Portside

After months of activism by Sodexo employees, the company has decided to change the way it calculates hours for full-time jobs and allow several thousand workers back on the company health care plan.

One detail Deutsche Bank didn’t account for when it opened The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas casino: a labor dispute that has reached from Nevada into the bank’s dealings with the Federal Reserve in Washington.

More than 1,000 members of Culinary Union Local 226 (UNITE HERE) picketed downtown Las Vegas on Saturday, April 12. Contracts covering 10 downtown casinos are expired, as well as Brady Laundry. Major Strip casinos, including those owned by MGM Resorts and Caesar's, were settled in recent months. In addition to picketing, workers queued up from 8am until 7pm to sign up for strike relief benefits and strike picket shifts.

As national Democrats prepare to run against the GOP on income equality issues, a giant union has issued a scathing Obamacare document that could undermine that case. "The Irony of ObamaCare: Making Inequality Worse" is the title of the UNITE HERE document that is soon to be making its way to Capitol Hill.

Members of the largest local of UNITE HERE, Culinary Union local 226, along with Bartenders local 165, voted to approve a five year contract with the largest Strip employer, MGM Resorts. This is the first new contract with the gaming employer since 2007, prior to the recession. The contract includes an economic package that funds the continuation of health benefits and pension. Currently workers pay no monthly premiums for benefits.

Eliseo Medina made a big mistake in tacitly backing SEIU’s raid on its longtime ally and the nation’s most progressive union, Unite HERE. Some believe that and his support for the SEIU- UHW takeover forever tarnished his legacy. But in the big picture Eliseo Medina did as much to advance social and economic justice as anyone of his time. His career was marked by extraordinary dedication to working people, and he never stopped believing in the power of “Si Se Puede”!

If union members at Hyatt hotels in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Chicago vote yes on a proposed contact it will end a four-year campaign. It will also make it easier to organize in new cities.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced last week that it will accept a case for review next year on the use of labor-management "neutrality" agreements in union organizing campaigns. An anti-union decision from the high court would make labor organizing more difficult and threaten labor organizations at a national level, labor experts say.

Labor experts say unions are focusing on the hospitality field and less traditionally unionized workplaces - car washes, retailers, taxi and limo companies - as membership rolls have decreased. The percentage of private sector workers represented by unions has fallen from a peak of about 35 percent in the mid 1950s to about 7 percent, said Fred Feinstein, a former general counsel with the National Labor Relations Board who now works as a union.

Workers at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, have been working without a first contract for 2 years, and bargaining for 18 months. The property is one of only a handful on the Las Vegas Strip that does not have Culinary Union 226 union standards in place, including employer paid healthcare, pension, and housekeeping workload provisions. Over 2,000 workers have picketed the Cosmo 3 times in 2 months.