He shifts to Las Vegas and its Culinary Union, a union that has developed its power in the hotels, casinos, restaurants, especially on the Strip but throughout much of Nevada. As he cheerfully summarizes, “The Culinary Union, you see, runs this fucking town.” A union made up of 55 percent women, 54 percent Latino, and 45 percent immigrants, “the union provides guaranteed contracts, free health care, and a pension to all of those workers and their families.” It also is “one of the most powerful political forces in Nevada.” He describes how they recruit and organize internally to keep developing its power.
Building off of the discussion about Las Vegas’ Culinary Union, he discusses the efforts of UNITE-HERE, the country’s foremost hospitality and tourism industry union.
Nolan naturally wonders if UNITE-HERE has built such a powerful “machine” in Las Vegas, can it replicate this success elsewhere? An interesting question, which he seeks to answer. He thinks it can:
… the general strategy used to build and maintain union power in Las Vegas can be used to build and maintain power in any city that relies on a tourist economy. By organizing the workers in the places that make up the spine of any tourist city’s businesses—the hotels, the airports, the stadiums, the casinos, the tourist attractions—a union can, in effect, wrap its hands around the city’s throat and demand that the working class receive its fair share of the money flowing into town. Cities that rely on tourism are fragile. Any disruption to the flow of visitors and their open wallets will soon cause the local economy, and all its tax revenue, to collapse. Tourist-heavy cities therefore offer one of the best opportunities for building union power at municipal scales.