Palms Casino Resort and the Culinary Union Local 226 are continuing their battle to gain recognition of the unionization the property’s workers, which they voted for last year.

And their effort has recently been recognized and supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Culinary Union will picket the Palms this Friday in the latest attempt to pressure the property’s owner, casino operator Station Casinos, to finally commence negotiations with the union and recognize last year’s vote of Palms’ workers to unionize.

The Nevada affiliate of the larger UNITE HERE! labor union will be joined on Friday by the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) as the picket goes on outside the hotel and casino resort located near the legendary Las Vegas Strip.

Commenting on their decision to join the Culinary Union’s Friday picket, APALA National President Monica Thammarath said that it is “especially meaningful” for them to support the Culinary Union as it is a diverse union with 15% Asian American And Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers membership and Nevada’s largest AAPI workers organization.

Palms Casino Resort first opened doors in 2001. The property experienced major financial troubles in the late 2000s and those prompted several changes of ownership until it was purchased by Station Casinos in 2016 in a $313 million deal.

Palms’ workers voted to unionize in the spring of 2018, but the new owners of the hotel and casino resort have kept refusing to recognize the overwhelming vote and to start contract negotiations with the Culinary Union since then.

Political Support

The Palms’ unionization saga has caught the attention of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. In a tweet from earlier this week, Sen. Sanders urged the property’s “Trump-supporting owners to stop ignoring the law and start negotiating with their workers.”

The upcoming Friday picket is the second time the Culinary Union will be joined by another labor union to picket outside the Palms. In June, casino workers were joined by more than a thousand UNITE HERE convention members, marching along Flamingo Road and chanting “No Contract. No Peace.”

.@Palms workers voted to unionize because they are fighting for better pay, better benefits, job security, and respect and dignity on the job. It's time for the Palms' billionaire, Trump-supporting owners to stop ignoring the law and start negotiating with their workers. https://t.co/nycj605Yzc — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 6, 2019

The battle has also reached the court floor after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the Palms’ owners were “failing and refusing to bargain” in good faith with the Culinary Union and that the property was thus violating multiple labor regulations. The matter is now to be reviewed in the appeals court.

It is also important to note that the Culinary Union has been struggling to negotiate the unionization of workers of five other Station Casinos properties. The company currently owns ten casinos.

Boulder Station, Palace Station, Green Valley Ranch, Sunset Station, and Fiesta Ranch have also been fighting to negotiate better contracts with the casino operator, but with little success. It was in mid-June when Sunset Station Hotel & Casino’s workers voted to unionize. At a one-day election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, 83% of the property’s workers voted in favor of being represented by the Culinary Union Local 226.

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