A walkout by hundreds of hospitality workers at a casino near the Las Vegas Strip entered its second day with union members willing to undergo the financial hardships of being out of work as they wait for a new contract.
The work stoppage launched Friday at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is the first open-ended strike in 22 years for the Culinary Workers Union, the largest labor union in Nevada, with about 60,000 members. Union members were on the picket line again on Saturday.
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.
The strike comes 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.
