(The following article by Rachel Osterman was posted on the Sacramento Bee website on March 1.)
LAS VEGAS — When Alma Lugo de Escobar packed up her belongings in San Diego and moved to this desert city, it wasn’t the gambling, the glitter or the bright neon lights that she had in mind. An ambitious immigrant from Mexico, Escobar was lured by something far more mundane. She simply wanted a middle-class life.
Long a magnet for the high rollers and the down-and-out hoping to get lucky, Las Vegas also has become attractive for unskilled workers who come here to earn $12 an hour as dishwashers, $15 as fry cooks and $10.50 (before tips) as porters.
They’ve found Las Vegas a place where they can grab a chance at the American dream. The chief reason: A labor movement that after floundering in the early 1980s reorganized and, in the process, created an accessible path to upward mobility for hundreds of low-wage workers.
As the executive council of the AFL-CIO gathers here to consider ways to invigorate the country’s struggling labor movement, Las Vegas offers a vivid picture of the kind of reach – and results – the movement aims to achieve.
Among union officials and academic experts in California, the Las Vegas model for both organizing and training new members is held up as a resounding success.
“The unionization here has reduced the poverty rate; it reduces inequality,” said C. Jeffrey Waddoups, an economist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The union movement rebounded with the demand for labor. Demand for workers was fueled by a building boom in the early 1990s when Las Vegas saw dramatic growth in its tourism industry, which dipped only briefly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Like the national labor movement, the service workers union here found itself treading water in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The lowest point came in 1984, when the union called an unsuccessful citywide strike of hotel and casino workers that resulted in union decertification at six hotels. Membership plummeted from 26,000 to 18,000 members, according to D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas.
In 1987, the union’s international parent dispatched new leadership to rescue the local, which represents cooks, housekeepers and other hotel and casino staff.
Then, in 1989, the union struck a deal with casino mogul Steve Wynn, who built the theme-oriented Mirage, Bellagio and Treasure Island casino resorts. He promised not to fight the union if a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted to organize. In turn, Local 226 agreed to simplify work rules, such as rules prohibiting certain types of workers from changing light bulbs, according to Taylor. It also placed rank-and-file members at the bargaining table.
Local 226’s membership is now 50,000, with about 90 percent of hotel rooms on the Vegas Strip under union contract.
The union joins the casino industry in lobbying Nevada’s state Legislature when it comes to such bread-and-butter issues as hikes in gaming taxes. And it bargains alongside employers to keep health care costs down.
Union members receive free family health care, an employer-funded pension and access to free generic drugs.
Overall, Las Vegas casino wages are about 40 percent higher than in nonunion Reno, according to Waddoups, the UNLV economist. He attributed that solely to the union’s bargaining power.
For Escobar, the journey to Las Vegas began in Mexico. Escobar worked as a beautician, but said she always knew she could do more. She had a brother living in San Diego and joined him, leaving behind her husband, teenage daughter and son. But Escobar found work only as a baby sitter, earning just $200 a week. Payment was in cash.
About eight years ago, a brother in Las Vegas suggested she move there. He said the standard of living was higher. She immediately found a new job as a baby sitter – with an income jump to $350 a week. Soon, her husband joined her and got a job working in a jewelry store at $15 an hour.
But the real promise, as she saw it, lay in the soaring hotels and casinos along Las Vegas’ vaunted Strip.
Escobar spent four months filling out job applications, with no luck. One hiring manager suggested she take classes at the Culinary Union Training Center, an arm of Local 226 founded in 1993 to teach new skills to casino workers.
Fully funded by employers, courses at the academy are free for working union members. Classes are available for everything from guest-room attendants to gourmet food servers, dishwashers, and even wine sommeliers.
First-timers are asked to pay several hundred dollars for the training, but Escobar received funding from a Nevada nonprofit, and promptly enrolled in six weeks of full-time housekeeping training.
“The first thing I learned was that making a bed at a hotel has nothing to do with making a bed at home,” she said. “I learned safety with chemicals, what kinds of chemicals to clean with, how to prepare a regular room, how to prepare a VIP room.”
The academy’s curriculum is designed with casino industry input, so the skills are specific to Las Vegas needs. The food service workers train in an 11,000-square-foot training kitchen. Housekeepers learn in replicas of hotel rooms.
On Escobar’s graduation day, a Friday, hotel representatives were waiting in the back row. Two gave Escobar business cards.
The following Monday, she walked into Harrah’s Las Vegas casino and hotel, filled out an application, completed an interview and left with a job offer.
“I wanted to die, I was so happy,” she said. “When you set up goals and you work hard enough to accomplish them, you will.”
She now earns $12 an hour and, along with her husband, owns two cars and and was able to send her children, who still live in Mexico, to private universities. And Escobar and her husband are planning to buy their first home in Las Vegas next year.
Escobar says she doesn’t want her training to stop with housekeeping. She plans to enroll in one of the training academy’s courses to become a hotel chef.
“I’m going to be a chef, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to be somebody important,” she said.