers, porters and bellhops were among those on the picket line Friday outside the hotel-casino, which was formerly the Hard Rock Las Vegas.
It comes exactly a year after casinos up and down the Strip narrowly avoided tens of thousands of hospitality workers walking off the job on the weekend the city was set to host its first Formula One race on the famous boulevard. But agreements were reached just before the union’s deadline for a strike, giving workers a roughly 32% salary increase over the life of the contract, including a 10% bump in pay in the first year.
After the breakthrough deals last November, the Culinary Union quickly reached similar agreements for the rest of its members at major hotel casinos on the Strip, downtown and at off-Strip properties — with the exception of Virgin Hotels. The contracts on the Strip alone cover more than 40,000 workers.
Bethany Khan, a spokesperson for the union, said Virgin Hotels is the “final holdout.” The union’s contract covering about 700 employees there expired in June.
The union says Virgin Hotels does not want to give its workers any wage increases during the first three years of a new five-year contract.
“We are worth more than zero wage increases,” Merla Paramo, a casino porter, said in a statement provided by the union.
Virgin Hotels said Thursday in a statement that it agreed to some wage increases before the fourth year of a new contract, but the union declined the proposal. Virgin Hotels did not provide specifics on its proposal.
“Our dedication to our team members’ well-being and achieving sustainable performance at our property remains steadfast, and we are fully committed to finding a fair resolution that is in their best interest,” the statement reads.
While Friday’s walkout is far smaller in scale than the strikes planned for last year on the Strip, disruptions are still likely because of Virgin Hotels’ location. The 1,500-room property is just off the Strip and along a common route to the tourist corridor from the city’s international airport.
The hotel-casino sits on a recognizable lot where an 80-foot(24-meter) neon guitar sign stood for decades. It was removed in 2017 after the Hard Rock closed.
Culinary Union members last went on strike in 2002 for 10 days at the Golden Gate hotel casino in downtown Las Vegas.