The union representing hotel workers in Las Vegas will ask casino-resort operators to give ‘panic buttons’ to housekeepers as it prepares to negotiate new contracts amid the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct.
Culinary Union secretary-treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline said leaders will make the request during negotiations set to begin next month.
‘We want safety for all the workers,’ Argüello-Kline told The Associated Press.
‘We want to have some language in the contract to protect more the people who work inside the hotels. … We know what’s going on with sexual harassment. No woman should have to go through that.’
More than 14,000 unionized housekeepers work on the Las Vegas Strip and in the destination’s downtown area, including those operated by MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment.
The push comes amid the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct and is in line with ordinances recently approved in other cities that provide hotel workers with some protections.
The contracts of 50,000 union members, including housekeepers, cooks and food and cocktail servers, expire at midnight May 31.
Argüello-Kline says the organization wants language in the contracts to further protect the people who work inside the hotels.
The union declined to provide figures related to threatening situations that housekeepers have faced in recent years while working at Las Vegas hotels.
Court records show some housekeepers have been brutally attacked in the past.
Authorities accused a 22-year-old man of sexually assaulting a housekeeper who was cleaning a bathroom in 2016 at the Boulder Station hotel-casino.
Police said the man stormed the room, punched the woman in the face, closed the doors and assaulted her. The victim told police that she yelled, but the man only hit her harder.
A 19-year-old man was arrested in 2011 after a 65-year-old housekeeper was punched in the face and sexually assaulted inside a room at Bally’s.
In New York City, housekeepers at unionized hotels have been carrying panic buttons — wireless devices that alert managers if they are attacked — since 2013.
The move was in response to a union effort after a maid accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then-leader of the International Monetary Fund, of sexual assault.
Following the lead of voters in Seattle in 2016, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance in October requiring hotels to provide panic buttons to workers by next summer if they work alone in guest rooms.
The average hourly wage of union workers is $23, including benefits such as premium-free health care, a pension and a 401(k) retirement savings plan and $25,000 down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.
Argüello-Kline said the group will negotiate with companies to protect existing benefits, increase wages, protect job security against the increasing adoption of technology at hotel-casinos, and strengthen language against sexual harassment.
‘It’s not like the recession anymore,’ Argüello-Kline said. ‘The economy is better. … We want the companies to be successful and grow, and we want the workers to have the right share from the company and the fair share, too.’
Casinos on the Strip earned a profit of $814 million during the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to data from the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
That represented a 191.4 per cent increase compared with 2016. It was the second fiscal year in a row that the Strip saw income gains after a streak of seven consecutive net losses.
Casino operators agreed to raise wages during the last round of negotiations in 2013 as the city was coming out of the recession.
MGM Resorts, for example, agreed to pay employees an extra 35 cents per hour in the first year of the contract, 50 cents more in the second year and an additional 55 cents in the third.
It also agreed to later negotiate increases for the fourth and fifth years.