The Golden Gate Hotel and Casino reached a tentative agreement Sunday morning to avert the first casino strike in Las Vegas in more than a decade.
Culinary Workers Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 announced a five-year agreement with the Golden Gate, which was the last remaining hotel in downtown Las Vegas to settle with the two unions. On Saturday, The Plaza, Las Vegas Club, Four Queens and Binion’s settled on new contracts.
"We are pleased that we have settled new contracts with our major employers that will allow union members to have an opportunity to provide for their families through hard work under a fair contract,” said Geoconda Arguello-Kline, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, in a statement. “We will make sure that other casino workers in Las Vegas who aspire to the same union standard of living will be able to join our family.”
Terms of the contracts were not disclosed. In a statement, the union said the contract “protects their health benefits and pensions, improves housekeeping working conditions, and facilitates workers’ return to work in food and beverage jobs.”
Workers at nine downtown Las Vegas properties will vote this week to ratify the contracts. The union also reached new contracts earlier this year with MGM Resorts International Caesars Entertainment, Tropicana, Riviera, Treasure Island, Stratosphere, the LVH, and Golden Nugget.
The new five-year contracts are retroactive to June 1, 2013. The last time hotel workers went on strike was in 2002 at the Golden Gate. The picket lines lasted 10 days.
In 1998, 500 Culinary members picketed the Frontier for six years, four months and 10 days. A city strike in 1984 saw 17,000 workers picket 32 Strip resorts, a walkout that lasted nine months and led to 900 union members being arrested and six casinos cutting ties to the union.
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