Hamilton Nolan, Gawker – Even as unions fret that many of their members will vote for Donald Trump, Trump’s company is actively fighting a union campaign by his own workers in Las Vegas. We spoke to Vegas workers about what’s at stake.
On the Vegas strip, the Culinary Workers Union reigns supreme. The 57,000-strong group boast that 98% of the jobs on the downtown strip are unionized. A glaring exception to that is the Trump hotel. After a long union campaign, workers at the Trump property voted to unionize late last year, a move that was immediately subjected to ongoing exhaustive legal challenges by Donald Trump’s company.
In Las Vegas last week, we spoke to a Trump hotel worker who is active in the effort to unionize, as well as a worker at The Bellagio, a plush property on the strip that has long been unionized.
Alma Zamarin is originally from the Philippines. She lived in California for ten years, working at hotels, and has worked for nearly six years at Trump Las Vegas as an on-call food server and bartender. She has been active in the effort to unionize Trump’s Vegas operation, which is a full-time condo residence as well as a hotel. She says that management practices unfair favoritism in hiring and promotion. She started at $8.50 an hour more than five years ago, and currently makes $10 an hour. Asked whether she thinks Donald Trump (who once drove by his picketing workers in his limo) is conscious of the union campaign, she said, “He knows it, but he’s ignoring it.” Read the full story at Gawker.com
