Culinary calls for Clark County Commissioners’ support amid strike against Virgin

Ted Pappageorge said Virgin Hotels’ license should get a closer look on Wednesday, when the casino’s new executives have their gaming license application hearing in front of the Gaming Commission.

Unionized Las Vegas Virgin Hotels workers are calling on the Clark County Commissioners to stand behind them in their strike against the company as a year of unfruitful contract negotiations led workers to walk out of the job nearly three weeks ago. 

Dozens of Culinary Union members filled the Clark County Commission chamber during Tuesday’s meeting, where Secretary-Treasurer of the union, Ted Pappageorge, and a couple of members spoke during public comment and asked commissioners for their support and to hold Virgin Hotels accountable. 

“We’re cooks, we’re housekeepers, you know, we do the same work as every other union casino and they want to pay us $6 less than everybody else,” said Lee McNamara, a lead dining room cook at Virgin Hotels, during the meeting’s public comment. 

Virgin offered the workers a raise of $3.51 over the course of a proposed five-year contract, a deal well below what other casinos agreed to. 

“That’s one third of what everybody else got. And we deserve the same as everybody else,” McNamara said. 

“Last November, Cliff Atkinson [president of Virgin] told us all that during the Formula 1 race they made more money in that one month for that property than they’d ever made in the 25 years before. Three, four months later, they’re telling us they’re broke and they have no money for this union contract,” McNamara continued. “We are literally the lowest paid union casino as it stands right now … They agreed to let the union in and now they don’t want to pay. And that’s just not right.”

Pappageorge said that commissioners can use their oversight of the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix so that next year’s traffic planning does not include Virgin Hotels as the ride-sharing base like it was this year. 

The commission also has the right to investigate gaming licenses, and Pappageorge said Virgin Hotels’ license should get a closer look on Wednesday, when the casino’s new executives have their gaming license application hearing. 

“We are asking the County Commission to also step up to the plate and take a look at these license applications. We think there needs to be a deeper investigation of the true ownership of the Virgin Hotel,” Pappageorge said. “The idea that these massive, really wealthy, billionaires from Canada come to Las Vegas and try to destroy our standards. It’s just unacceptable.”

The union’s last five-year contract with Virgin Hotels expired in June 2023. In the last year and a half, Culinary has negotiated and landed on agreements with all of the Strip properties and several downtown Las Vegas properties to provide standardized benefits to workers. 

Those included increased wages, expanded the use of “safety buttons” to allow workers 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.

Virgin Hotels executives have previously said in a statement that the company does not agree with the Union’s “take it or leave it bargaining” approach and that its requests are “not economically viable for our off-Strip property and that would negatively impact all hotel team members.” 

Pappegeorge finds that argument laughable. 

“This is a massive Canadian billionaire hedge fund worth over $9 billion called Fengate — [it] is a majority owner of Virgin Hotels. They have extremely deep pockets,” Pappageorge said, adding that there are no additional negotiation meetings scheduled between the union and Virgin Hotels as of Tuesday.

“Hotels like the Stratosphere and the Westgate have already signed this union contract. It’s outrageous that this company has turned its back on its own workers that were loyal to this company,” he continued. “Look, it’s bad for business, it’s bad for customers, and it’s bad for the workers, and it’s bad for Las Vegas.”