When the pandemic struck in full force in March 2020, the entire Strip shut down, a sight that rivaled New York City’s empty Times Square for apocalyptic eeriness. The Culinary Union is Las Vegas, and its fortunes rise and fall with the city. Along the way, it has become the state’s strongest political force pushing bread-and-butter progressive issues that help working people. Today, it is not so much a simple labor union as a full-service social service and political operation, with unparalleled efficiency in using labor power to create sustainable, middle-class lives for workers who would otherwise face low wages and indifferent prospects. Virtually all of the employees of the Vegas Strip’s famous casinos are members of the Culinary Union, which has spent the past 86 years building an organization of more than 60, 000 hospitality workers in Nevada. It is the story of what happens to a one-industry town when that industry is suddenly and completely shut down. When the history of the pandemic’s effect on working people is written, there will be a special place in it for the devastation of Las Vegas. The past year and a half had been very, very hard. Now, they had come to rally in a town once again full of gaudy life. They had seen this Strip deserted not long ago. All those people in red “Come Back Stronger” T-shirts were room cleaners, bartenders, bellhops and other workers in the casinos that dominate the skyline. It was not debauchery, but a celebration. This was the most wholesome thing happening on the Strip. “Are the cops gonna come break this up?”

“What’s going on here?” one said nervously, fingering her riding crop. Two women in matching fishnet stockings and leather bikinis stopped accosting tourists for photos and tips for a moment and wandered over to take in the scene. Speakers blasted the song “We Are Family.” And from all directions, people in red shirts trickled in. A flatbed truck served as an improvised stage.

In front of the Paris Las Vegas Casino, cones were carefully laid down the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, shutting down three of its six lanes.

It was the week before Halloween on the Vegas Strip, and the party had already begun.

Are any casinos in vegas union