Thousands Support Strikers in March Down Vegas Strip

Thousands of union members from the West Coast marched down the Las Vegas Strip in support of Frontier Hotel workers who have been on strike for more than a year.

Union members, carrying signs from a dozen states, marched in temperatures that dipped into the low 40s. Matthew Walker, a spokesman for the International Culinary Union, estimated the turnout at 20,000. Harry Hill of the Nevada Highway Patrol said authorities estimated that there were 15,000 to 20,000 noisy but well-behaved people. No arrests were reported.

The three northbound lanes of the strip were blocked, creating massive traffic jams and honking horns along the bustling thoroughfare.

With Saturday typically the busiest night at the casinos and the National Rodeo Finals in town, police said they expected to have their hands full.

Jim Arnold, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Local 226, said the unions had coordinated the march with police.

Five labor unions, including Culinary Local 226, have been on strike over wages and health benefits at the Frontier Hotel since September, 1991. Culinary is Nevada’s largest labor union with 30,000 members.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had anything like this on the West Coast, this many people coming together for a strike,” said David Sickler, director of the AFL-CIO region encompassing Nevada, California and Hawaii.

The Frontier’s attorney, Joel Keiler, was not impressed.

“Nothing has changed. The union is bargaining in bad faith. They have not offered to compromise,” Keiler said.

The Frontier is one of a handful of hotels that have not signed contracts since expiration of a five-year pact in 1989.

The unions have worked closely with law enforcement officials in the past, coordinating times of events and providing training for those who signed up to be arrested during two sit-ins on the Strip.

A Labor Day demonstration blocked southbound lanes of the Strip for nearly two hours and resulted in the arrest of 220 union members.

That demonstration was peaceful. Protesters were arrested on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and obstruction of a roadway, then released on their own recognizance.

The general manager of the resort, Tom Elardi, called the Labor Day incident a “circus.”