The world's largest tech show put those fears back under the spotlight just a little over a month after the casino workers union in Las Vegas ratified new contracts for 40,000 members, ending a bitter, high-profile fight that called attention to AI's threat to union jobs.
"Technology was a strike issue and one of the very last issues to be resolved," said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Workers Union 226, who led the teams that negotiated new five-year contracts, narrowly averting a historic strike at more than a dozen hotel-casinos on the Strip.
Hospitality workers told the Associated Press in interviews over eight months of bargaining that they were willing to take a cut in pay while on strike to win stronger job protection against the inevitable advancements in technology. That includes technology already at play at some resorts: self check-in stations, automated valet-ticket services and robot bartenders known as "tipsy robots."