The union representing tens of thousands of hotel workers in Las Vegas will ask casino-resort operators to give every housekeeper a “panic button” as it begins negotiating new contracts admit an uptick in rape and sexual assaults against housekeepers.
Leaders of the Culinary Union will bring the request to the bargaining table next month on behalf of the more than 14,000 housekeepers who work on the Las Vegas Strip and the destination’s downtown area. The push is in line with ordinances recently approved in other cities that provide hotel workers with some protections.
“We want safety for all the workers,” Geoconda Argüello-Kline, the union’s secretary-treasurer, told The Associated Press. “We want to have some language in the contract to protect more the people who work inside the hotels. … We know what’s going on with sexual harassment. No woman should have to go through that.”
The union declined to provide figures related to threatening situations that housekeepers have faced in recent years while working at Las Vegas hotels. Court records show some housekeepers have been brutally attacked and raped in the past.
