The Vegas, Nevada.- A picket with a hundred workers in front of Palms, one of the monstrous resorts in the middle of the Las Vegas desert, became the scene of a courtship this Wednesday: the five Democratic candidates to hotel and casino workers.
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“Who cleans the rooms? We clean the rooms?”, the protesters shouted while holding banners that, in English and Spanish, said: “Without contracts there is no peace.” The workers demonstrated in support of the employees of Station Casinos, the chain that owns a dozen tourist resorts in Las Vegas. In 2018, they voted in favor of organizing but have not yet managed to get business owners, two billionaire brothers donors of the Donald Trump campaign, recognize their benefits.
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Shortly before 10 in the morning, when the workers dressed in their work clothes or with their union t-shirts had not been turning the picket line for 15 minutes shouting their demands, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren She presented herself with a box of donuts to support them and was quickly surrounded by a tide of journalists who let her barely advance in the ten minutes she walked trying to greet the protesters.
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.@ewarren He has come with donuts to support this demonstration to ask Station Station employees to unionize. The powerful union @ Culinary226 He invited all the candidates to come to this protest in front of The Palms hotel in Las Vegas @UniNews pic.twitter.com/czThLYbxS7
& mdash; Lorena Arroyo (@lav_arroyo) February 19, 2020
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In the hour and a half that the protest lasted, that scene was repeated another four times: when the former mayor of South Bend (Indiana) arrived Pete Buttigieg, the senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar, the former vice president Joe biden and the Californian billionaire Tom steyer.
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They all came to the call of the Union of Culinary Workers (‘the Culinary’), the powerful union of casino and hotel workers in Las Vegas that organized the protest, taking advantage of the presence of Democratic candidates in a state where they struggle to receive support before the Nevada caucus of this Saturday.
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With 60,000 members and a long history of union victories in its 84 years of existence, the Culinary has become a mandatory stop in Las Vegas for any Democratic candidate who wants to promote his platform.
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“We are going to vote for the one with the most benefits”
“It is a support that the candidates have to come, but we are going to vote for the one that suits us, the one that gives us the most benefits”He told Univision News Aristeo Valladares, who works in the kitchen of the Station Casino.
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Born in Jalisco (Mexico), Valladares has been in the United States for 46 years, most of that time working in Las Vegas. At 62, he is already close to retirement and, although he says he has not yet decided on who will vote on Saturday, he wants to ensure that the elected Democratic candidate is one that respects the good benefits packages they have achieved thanks to the union struggle.
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“Although they are Democrats, there are two who want to take away Culinary security: Sanders and Warren”Valladares told Univision News. “That we are not going to vote because we want full benefits and in the Union they are giving us a package that benefits us for retirement and everything for our families that includes pension, insurance and hospitals where we can go for free medicine.”
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Valladares’ statements reflect a widespread concern among Culinary affiliates: that the universal health plans promoted by these candidates force them to renounce their good benefits packages, thanks to the years of union struggle, something the candidates have ruled out indicated.
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“I know that ‘healthcare for all’ is a human right and we shouldn’t be fighting each other for a human right”says another protester, Natalie Hernández of Make the Road Nevada, an organization that supports Sanders, who promotes the idea of ’Medicare for All’, a program to expand access to health services.
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“Health care is something we all need and the struggle of our community goes beyond a candidate,” he adds.
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La Culinaria and Sanders, unexpected disagreement
That issue, however, has been the subject of an unexpected disagreement between the Union of Culinary Workers and Sanders, the candidate who polls favor Nevada and also among Hispanics that make up 30% of the population of that state.
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Although this year the Culinary has not supported any candidate as it did in 2008 with Barack Obama, the publication of brochures in which they warned that the Vermont senator’s Medicare for All proposal could threaten its benefits caused a strong reaction from some of his followers against two of the union leaders, who reported being victims of telephone threats, by email and on social networks.
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“They have tried to intimidate us and tell us that we will not be able to work anymore because physically we will not be trained”, denounces in statements to Univision News the union leader, Geconda Argüello-Kline, who claims to have been the victim of threats that were also addressed to the group’s communications director, Bethany Khan.
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Although Univision News has not seen those threats directly, the local media Nevada Independent indicates that you had access to sent messages union leaders in which people identified as followers of Sanders were insulted and threatened to go after them if they did not change their mind.
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“We feel that it is a great attack on the woman of color because they believe that you will be afraid and that you will stop talking but the threats do not stop us,” he warns.
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The theme arrived on Wednesday night at Democratic debate and although Sanders He tried to take the weight off the threats by saying that only a small part of his followers incurs in these behaviors and that we must end the “ruthless attacks on the Internet” wherever they come from, He insisted that, if he reached the presidency, he would not sign any health plan that ends the benefits that workers already have.
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“What we are asking of all the candidates is to protect our insurance and also that there is a program that they establish for people who do not have insurance. What we want is for them to leave the person a chance to decide: if you want the government or if you want to keep yours “, argues Argüello-Kline, who arrived in the United States as a political refugee in 1979 after fleeing Nicaragua after the triumph of the Sandinista revolution.
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From hotel cleaner to Culinary leader
The union leader says that her story is a reflection of how the union can improve the lives of workers. After spending time in Florida, Argüello-Kline arrived in Las Vegas in the early 1980s in search of better living conditions. He started cleaning rooms and bathrooms in hotels, a job in which he spent seven years in which he began to get involved in La Culinaria.
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As a member of the union, the Nicaraguan became the leader of the picket line that formed a group of workers in front of the Frontier casino that paralyzed the business for 6 years and 4 months, which is considered the longest strike in US history, until the workers managed to guarantee them better conditions.
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“When people know their rights and can exercise them, it is tremendous power and when a person comes from another country like when I came to work I could see the great difference of having an established life. Having union is the best way to have a family and feel safe, have a contract, be protected. “, Explain.
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In 2012, Argüello-Kline reached the highest position of the union, the secretary treasurer, who currently holds. And now it is a point of reference for politicians who visit the city in search of workers’ vote.
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This year, except for former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, all Democratic candidates who remain in the race to face Donald Trump in November have visited her in the Culinary and talked to workers in community forums about their proposals.
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“The demands we have are that one job must be enough for each person,” explains the union leader in rejection of precarious jobs that do not give to move families forward. In addition, among the group’s priorities is the need for immigration reform to legalize the nearly 11 million people estimated to be undocumented in the country and protect the union’s health insurance.
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But, despite the differences that have arisen with Sanders’s proposal in this regard, Argüello-Kline does not hesitate to say that they will support the Democratic candidate who is elected in the primaries with the aim of defeating Donald Trump.
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“We have a president who does not want immigrants and the Workers Union is a union of immigrants,” he says. “The candidate who is the nominee at the end we will support him and we will work very hard to be him”.
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For her, this 2020 Americans will have “great responsibility as citizens” for a change. Therefore, every time you have the opportunity to speak to your union members, be it in a forum with candidates or a protest on the street in Korea with a firm voice and the strong accent that characterizes you when you speak English: “We vote, we win!” (“If we vote, we win!”).
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