About 700 workers walked off the job at a hotel-casino near the Las Vegas Strip at dawn Friday, in what union organizers said would be a 48-hour strike after spending months trying to reach a deal for new five-year contract with Virgin Hotels.
The Culinary Union, the largest labor union in Nevada, said the action marked its first strike in 22 years. The union authorized a citywide strike late last year, but it reached agreements with all the major hotel-casinos on the Strip for about 40,000 workers before the end of the year, and with most downtown and off-Strip properties in early February for 10,000 workers.
Guest room attendants, cocktail and food servers, porters, bellmen, cooks, bartenders, laundry and kitchen workers were among those walking a picket line in front of Virgin Hotels, formerly the Hard Rock Las Vegas, just west of the Strip, union organizers said.