SALON

Monday, Dec 17, 2012 8:30 AM UTC

Right-to-work Nevada a rare bright spot for labor

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Right-to-work Nevada a rare bright spot for laborChief instructor Larry Baumann, left, answers questions for students in a professional cook class at the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, in Las Vegas. The academy is funded through a trust created by the culinary and bartenders unions as well as management from 26 properties on the Las Vegas Strip. Nevada has become an increasingly Democratic state. And the Culinary Union's track record gives a dispirited labor movement some hope even as it continues to hemorrhage workers and reels from the signature of a right-to-work law in Michigan this week. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)(Credit: AP)

The future of the American labor movement may lie just off the Las Vegas Strip, inside a squat building huddled in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino.

That’s the home of the Culinary Workers Local 226, a fast-growing union of hotel and casino employees that has thrived despite being in a right-to-work state and a region devastated by the real estate crash.

More than 90 percent of Culinary’s 60,000 predominantly immigrant workers opt to be dues-paying members, even though Nevada law says they cannot be forced to pay unions for their services.

As a result, housekeepers in most Strip hotels start at $16 an hour with free health care and a pension. Culinary’s track record gives a dispirited labor movement some hope even as it hemorrhages workers and reels from the approval of a right-to-work law last week in union-strong Michigan.

“National unions need to look at what some of the folks out here have done,” said Billy Vassiliadis, former chair of the Nevada Democratic Party. In a right-to-work state that for years was relatively conservative, “they had to be smart. They had to be nimble.”

As a result, he said, “labor here is a big pillar in the political debate.”

But that’s less true on a national scale. American labor has been on a downward trajectory for decades: Unions represented 30 percent of the workforce when the federal government first began tracking membership in the early 1980s. Now they represent less than 12 percent.

Michigan’s adoption of a right-to-work law follows a string of recent setbacks in the industrial Midwest. Indiana passed a right-to-work law early this year, and Wisconsin effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers last year.

The American union member once was typified by the white Michigan factory worker who was hoisted into the middle class by the United Auto Workers’ package of good pay and benefits. Now Culinary’s service worker membership — largely Hispanic housekeepers, line cooks and hostesses at casinos — may be the new model.

“Manufacturing jobs used to be horrible, until they got organized,” said D. Taylor, who just stepped down as Culinary’s secretary-treasurer to run its national organization, Unite-HERE. “Service jobs used to be the same — horrible jobs until they got organized. Nevada’s not some magic place. Those jobs just got organized.”

Culinary has almost quadrupled its membership since the 1980s, but Nevada unions still struggle against national headwinds. The percentage of workers in the state who belong to unions is down to 14.6 percent from its 1996 peak of 20 percent — though much of that decline happened in the past four years after the real estate crash wiped out thousands of union construction jobs.

Danny Thompson, head of the state AFL-CIO, says right-to-work has hobbled Nevada labor. But he’s mulling going on the offensive and asking voters to overturn the law, which passed narrowly in the 1950s.

“There’s no question that this is a strong union state,” he said.

The Nevada model, however, is difficult to duplicate.

Michael Chamberlain, a Republican political consultant in Las Vegas, notes Culinary has thrived in a heavily regulated industry. If casinos, which must be licensed by the state, pay their workers high wages, it’s difficult for competitors to offer less. And cleaning, cooking and card-dealing jobs cannot be shipped overseas.

“They have the ability to limit competition, and that allows the unions to develop their power,” Chamberlain said.

Even Nevada’s formidable construction trade unions have had most of their success in casinos along the Strip, and less in private suburban projects where wages are competitive, Chamberlain said.

Indeed, many of labor’s remaining success stories come in areas where competition is limited, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California Santa Barbara.

He pointed to unions representing port workers in Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as unions representing professional athletes in Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. Like with Las Vegas casinos, those jobs cannot be moved to lower-wage locations.

Still, there are other pockets that show Nevada-like efforts can be replicated. As Culinary regrouped from a series of 1990s setbacks and started to grow again, unions in Los Angeles organized immigrant garment workers and janitors. Now labor is the predominant political power in once staunchly anti-union Southern California and one reason that state is a Democratic stronghold.

Vassiliadis said unions in the Southwest win loyalty by helping immigrants enter the middle class and turn low-wage jobs into stable sources of health insurance. In the Rust Belt, he said, labor is trying to maintain generations-old victories.

“They’ve done a heck of a job at being the ones who brought Latinos into the mainstream, provided them health insurance and pensions,” Vassiliadis said. “In the Rust Belt, you’re looking at third- and fourth-generation auto workers, folks who have always had health insurance. They never had to fight for these things and over time (unions’) relevance has faded.”

The union isn’t afraid to play hardball. It famously went on strike for six years and ended up closing a casino that resisted organizing. It’s now trying to organize the Station casinos off the Strip in a campaign that could last as long. But Culinary also has generally warm relations with the gambling industry and helps defend its interests.

In partnership with the casinos, Culinary created an academy that trains workers to become housekeepers or sommeliers and offers English classes. The new head of Culinary, replacing Taylor, is a Nicaraguan immigrant and former housekeeper.

Taylor cited Culinary’s track record and member outreach as the reason so many workers pay dues.

“They know,” he said, “that, together, they have more strength.”

___

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nickriccardi .

More By Nicholas Riccardi.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations