Housekeepers and cocktail servers who work at the largest casinos in Las Vegas will soon carry panic buttons, allowing them to call for help if they experience sexual harassment or abuse on the job.
Vox.com reports that recent contract agreements with MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment included a provision to give the panic buttons to workers who are vulnerable to sexual harassment.
The contracts cover 36,000 service workers at the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, the Mirage, MGM Grand, Caesar’s Palace, and other iconic casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, according to the Culinary Workers Union’s Local 226.
The panic button looks like a car remote, and when pressed, it alerts managers with the name and room number of the employee who is signaling trouble.
Las Vegas casino housekeepers, bartenders, and cocktail servers have been pushing managers to protect them from harassment with the advent of the #MeToo movement.
A May survey conducted by culinary and bartender unions affiliated with the international labor union Unite Here indicated that about 59 percent of the Las Vegas cocktail servers and 27 percent of the hotel housekeepers said they had been sexually harassed by guests, managers, or others while on the job.
From 2005 to 2015, hotel and restaurant workers filed at least 5,000 sexual harassment complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — more than representatives of any other industry, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.