Las Vegas Culinary Union member Gladis Blanco has worked as a housekeeper at the Bellagio Resort and Casino for the last eight years. For the last two and a half months, she’s been out of a job. Yet, Blanco has mixed feelings about returning to work.
She has yet to receive unemployment benefits, and has been living off her savings since mid-March. As the only breadwinner for her two children, she’s anxious to get a paycheck, but she’s also anxious that working at the Bellagio will place her in danger of the coronavirus as visitors return to the city’s hotels and casinos.
“People come from everywhere,” she said. “And we don’t know whether they’re sick or not.”
Blanco is just one of the many Las Vegas culinary union members who are pondering the risks of returning to work in the country’s hospitality and entertainment capital. Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak recently announced that some hotels and casinos would be allowed to reopen under Phase 2 of the state’s COVID-19 reopening plan.
The economic shutdown caused more than 300,000 people in Clark County alone to become unemployed, according to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation. Statewide, the shutdown resulted in more than 485,000 unemployment claims. Nevada’s unemployment rate hit more than 28% in April, the worst unemployment rate in both the state’s history and the highest unemployment level in the country.
“This is much worse than the Great Recession because we’ve had no money coming in,” said Clark County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick is one of the primary county officials who oversees the Las Vegas Strip; the 4-mile stretch actually falls outside of the Las Vegas city limits, placing it under the jurisdiction of Clark County. That 4-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard is home to the top 100 employers in Nevada and the shutdown resulted in a $1.1 billion loss for the Clark County government.
Despite the economic hardship, Kirkpatrick supports public health as the county’s top priority. She is in favor of a gradual reopening of the Vegas Strip due to the state experiencing a month-long decline in new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. Also, the state now can test 10,000 people per day.
Kirkpatrick also highlighted the strict requirements from the Nevada Gaming Control Board requiring casinos and hotels to submit a detailed COVID-19 plan at least a week before reopening.
In Kirkpatrick’s view, hotels and casinos have gone to great lengths to ensure that both guests and employees will be able to return safely. The vice president of administration at MGM Resorts International, John Flynn, echoes that sentiment. “It’s kind of like an art form,” he said during a recent tour of the Bellagio. “But we think that a lot of the safety precautions that we’ve implemented are definitely the right direction and the right thing to do.”
The Strip Has a Different Look
The changes at the Bellagio are obvious upon entering the lobby, where signs and floor markers remind guests to practice social distancing. Furthermore, there is a QR reader ready to process contactless check-ins.
Flynn pointed out that maximum capacity for the hotel and casino are capped at 50%, so half of the table games and slot machines on the casino floor have been roped off.
Those that remain open have been retrofitted with plexiglass barriers separating guests from both other guests and casino staff. At the bottom of these barriers are slots where dealers and players can exchange chips and cards while locked in their own safe spaces.
Flynn also noted that poker chips will be disinfected each time they leave the table and cards will be replaced regularly. Attendants will also walk around, at the ready to disinfect any surface upon request. Handwashing stations are also placed alongside the slot machines and game tables.
Furthermore, Flynn said that all guests and employees will have their temperatures taken upon arrival, and that any employee with a fever or COVID-19 symptoms will be sent home and receive appropriate compensation.
When asked how these policies would be enforced, Flynn referenced inspectors from the Nevada gaming control board.
“When people look at gambling here, they don’t realize it’s all very regulated,” he said. “We must be rule followers. When new rules are devised, we must follow them.”
Las Vegas Culinary Union leaders want the new rules clearly spelled out
The secretary-treasurer of the Las Vegas Culinary Union Local 226, Geoconda Argüello-Kline, is a key figure in the most powerful labor union in Nevada. She says the union’s 60,000 members want the hotels and casinos to make their COVID-19 mitigation plans fully available to the public. So far, only partial plans have been released.
The Las Vegas culinary union also demands that hotels and casinos regularly test all of their workers, whom the union argues have become “frontline workers”.
Even though the state completely shutdown, 15 Las Vegas culinary union members or members of their family have died of the coronavirus, Argüello-Kline said. She added that it’s not worth opening the state’s economy if one more union member’s life is at risk.
“The state government is not putting our worker’s lives as a priority,” she said. “They want to go back to work, but they want to do it safely.”
