‘Patience is over’: Virgin Hotels workers strike with no end date

Virgin Hotels and the Culinary Union have been negotiating for over a year, with property executives not budging to meet the union’s requests on salary increases, benefits, and job protections, the union said.

It’s been 16 months since the five-year contract between the Culinary Union and Virgin Hotels Las Vegas expired and months of unfruitful negotiations have pushed workers to strike and walk out for the second time this year. 

Over 700 workers are partaking in 24/7 picket lines around the property starting Friday, with no end date scheduled as the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix — which is expected to bring more than 300,000 people to Las Vegas — approaches next weekend. 

Virgin Hotels and the Culinary Union have been negotiating for over a year, with property executives not budging to meet the union’s requests on salary increases, benefits, and job protections, the union said. Workers first walked out in May with a 48-hour strike action.

“For months they’ve proposed zero raises for many years. We offered to bargain yesterday. The company essentially put a few more pennies on the table. It was a real slap in the face. And unanimously, the negotiating committee voted to walk out and we’re out on strike,” Ted Pappageorge, Secretary-Treasurer of the Culinary Union, said on Friday. “Most companies can’t find their money when they’re in negotiations, but when they are ready to spend a billion dollars buying and renovating a property like this, there’s plenty of money for them and their stockholders.”

Virgin Hotels executives said in a statement after Thursday night’s negotiation session that in “an attempt to address the Union’s concerns,” the company “proposed bringing forward a portion of the wage increase that was previously proposed for years four and five so that there are no longer zero increases in the first three years.” 

“Again, the Union chose to engage in ‘take it or leave it’ bargaining, refusing to move off of a position that it knows is not economically viable for our off-Strip property and that would negatively impact all hotel team members,” the statement reads.

As of Friday, there are no additional negotiation meetings scheduled, Pappageorge said. In the last year, the Culinary Union established contracts with all of the Strip properties — including a historic first-time contract agreement with The Venetian and Palazzo, which have been open for more than 25 years.

“If a hotel like The Stratosphere, or the Westgate, or the Sahara can afford it. This place — they certainly can,” Pappageorge said. “It’s a question of whether they want to treat their workers first class. These workers are not going to accept a second-class contract.”

In negotiations with on-Strip properties, Culinary was able to land on increased wages for workers where every worker received a 10% wage increase in the first year and a total of 32% in raises over the life of the new contract. The new agreements also expanded the use of “safety buttons” to more workers to allow them to call for help, added technology protections when it comes to artificial intelligence and automated processes, and extended recall rights (the right of an employee to be brought back to work after being laid off) for up to three-years.

“To these workers’ credit, they gave this company months to try to come up with a real plan to meet the Vegas standard, and this company refused to do that,” Pappageorge said. “At the end of the day, these workers have been very patient, but that patience is over. And they’re going to strike, and we’re going to support them as much as they need, for as long as they need, to get a fair contract.”

Sara Campos, a hostess for a restaurant at the Virgin Hotels, said it is disappointing having to strike and did not think the negotiations would turn into her walking out of the job.

“Everybody else has signed the contract, every other hotel. So we didn’t expect only ours to be the only one that doesn’t want to pay us what we should get,” Campos said. “It feels like they don’t value us because even when we’ve been on strike before, they just hired temporary people and they did not budge at all. And they actually preferred to pay temporary people more than they pay us on the regular, when they could just pay us what we deserve.”

While Campos, who is 21, still lives with her parents, she still has to work two jobs to help with the bills, which have increased with inflation.

“I would like to just focus on one job. If I could just get paid well, I would like to just keep this one job and not have to work two shifts a day,” she said. 

Rita Salcedo’s children are grown and she has to only care for herself now, but she is also grappling with the increased cost of living working as a guest room attendant. 

“Oh, I love it. Don’t get me wrong. That’s what I love about housekeeping. Cause you gotta be on the clock, you gotta do it fast, and you gotta do it right. I love it,” Salcedo said. “But you know the pay? In this casino, it is really hard to clean the rooms, and they don’t want to give us a raise. You know, we can’t live off of that, come on. With how inflation is now. We just can’t. So, we strike.”

Striking, for Salcedo, is more than the physical act — she said it sends a message to the hospitality companies that workers will not just stand by without fighting for equitable pay and benefits. 

“They told us in a letter they sent us that they appreciate us — but truthfully, they don’t because they didn’t want to sign or even make a deal,” Salcedo said. “We have to do what we have to do. Sometimes that’s the only way. This sends a signal to the other casinos that we will go on strike if that’s what needs to be done.”