9
Rothman and Mike Davis entitled The Grit beneath the Glitter; another collection edited by David
Littejohn, The Real Las Vegas; and Sally Denton and Roger Morris’s The Money and the Power.
III. History
“We date history here by 1984,” said Arnodo when asked about the starting point of the
Culinary Union’s organizing program.
14
That was the year of the last citywide strike in the casino
industry, a strike that was enormously costly to both the union and the employers. From Culinary’s
perspective, the outcome of the strike was a wake-up call, and the union’s response set in motion a
chain of developments that lead in 1989 to the breakthrough card check agreement with the Mirage.
But 1984 itself has a history, which is helpful in understanding the dynamics of both the
labor market and the casino industry in Las Vegas. In 1946, HERE sent a young business agent
named Al Bramlett to help what was then a tiny, new local, and Bramlett soon hit upon the union’s
key to success.
15
As the industry expanded in the late 40s and 50s, it was desperate for workers.
Located deep in the brutally barren Mohave Desert, Las Vegas is literally in the middle of nowhere,
hundreds and hundreds of miles away from any significant population center (or anything else, for
that matter). Bramlett became a labor recruiter, traveling throughout the country to entice thousands
of people to come to Las Vegas and work in its casinos. The result was that “the union was viewed
as an asset by the owners…because we could supply the labor in a place where no labor existed.”
16
Hotel operators accepted the union in exchange for the steady supply of labor Bramlett provided.
In those days, the hotels were run by the mob. The union was run by Al Bramlett. There
were no NLRB elections or other formal recognition processes that established the union in the
14
Arnodo, interview.
15
Culinary Workers’ Union Local 226, http://www.culinaryunion226.org/english/pages/history.html (viewed
May 8, 2002).
Convention