2023-02-17 08:00:00
Culinary Union workers picket outside the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Las Vegas. Workers are demonstrating for higher wages in their stalled negotiations with Sodexo Live!, which operates the Centerplate food concession at the Convention Center. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye Diamante Asberry, a researcher for Culinary Union 226, shouts slogans as Culinary Union workers picket outside the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Las Vegas. Workers are demonstrating for a wage increase in their stalled negotiations with Sodexo Live!, which operates the Centerplate food concession at the Convention Center. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye Culinary Union workers picket outside the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Las Vegas. Workers are demonstrating for higher wages in their stalled negotiations with Sodexo Live!, which operates the Centerplate food concession at the Convention Center. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye Culinary Union workers picket outside the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Las Vegas. Workers are demonstrating for higher wages in their stalled negotiations with Sodexo Live!, which operates the Centerplate food concession at the Convention Center. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye
The Culinary Union ratcheted up the pressure Thursday on the food service company at the Las Vegas Convention Center with a pair of rowdy picket lines protesting the lack of a contract.
Hundreds of workers marched down Paradise Road, near Convention Center Drive, and in front of the center’s North Hall for more than an hour, demanding Sodexo Live!, the multinational company that operates Sodexo Centerplate, the food service provider at the Center Convention Center, to provide a better deal than offered.
The workers have been without a contract since late summer, and collective bargaining stalled in November.
Workers demand better wages and benefits.
Sodexo cooks, dishwashers, banquet servers, concession cashiers and other workers earn an average of $16 to $19 an hour, according to union officials.
billboards and megaphones
Most of the pickets carried signs reading: “Centerplate Sodexo Live! It’s Unfair There is no contract with Culinary Union Local 226, our dispute is only with Centerplate/Sodexo Live! We are not asking the employees of any employer to stop working.”
Pickets, some with megaphones, chanted union slogans as they walked down the line.
A Sodexo representative wrote in an emailed statement that union leaders had better come back to the bargaining table.
“We are fully committed to reaching a new collective bargaining agreement with UNITE HERE Local 226, and have already agreed to some of the union’s main demands to ensure the long-term vitality of the people who work with us,” Paul said. Pettas, vice president of brand and communications for Sodexo.
The culinary union is affiliated with the umbrella organization UNITE HERE – the Garment, Industrial and Textile Employees and Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union – which works with Sodexo at convention centers across the country.
“We have a proposal on the table, and we have more dates scheduled for good faith negotiations,” the statement said. “Our latest iteration includes salary increases well above industry and state standards, increased health insurance coverage for union members, and increased access to a best-in-class pension fund.”
“Despite our continued good faith efforts, UNITE HERE leadership is choosing to picket rallies, rather than continue to be at the negotiating table to reach this agreement. As negotiations progress, we have assured our customers and all show planners that all contingency plans have been put in place to continue offering best-in-class food and beverage at the Las Vegas Convention Center without interruption.”
Optimistic about the deal
However, Pettas is optimistic that an agreement could be reached soon, noting that UNITE HERE workers reached a contract agreement with Sodexo at the Orange County, Florida Convention Center in Orlando in late January.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, was walking in the picket line with the workers and, in an interview, said that Sodexo workers have fallen behind their peers with rising inflation and rising to rent eating the net salary of workers.
“These workers, after all, are part-time,” Pappageorge said. “They work here and throughout the city, and their wages are significantly lower than the rest of the city. In the past, some of these more part-time jobs were perhaps considered more peripheral. That is no longer true”.
According to Pappageorge, about 1,000 Culinary Union workers were part of the picket lines Thursday morning, many of them bused in from the union’s Las Vegas headquarters.
Pappageorge said that because the Las Vegas Convention Center expects first-class catering, Sodexo should also pay first-class wages. Many workers are forced to take second jobs to cope with spiraling costs.
With the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, Pappageorge said the convention business is getting back on track, but the pay scales are not.
strike vote
The union also has a unanimous affirmative strike vote, meaning workers could walk off the job at any time if requested by their leadership.
The strike threat fell on three major Convention Center shows in January and February: CES, World of Concrete and this week’s MAGIC fashion show.
Other big events are looming on the March and April calendars.
ConExpo-Con/Agg, a construction machinery trade fair that takes place every three years, is scheduled for March 14-18. A group of fairs – Bar and Restaurant Expo, International Pizza Expo, Amusement International Expo and International Wireless Communications Expo – enter the Convention Center simultaneously from March 28 to 30. And one of the city’s biggest fairs, the National Association of Broadcasters, comes April 15-19.
Pappageorge said the collective bargaining talks are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday and March 1.
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